Sanger And The Eugenics Movement Summary

As opposed to the genetic approach that the Eugenics Movement took in the 1920s, Sanger thought that the key to an improved race lay in the stability of the home environment. Margaret Sanger’s unique path to eugenics took on the ideas that prefered human qualities were not necessarily hereditary and, instead, argued that that home environment determined traits. To be an acceptable home environment, Sanger believed that mothers must be emotionally and financially stable. Sanger’s modern views on eugenics came from the evolution of women’s and children’s societal roles throughout history. In American historian Estelle B. Freedman’s book, No Turning Back, Freedman wrote about changing demands of childcare throughout history. She observed that “In commercial and industrial economies children no longer provide labor for their families. Instead they require substantial investment of family resources and years of

education to become productive workers.” As opposed to the previous farming societies, children in the twentieth century required families who could support them in attending school instead of working. Sanger supported the idea that women should only have children once they would be able to cope with the demands which modern childbearing required. In order for mothers to create a superior race, Sanger believed that they must be emotionally and financially stable so that instead of struggling to raise children, mothers could raise children properly. Instead of honing in on the perfect set of genes which the Eugenics Movement desired, Sanger had her own requirements for a new race. She wanted children to be part of loving and supportive families. In a draft of a newspaper article which Sanger wrote in 1951, she outlined that “Food, clothing and shelter are basic, of course, but they are not enough. The affection and attention of parents is equally essential. Not every parent can bestow these gifts upon the same number of children.” Sanger thought that parents must be economically and mentally stable in order to raise children properly and support her vision for a new race.
Poor women were financially unstable and therefore more susceptible to the effects of unwanted pregnancy which Sanger worked to prevent.

She believed that working class women who were burdened by large families were unfit parents. In Sanger's book Woman and the New Race, she said that working class women could not have a healthy home if they had many children. She said that when poor women do not go into the workforce and secure their finances, “motherhood becomes a disaster and childhood a tragedy.” When working class women have too many children, the world is a “disaster” for both the mother and child. Sanger believed that women needed to go through womanhood on their own and become independent from their husbands before raising a child. In her book Woman and the New Race, written in 1920, Sanger outlined her beliefs that secure women would develop the superior race. She wrote, “The exercise of [a woman’s] right to decide how many children she will have and when she shall have them will procure for her the time necessary to the development of other faculties than that of reproduction. She will give play to her tastes, her talents and her

