Margaret Sanger's Speech Analysis

During the 1900’s through the 1960’s, the population in the United States nearly increased to 2,357,000 (Wikipedia). Margaret H. Sanger, having a liberal father, and a mother who died after giving birth to eleven children, had began a movement for birth control and contraceptives. After studying to become a nurse, she began to work with poor woman in the slums (Mr. Newman’s Digital Rhetorical Symposium). After helping these immigrants in the slums and experiencing her mother’s death, which she believes was from having too many children, Sanger believed that women should be able to have control over childbearing (Mr. Newman’s Digital Rhetorical Symposium). Sanger had started her movement by sending out newsletters to spread the word of her findings,

and this ended in an arrest for sending obscene material in the mail. She begun to travel the world to spread the word internationally; she opened up clinics to record women’s medical histories and give out information about birth control. This later helped her by the founding of the International Planned Parenthood Federation “Her 1925 speech, The Children's Era, addressed the results of overpopulation and a lack of birth control options: Children who were "unwelcome, unwanted, unprepared for, unknown," with poor health, hunger, abandonment and abysmal living conditions” (The Eloquent Woman). Sanger was a part of the first national birth-control conference in 1925; She delivered her landmark speech “The Children’s Era” (Mr. Newman’s Digital Rhetorical Symposium).
Margaret Sanger knew she needed to make a big deal about birth control because certainly the population was getting out of hand plus many women were dying from birthing.

Sanger opened her speech by referring it to Ellen Key’s book “The Century of the Children”. She mentions that, “Ellen Kay hoped this twentieth century was the century of the children” and “ould see this old world of ours converted into a beautiful garden of children”. Sanger said, “ ...in spite of all our acknowledged love of children, all our generosity, all our good-will, all the enormous spending of millions on philanthropy and charities, all our warm-hearted sentiment, all our incessant activity…”. “You have got to give your seeds a proper soil in which to grow. You have got to give them sunlight and fresh air. You have got to give them space and the opportunity”, says Sanger. Sanger used anaphora for these lines in her speech to help create more emotion and make her speech more powerful. Sanger also used an alliteration in her speech “Prospective Parents” because alliterations are known to make logos catchy or easily memorized. “Worry, strain, shock, unhappiness, enforced maternity, may all poison the blood of the enslaved mother” was an example of an asyndeton that Sanger used in her speech. Sanger used this rhetorical trope because asyndeton speeds up the rhythm of a passage and makes a single idea more memorable. “Sometimes in idle moments I like to think it would be a very good scheme to have a

bureau of the Child-to-be. At such a bureau of the unborn..” was referred as an anadiplosis. Sanger used this rhetorical trope because it helps rise to the climax.
The majority of Sanger’s speech is made up from the three appeals (ethos, pathos, and logos).

“When we point the one immediate practical way toward order and beauty in society, the only way to lay the foundations of a society composed of happy children, happy women, and happy men, they call this idea indecent and immoral” is an appeal to an ethos. “"Who is to decide?" "Would there be a jury, like a play jury?" Would a Republican administration give parenthood permits only to Republicans -- or perhaps only to Democrats?” would be an appeal to a pathos. “It suggests Prohibition: there might even be bootlegging in babies” is an appeal to logos because it is persuading an audience by reason. “Why does the Children's Era still remain a dream of the dim and the distant future? Why has so little been accomplished? -- in spite of all our acknowledged love of children, all our generosity, all our good-will, all the enormous spending of millions on philanthropy and charities, all our warm-hearted sentiment, all our incessant activity and social consciousness? Why?” This whole paragraph is a pathos because it is a way of convincing an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response. The appeals of the ethos, pathos, and logos are balanced in this speech because there are about the same amount of each throughout the speech. This speech is balanced also because it’s ethical, believable, well organized, logically ordered, and it appealed to her

audiences.
Among having the population nearly reaching 2,357,000 people, Margaret Sanger founded birth control. Sanger believed that women who were giving birth every year and all the time was nearly killing them or actually killing them. Although she was arrested for trying to spread her findings through mail, Sanger eventually travel the world internationally to spread her word. Sanger drawn many women and even men's attention about her clinic and birth control through her speech. Her tone of voice allowed much of the audience to focus in on actually what point she was trying to stick out there (The Eloquent Woman). Through Margaret H. Sanger speech,the use of the rhetorical tropes, and appeals, she was and still is considered a great speaker of history.