Margaret Sanger S Eugenic Legacy

Margaret Sanger, the American birth-control and population-control advocate who founded Planned Parenthood, stands like a giant among her contemporaries. With her dominating yet winning personality, she helped generate shifts of opinion on issues that were not even publicly discussed prior to her activism, while her leadership was arguably the single most important factor in achieving social and legislative victories that set the parameters for today's political discussion of family-planning funding, population-control aid, and even sex education. This work addresses Sanger's ideas concerning birth control, eugenics, population control, and sterilization against the backdrop of the larger eugenic context.

Margaret Sanger wrote this book in 1920 at the high water mark of the first wave of feminism. Women in the United States could now vote, own property, acquire higher education, and many other rights won through hard struggle. Sanger saw a woman's right to control her own body (specifically her reproductive system) as the next big goal. It took more than forty years before a new wave of feminism, along with advances in medical technology, made this attainable. Of course, this is still the fault-line which runs through the topic of women and religion. The themes which Sanger raises in this book still arouse vehement debate, and pertain to contemporary issues which would have seemed unimaginable to Sanger, such as human cloning and stem-cell research. Some of the language in this book may mystify or confuse contemporary readers. When she speaks of a 'New Race' she means the improvement of the human species in general. She occasionally uses arguments similar to the Eugenics movement (which was later embraced by the Nazis). This has been used as ammunition by some opposed to women's reproductive rights, and several misleading quotes either taken out of context or completely fabricated have been attributed to her in an attempt to demonize her. This is a disservice and dishonors Sangers' legacy. Sanger later denounced the Eugenics movement. Her books were among the first burned by the Nazis. She also personally helped several Jewish women and men escape Nazi Germany. Sanger was about as far from a reactionary as could be imagined--note her opposition to militarism, her ardent feminism and activism on behalf of working-class women, her support for labor and the rights of immigrants, all of which she makes clear in this book. She opened clinics in Harlem to bring health services to the African American community, and worked closely with such African American activists as W.E.B. DuBois and Adam Clayton Powell. In 1966, the year Sanger died, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts. . . . Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her. Sanger's opposition to abortion has to be considered in the light of the reality of pre-Roe v. Wade 'back-alley' abortion, which often had fatal or harmful side-effects. She states that she would not be opposed to abortion if it could be performed safely.

The Pivot of Civilization is one of Margaret Sanger's several insightful books in the 1920s which had a nationwide impact in promoting the cause of birth control. Contents: "A New Truth Emerges CHAPTER II: Conscripted Motherhood CHAPTER III: "Children Troop Down From Heaven...." CHAPTER IV: The Fertility of the Feeble-Minded CHAPTER V: The Cruelty of Charity CHAPTER VI: Neglected Factors of the World Problem CHAPTER VII: Is Revolution the Remedy? CHAPTER VIII: Dangers of Cradle Competition CHAPTER IX: A Moral Necessity."

Undoubtedly the most influential advocate for birth control even before the term existed, Margaret Sanger ignited a movement that has shaped our society to this day. Her views on reproductive rights have made her a frequent target of conservatives and so-called family values activists. Yet lately even progressives have shied away from her, citing socialist leanings and a purported belief in eugenics as a blight on her accomplishments. In this captivating new biography, the renowned feminist historian Jean H. Baker rescues Sanger from such critiques and restores her to the vaunted place in history she once held. Trained as a nurse and midwife in the gritty tenements of New York's Lower East Side, Sanger grew increasingly aware of the dangers of unplanned pregnancy—both physical and psychological. A botched abortion resulting in the death of a poor young mother catalyzed Sanger, and she quickly became one of the loudest voices in favor of sex education and contraception. The movement she started spread across the country, eventually becoming a vast international organization with her as its spokeswoman. Sanger's staunch advocacy for women's privacy and freedom extended to her personal life as well. After becoming a wife and mother at a relatively early age, she abandoned the trappings of home and family for a globe-trotting life as a women's rights activist. Notorious for the sheer number of her romantic entanglements, Sanger epitomized the type of "free love" that would become mainstream only at the very end of her life. That she lived long enough to see the creation of the birth control pill—which finally made planned pregnancy a reality—is only fitting.

During the first half of the twentieth century, supporters of the eugenics movement offered an image of a racially transformed America by curtailing the reproduction of “unfit” members of society. Through institutionalization, compulsory sterilization, the restriction of immigration and marriages, and other methods, eugenicists promised to improve the population—a policy agenda that was embraced by many leading intellectuals and public figures. But Catholic activists and thinkers across the United States opposed many of these measures, asserting that “every man, even a lunatic, is an image of God, not a mere animal." In An Image of God, Sharon Leon examines the efforts of American Catholics to thwart eugenic policies, illuminating the ways in which Catholic thought transformed the public conversation about individual rights, the role of the state, and the intersections of race, community, and family. Through an examination of the broader questions raised in this debate, Leon casts new light on major issues that remain central in American political life today: the institution of marriage, the role of government, and the separation of church and state. This is essential reading in the history of religion, science, politics, and human rights.

This autobiography tells of Sanger, a pioneer in the struggle for birth control as a basic human right and the founder of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Sanger is a nurse, who has witnessed first-hand the devastating effects of unwanted pregnancy, triumphed over arrest, indictment, and exile. Her autobiography is a classic of women's studies.