ambitions. She will become a full-rounded human being. Thus and only thus will woman be able to transmit to her offspring those qualities which make for a greater race.” Sanger thought that making a new race did not stem from genetic selection and that it, instead, evolved from allowing women to grow into themselves before having children. Sanger emphasised that women will bestow their most valued qualities on her children when they have been given a chance to become independent. She believed that a new race came more from nurturing mothers than it did from genetics. In Woman and the New Race, she went on to say that as a result of poor women not being able to control their number of children, they are “the greatest sufferers of all” since they not only “bear the material hardships and deprivations in common with the rest of the family, but in the case of the mother, these are intensified.” Poor families may not be able to keep up with the growing numbers of children which comes from not having access to family planning. When “The earnings of the husband do not increase as rapidly as the family does. Food, clothing and general comfort in the home grow less as the numbers of the family increase. The woman's work grows heavier, and her strength is less with each child.” In Sanger’s childhood as well as her work as a nurse, she saw the struggle which women were forced to endure without birth control. In Sanger’s 1938 eponymous autobiography, she recalled the day when a woman died because of a self-inflicted abortion because she did not have the access to birth control. During her work as a nurse, she was called to the lower class Sachs’ family. She wrote: “Mrs Sachs was in a coma and died within ten minutes. I folded her still hands across her breast, remembering how they had pleaded with me, begging so humbly for the knowledge which was her right.” Without reliable tools to limit births, Mrs Sachs, like many poor women, felt that they had no options when they became pregnant. Sanger knew that the strict anti-birth control and abortion laws forced into corners with nowhere to turn.
Birth control was the tool in which Sanger planned to use in her quest to liberate poor women which would then improve the human race. While Sanger wanted to aid women and improve the human race through birth control, she also had to fight legal restrictions. In a newspaper article published in 1922, activist Mary Ware Dennett writes about the legal stage of birth control in the US saying that the US “had the unfortunate distinction of being the one country in the world which has attempted to keep under legal lock and key the knowledge by which human reproduction may be controlled, and it is the one country whose laws have classified this knowledge with ‘obscenity’.” Due to the Comstock law passed in 1873, birth control was illegal in United States. Margaret Sanger had to fight against the laws in the US in order to take her stance. She wanted women to be freed from pregnancy so that they could grow themselves into womanhood before having children. In 1979, writer Madeline Gray commented on Sanger’s popularity among the poor population. She noted that “[Sanger’s] most faithful allies were the poor women who flocked to her clinics by the thousand and wrote more than 50 letters a day begging to know how to avoid pregnancy.” Since poor women were most vulnerable to the economic responsibilities of childcare, they were also the women who wanted birth control the most. Sanger helped poor women gain access to birth control by opening birth control clinics, holding conferences and training doctors to teach women about family planning. In 1923, Sanger opened the first legal birth control clinic called the Clinical Research Bureau which taught doctors about birth control practices and, by the 1930s, served more than 10,000 patients each year. In a newspaper article draft Sanger wrote in 1951, she states what she thinks the role of birth control should be in the family. She said that “[Birth control] is one of the cornerstones of family life for couples who want children and can bring into the world healthy babies with a chance in life.” It was the mother’s choice, Sanger thought, to decide when to have children, but she encouraged it to be after they developed themselves into women. Sanger’s deep involvement in the Birth Control Movement exemplifies her desire to give women the control over their lives that they wanted. In No Turning Back by American historian Estelle B. Freedman, Freedman sums up the importance of birth control when she says that “Choice allows women to claim rights to motherhood when they wish but to resist childbearing when they must.” If a woman was in an unstable place to have a child, birth control would give her the authority over her reproductive rights that she needed.
Sanger’s goal throughout her career was to distribute birth control to poor women so that they liberated themselves from the limitations of caring for many children. Sanger saw women in two different categories: rich and poor. Rich women, Sanger said in Woman and the New Race, had few children which they raised well, while poor women were “their enslaved sisters.”Burdened with uncontrollable pregnancy, poor women were at the hands of their wombs. When women gain access to birth control, however, the lower class is able to be freed from the obligations of pregnancy. In Sanger’s book Woman and the New Race, she summarizes her visions for motherhood. She wrote, “When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race.”Sanger believed in the theories of eugenics in relation to a new human race, but she did not believe that selective breeding was the answer. She, instead, saw that voluntary motherhood through birth control was the key.
Sanger gave women control over their lives through her family planning efforts that in turn made her one step closer to achieving her goal of a new human race. Through birth control, Sanger wanted to empower women so that the public saw them as equal to men. In her book Woman and the New Race, she wrote, “They can be…comrades and companions to their husbands -- a privilege denied to the mother of many children. Theirs is the opportunity to keep abreast of the times, to make and cultivate a varied circle of friends, to seek amusements as suits their taste and means, to know the meaning of real recreation. All these things remain unrealized desires to the prolific mother.” Women with many children would not be equal to men in the workforce because of their societal obligation to take care of their children at home. When birth control helped them work, they could grow their personalities, and the woman would pass her skills onto her children to form a better human race. Sanger branched off from the side of eugenics focused on ‘perfecting’ the human body through selective breeding, and instead put her efforts into making happier homes. In Sanger’s book The Pivot of Civilization written in 1922, she laid out her opinions on the purpose of BC saying, “More children from the fit, less from the unfit—that is the chief issue of birth control.” She put the power in the hands of the women by allowing them to choose when to have children, but she strongly encouraged the poor to use birth control. Throughout her work, she advocated for the belief that women needed to become women before wombs. She argued that “If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman. Then and then only can the mother cease to be an incubator and be a mother indeed. Then only can she transmit to her sons and daughters the qualities which make strong individuals and, collectively, a strong race.”Womanhood must be fully developed before a woman becomes a mother. Then, a superior race will form from the strong and independent woman. When women control their fertility, they have more time to become independent. With this newfound freedom, women can grow themselves and tighten the social gap between men and women. When women feel this empowerment, they will deliver it onto their children. This is how the better race will be made.
Sanger advocated for birth control because it gave poor women the tools to postpone raising children until they could develop into stable women. While Margaret Sanger was always a leader in the Birth Control Movement, her motivations behind her advocacy frequently crossed paths with Eugenics. In WWII, the Nazis explicitly exterminated groups that they deemed “unfit”, such as the Jews and the Gypsies, which besmirched Eugenics. Propagandist organizations who are against women’s reproductive control often misreference Sanger’s relationship with eugenics. They reference the darker side of Eugenics instead of understanding Sanger’s redefinition of improving the human race.