Margaret Sanger has always sparked controversy. Her radical feminism, way of thinking, political and modernist va-lues, association with eugenicists (who wanted to improve the qualitty of the human species by weeding out defects), and passionate support for birth control angered and provoked many, both in her lifetime and today. She is still the target of ambiguous discourse accusing her of racism, along with faulty Nazi claims in order to attack women’s rights and discredit her work for reproductive freedom. Many haters depict her as being an advocate for abortion. Instead, once a nurse, she fought to protect women from abortion and against repeated pregnancies that destroyed their lives and bodies. Also, some well-known, constantly recycled myths, such as the ones used in 2012 by MSNBC political analyst and former Republican National Committee’s Chairperson Michael Steele’s, portray her as a promoter of black genocide. Maybe it is time to straighten out a few facts without going too deep into Margaret Sanger's private life. Interestingly, across the web and in books, there is no agreement on her date of birth. If this simple fact is open for discussion, one would wonder what else about Margaret Sanger is left to one’s own interpretation.
Though the majority agree on her birthday as September 14, some sources, including Webster's Dictionary of American Women, give her birth year as 1883, and www.notablebiographies.com as 1884. According to David M. Kennedy, author of Birth Control in America - The Career of Margaret Sanger, she was born in 1883. According to Wikipedia and many other sources, Margaret Louise Higgins was born in 1879 in Corning, New York, to Michael Hennessey Higgins, Irish-born stonemason, and Catholic Irish-born Anne Purcell Higgins. Michael Hennessey Higgins' non-conformist, anti-victorian views often made him pass for an extremist, as he was an activist for women's suffrage and free public education. An atheist and a free-thinker in a heavily Catholic Corning caused him and his family to be ostracized from the community. This rejection would remain in Margaret's mind as a bitter experience that would eventually develop into a dislike for religion. In 1869, he married Anne Purcell, who went through 18 pregnancies (with 11 live births) in 22 years before dying at age 49 of tuberculosis. Margaret resented her father for having to care for her mother in the last stage of her illness, and ultimately blamed him for her death, which she implied had resulted from her “father’s passion.” The sixth of eleven children, Margaret spent her youth assisting with household chores and caring for her younger siblings.
However, nursing her mother awoke a new interest in young Margaret. She wanted to be a physician, but her family could only pay for nursing school; thus, in 1899, she left for White Plains Hospital, in Westchester County, to begin her nursing education. It is there she met and secretly married the architect William Sanger in 1902. From their union, three children were born, a daughter who died in childhood, and two sons. Soon, Margaret had to give up her education due to a recurring tubercular condition. The couple settled down to a quiet life in Westchester, New York, and she bought into her husband leftist political views. Margaret seemed to be living the dream, but close to ten years of marriage, she wanted more than this life of boredom, complacency and stagnation. They moved to New York City in 1911, and before long, Sanger adhered to radical political and modernist values. She joined the Women's Committee of the New York Socialist party, taking part in the labor actions of the Industrial Workers of the World (including the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike and the 1913 Paterson Silk
Strike). She also became
involved with local
intellectuals, and
met the ferocious
Emma Goldman,
agitator, feminist,
but also among
the first fervent
advocates of
“voluntary
motherhood."
All the
while, Sanger
worked as a
visiting nurse in
the slums of the
East Side. She was
appalled by the
ignorance of immigrant
women about their bodies
50 | Ceres Magazine | Oct/Nov 2015