- Published: September 10, 2022
- Updated: September 10, 2022
- University / College: University of Oxford
- Language: English
- Downloads: 41
Contents
Planned parenthood is a powerful, controversial, and important topic to discuss. We can all agree that planned parenthood is influential in today’s society, whether we fall on the positive or negative side of belief, but very few know why it started or who it was started by.
Margaret Sanger is the founder of planned parenthood and brought the importance of birth control to the public. She had many experiences within her life that led to her award winning books and, as Hillary Clinton said in 2009 after receiving the Margaret Sanger award, her courage, her tenacity, [and] her vision.
She rocked the boat during her lifetime to get us to where we are now.
Margaret Sanger was born on the early fall day of September 14, 1879 in Corning, New York. She was one out of eleven kids born into her family. Her mother, Anne, had several miscarriages during her life, which was cut short due to a fatal case of tuberculosis. (Biography. com). Margaret believed that her mother’s total of 18 pregnancies in 22 years caused her death (14 Facts About Margaret Sanger). Her father taught her that she should always speak her mind and stand up for her beliefs. All of these experiences caused her to want to become a nurse and tend to pregnant women. (u-s-history. com).
After attending university for nursing, marrying William Sanger, and having three kids, