In the first issue of Ceres Magazine we left the story on Margaret Sanger at the front steps of what would become a controversial career as a radical feminist and as a passionate supporter of birth control rights. We focused on her motivation and her ideals, which in turn, put the wheel of contraception reform in motion.
In this issue, we discuss the events that led to the opening of the first clinic, and to the first victory of the birth control movement in 1918. I would recommend as a good informative read, Birth Control in America, The Career of Margaret Sanger, by David M. Kennedy, in which Sanger is depicted for who she was, a woman with conflicting ideas and motives, with no attempt to canonize her or give credit that she doesn’t deserve.
From our first issue, we already know that in England, Sanger had associated with the British neo-Malthusians, which was a school of beliefs that population would grow to an unsustainable level. It gave Sanger another justification for birth control to avoid over-population,
and therefore poverty and famine.
All the while, in early 1915, Margaret Sanger's estranged husband, William Sanger, was arrested and spent 30 days in jail for giving a copy of Family Limitation (Margaret’s pamphlet containing detailed and precise information on various contraceptive methods, and for which she was indicted for violating postal obscenity law) to a representative of anti-vice politician Anthony Comstock. The obvious purpose was to bait Margaret Sanger to return to the US, so she could be arrested and tried. At first, it seemed that the scheme would fail, but when William Sanger chose to go to prison instead of paying the fine, it ruffled Margaret’s feathers, who would have preferred to carry the martyrdom of her crusade alone, and despised her husband for interfering with her work.
Up to then, she had wanted to return to her family, and mainly to her children, but she had thought that her cause would better be served if she remained in Europe. Sanger visited
northwestern Europe birth control clinics where she gleaned information about diaphragms and
other contraception methods. She realized that there were more effective options than the suppositories and douches that had been recommended in the United States. Now, with her husband involved, she had to go home. But she would bring those new methods with her, in defiance of United States law. By the end of September 1915, she started the long voyage back to the US.
It was a troubled country that awaited Sanger. The apparent disintegration of the family nucleus caused by social changes, urbanization and industrialization had brought concerns and questioning. On the other hand, a social movement had formed advocating birth control, and the first thing Sanger saw “when she disembarked on October 10, 1915 was a headline on the cover of the Pictorial Review with the very words—birth control—she had coined eight months before.”
[Birth Control in America, p.77].
Margaret Sanger (September 14, 1883—September 6, 1966) has always sparked controversy. Her way of thinking, political and modernist values, association with Eugenicists (who wanted to weed out defects and improve the qualities of the human species) angered and provoked many, both in her lifetime and today. She is still the target of ambiguous discourse accusing her of racism, even a promoter of black genocide, 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 of abortion. Instead, once a nurse, she fought to protect women from abortion and against repeated pregnancies that destroyed their lives and bodies. Maybe it is time to straighten out a few facts without going too deep into Margaret Sanger’s private life. Interestingly enough, across the web and in books, nobody can agree 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.
Sanger in 1922.
68 | Ceres Magazine | Spring 2016