Who Is Margaret Sanger

Margaret Higgins Sanger was born on 14 September 1879, in Corning, New York.  She was a supporter of birth control and the founder of American Birth Control League.

            After a short career teaching, Margaret Sanger become a nurse in lower east side of New York. She witnessed the relation between poverty, uncontrolled birth and mother and child mortality during the labors. Margaret Sanger claimed that every woman has birth control right therefore she fight against legal regulations that complicated the birth control for woman.

            In 1914 Margaret Sanger started to publish a magazine named “The Woman Rebel” to addition to that she handed out brochures about Family Planning. She have been judged because of these actions, the case was dropped in 1916. At the following year, Sanger who opened up first birth control clinic, accused for disturbing the public peace, imprisoned for 30 days in 1917.

            Federal court of USA rearranged the 1873 Comstock Law which considered the publishings on birth control and birth control methods as off-color. The court allowed the birth control for doctors in order to save lives.

            Margaret Sanger established American Birth Control League in 1921  and she remained as president untill 1928. She leaded the first meeting of World Population Conference in Geneva, in 1927. She was the first president of International Planned Parenthood Federation(IPPF), which was established in 1953.

            As a result of the women’s right to use birth control, initiated by Margaret Sanger, in 1965 women were legally able to exercise their right to birth control. As an atheist, she criticised in her work “The Pivot of Cİvilization”, the words of Catholic Church on birth control. By that Margaret Sanger pointed out the first conflict between feminism and religion in a way.

            Margaret Sanger build her work on a simple idea; “Every child should be a wanted child“.

            Margaret Sanger had the chance to see another improvement in 1965, which is the Supreme Court’s action on legalizing the birth control for married couples on Griswold v. Connecticut.

She passed away in Arizona, on 6th September 1966. Many clinics named Margaret Sanger  after her efforts and works on women’s rights and birth control.