Margret Sanger’s Association, Essay Example

Margaret Sanger, the iconic birth control advocate who fought for women’s right to choose if and when to become mothers is a controversial figure whose ideas and words have been used both to praise her work, and to discredit her for having adhered to the Eugenics Movement that was widespread during the time when she was most active. By using the treasure of primary sources that the famous woman left behind, and basing their accusation on many of her own statements and declarations, critics are quick to include Margaret Sanger among the notorious group of Eugenicists, which includes Hitler as its most radical member. Margaret Sanger worked in the same time period when the eugenics movement was at its apogee and since the problems she discussed intersected in some points with those put forward by the Eugenicists, it is easy to see how and why at time Sanger collaborated with them. However, she never adhered to the group, nor did she agree entirely with their precepts. The present paper will try to demonstrate that Margaret Sanger only agreed in one point with the Eugenics Movement, and she rejected other theories put forward by the group, particularly more radical ones.

Margaret Sanger was born in 1879 to an immigrant family of 11 children. She was impacted from an early age by her mother’s death by cervical cancer after she had 18 pregnancies in 22 years. However, as Dorothy Wardell (738) explains, the decisive moment in Sanger’s career as a birth control advocate came when she witnessed Sadie Sachs’ death as a result of having one too many pregnancies. Sanger needed to fight the Comstock law which specifically forbade the distribution of contraceptive information. Sanger started a newspaper, “The Woman Rebel”, which attracted the attention of authorities, although no specific contraceptive means were promoted in it (Wardell 739), and forced her to flee to Europe. In Netherlands, she discovered the diaphragm, and visited a birth control clinic. She returned to open her own clinic in Brooklin, in 1916 and she was brought to trial because of it, which helped to popularize her ideas even more. Following the suit, she obtained a significant victory when contraceptive methods were made available for women in cases when women’s lives were endangered. Based on this law, she opened another clinic, where doctors now felt they had the legal cover to work and help women (Wardell 741). After this point, Sanger’s efforts began to be rewarded, and many other clinics were open in the country, while the issue of birth control became popular and earned many supporters. In 1936, Sanger broke the last legal barrier when she managed to legalize the sending of birth control materials through mail.

Sanger’s work as a birth control advocate intersected with the ideas and actions of the Eugenics movement, and she is even to this day, accused of having been closely associated with this movement, which notoriously promoted forced sterilization of disadvantaged and of minority groups. However, the basic precepts of the Eugenics Movement in the 1920s were much more moderate, arguing in favor of the ‘fit’ having more children and the ‘unfit’ having less, as Charles Valenza (44) argues. At the time, the Eugenics movement was no as controversial as it is today, and was much better viewed than Sanger’s birth control advocacy. However, Margaret Sanger did not adhere to the movement, but rather, used it in order to promote birth control to those who were reluctant to them, as being an effective manner of reducing poverty, famine and overpopulation (The Margaret Sanger Papers). Therefore, her argument in favor of birth control was made stronger by relying not only on women’s rights, but also on the wider benefits of the society, such as better health of the mothers, diminished infant death rates and increased economy. Moreover, the Eugenicists themselves were against birth control because, they inferred, the rich and educated would use it and the uneducated would not, thus contradicting their own program (Charles Valenza 44).

Margaret Sanger was therefore not a Eugenicist herself and in fact, she did not approve with their basic precepts. It was not Sanger’s aim to stop poor women, of any race, to bring children to the world, but rather, her aim was that of helping them to have the possibility of deciding when and how many children to give birth to. This is clear from her statement, that “…woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world (Sanger cited in Valenza 45). However, there was one point in which the two parties agreed, namely the necessity that the mentally sick should be stopped from conceiving children (The Margaret Sanger Papers). Sanger declared that, “the grosser, the more obvious, the undeniable feeble-minded should, indeed not only be discouraged, but prevented from propagating their kind” (cited in Valenza 44). Therefore, Sanger’s common ground with the Eugenics movement was the need to prevent the mentally ill from transmitting their illness o the next generation. In addition, as Valenza (46) argues, even though she was labeled a racist for having promoted birth control among the African Americans, this action in itself proves that anger was not concerned with matter of race, because she understood and tried to help women of all races, making no distinction between the white and the black skinned women who needed help and information.

As this paper tried to argue, it is wrong to assert that Margaret Sanger was a member of the Eugenics Movement. Sanger did use the popularity of the movement to promote its own ideas as based on scientific truth, and she did agree in one point with the Eugenicists, namely that the mentally ill should be prevented from reproducing, thereby stopping them from transmitting their condition to future. However, Sanger did not agree that anyone could or should decide who is fit and who is unfit to have children and she cannot be associated with racism of the kind that led to the Jewish genocide.

Works Cited

The Margaret Sanger Papers. “The Sanger-Hitler Equation”. 32. 2002/3. Web. http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/secure/newsletter/articles/sanger-hitler_equation.html

Valenza, Charles. “Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?” Family Planning Perspectives .17.1 (1985):44-46.

Wardell, Dorothy. “Margaret Sanger: Birth Control’s Successful Revolutionary”. American Journal of Public Health. 70.7 (1980):736-742.