Margaret Sanger

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Margaret Sanger, born September 14, 1879, was a women’s rights activist who led the birth control movement and dedicated her life to fighting for access to sexual health information for women. The impact of her work can still be felt today as reproductive health is no longer a forbidden topic and access to birth control or other contraceptives is mainstream. Sanger fought for women to have access to sexual health information so they could properly educated themselves about the control they have over their own bodies. In order to understand where the world is now with sexual health, it is important to understand the world in which Sanger started her work.
Sanger came into age during a time where the Comstock Act of 1873 was in full effect. The Comstock Act was a federal statute that criminalized contraception and the distribution of information regarding sexual health. Her commitment to fighting these laws came from personal tragedy. Her mother died at age 40 of tuberculosis, which was hastened by the strain of giving birth to eleven children and having seven miscarriages. She was determined to not repeat her mother’s fate. Influence from her childhood traumas can be seen throughout her writings. In her article titled What Every Girl Should Know in 1915, Sanger wrote that women must come to “recognize there is some function of womanhood other than being a child-bearing machine.” She sought to create equality between men and women by freeing women from what she understood as “sexual servitude.”
Sanger attended Calverack College in New York and studied to be a nurse. Working in hospitals gave her an intimate view of the women whose lives were similar to that of her mother’s. She saw many women who had suffered botched abortions an...

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... become a reality until she met physician Gregory Pincus in 1951. Pincus, a medical expert in human reproduction, was willing to take on this project with her to find a safe, effective, female-controlled contraceptive. They collaborated with their sponsor, Katharine McCormick, to create Enovid, the first oral contraceptive that was invented and approved by the FDA in 1960.
Sanger died in September of 1966, but lived to see the realization of her “magic pill” as well as the undoing of the Comstock Laws. In 1965, Griswold vs. Connecticut, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the private use of contraceptives was a constitutional right. Sanger left behind the legacy of her birth control league, which changed its name to the Planned Parenthood Association in 1942, as well as two autobiographies, My Fight For Birth Control and Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography.

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