Margaret Sanger

About this book

In 1916, Margaret Sanger made her legal stand against the repressive laws forbidding the distribution of obscene articles-including any information on contraception. Though embraced by feminists, socialists, birth-control advocates, and the working class, her ideas are still as controversial and valid today as they were ninety years ago. Margaret Sanger was a controversial fighter for legalized birth control and visionary whose ideas formed Planned Parenthood. In this book Miriam Reed compiles historical and personal commentary on a broad selection of Sanger's letters, articles, and speeches. These original documents venture beyond Sanger's involvement in the contraception movement and depict the untold autobiography of Sanger's wide social impact. This book includes Sanger's writings on marriage and children, the labor movement, socialism, prison reform, pacifism, eugenics, and sex education. The chronological arrangement of documents illustrates Sanger's impact on these issues, the development of the struggle between working class and middle class, and the clash between conservative mores and the freethinking women that have shaped today's society. It features the original articles "Nothing" and "What Every Girl Should Know" from The New York Call, which sparked the ongoing struggle for women's reproductive freedom.