Essay On Margaret Sanger

In our society today, both men and women have the ability to control their chances of reproduction by utilizing some type of birth control. However, this was not always true. From 1873 to 1972, the Comstock Act prohibited the usage or distribution of birth control. The American birth control movement, partly led by Margaret Sanger, fought against these laws, believing that women in particular should be able to decide the sizes of their families. Margaret Sanger changed the lives of women during her time period for the better by giving women access to birth control, becoming involved in politics, and aiding in the development of an oral contraceptive. In doing so, she had a lasting influence on reproductive rights that one can still see today

in multiple institutions.

Without birth control, many women who lived in small tenements died from improvised abortions. Margaret Sanger worked as a visiting nurse in New York, where she saw that many women, when faced with another unwanted pregnancy, resorted to hasty and cheap back-alley abortions. These efforts to be rid of unborn infants were extremely unsanitary and risky. After seeing such a vast amount of trauma and pain, Sanger shifted her attention from nursing to the need for better contraceptives. She started to write monthly articles in newspapers, such as Birth Control Review. In 1914, she coined the term "birth control" and soon began to provide women with information and contraceptives. This caused women to be more well-informed about possible ways to control pregnancies. Indicted in 1915 for distributing diaphragms and arrested in 1916 for opening the first birth control clinic in the US, Sanger would not be disheartened ("People & Events: Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)"). By accomplishing this, Sanger influenced much of the movement, and as a result, her beliefs gradually spread, reaching the minds of many women in America. Even

though she was arrested, Sanger continued to see women from the birth control clinic until the police had to take action a second time. Her efforts would go on to reduce the frequent need for painful abortions and save the lives of many women and children (Knowles). In 1921, she founded the American Birth Control League, the precursor to the Planned Parenthood Federation, and spent the next three decades campaigning to bring safe and effective birth control into the American lifestyle ("People & Events: Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)"). This achievement helped lift families out of poverty and increased the health and well-being of all individuals, families, and their communities. By granting women access to birth control, Sanger helped them gain their legal and civil rights.
In addition to her nursing capabilities, Sanger was also especially involved in the politics of the birth control movement. On November 18, 1921, she delivered a speech in Park Theatre, New York, known as The Morality of Birth Control. Sanger discussed many benefits of birth control, saying that “it is right to control the size of the family for by this control and adjustment we can raise the level and the standards of the human race” (Sanger). This statement assisted in promoting the usefulness of birth control. In 1926, Sanger gave another lecture on birth control to the women's auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey. She described it as "one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing," and added that she had to use only "the most elementary terms, as though I were trying to make children understand." Sanger's talk was praised, and as a result, "a dozen invitations to similar groups were proffered” ("People & Events: Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)"). This enlarged the number of people who supported the birth control movement, thereby making it more well-known. She enjoyed a key legal victory in 1936 when the Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries that the medical prescription of birth control for disease prevention or well-being was not illegal under the Comstock Act. A year later, the American Medical Association issued its support for birth control (Ed. K. Lee Lerner, Brenda Wilmoth Lerner). By incorporating herself into the politics of the birth control movement, Sanger became a model for nonviolent civil disobedience, empowering the American civil rights, women’s rights, anti-war, gay rights, and AIDS-action movements.
Although she’d already sparked the movement, Sanger still wished to create an oral contraceptive for women that could be ingested easily ("People & Events: Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)").

She wanted a pill that could provide all women with cheap, safe, effective and female-controlled contraception. By 1942, Sanger had refocused her attention towards a medical approach to self-controlled pregnancy prevention. Years later, in 1951, she met Gregory Pincus, and they worked together to develop the “magic pill”. The result, Enovid, was approved for usage by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960 (Katz). It promptly improved the safety of the sexual revolution of the ‘60s for millions and established family planning as the cultural norm for the US and also in many other countries of the world. Today, over 100 million women use the pill as a form of birth control (Knowles). Sanger’s tenacious struggle to obtain a method of effortless birth control brought about the advent of safe and effective oral contraception and changed the future of human reproduction for the

better.
Margaret Sanger is widely regarded as one of the leaders of the birth control movement. Thanks to Sanger’s lifelong struggle of defending the basic human right to decide when or whether to have a child, both men and women are now able to make their own choices regarding the creation and sustainment of a family. Her efforts led to the legalization and wide-spread usage of contraceptives in the United States. The effect of Margaret Sanger’s actions are demonstrated nowadays through the gradually decreasing strain of repeated and unwanted pregnancies. By giving women access to birth control, getting involved in politics, and helping to develop an oral contraceptive, Margaret Sanger has clearly contributed to the success of many American medical institutions and may as well be considered a hero.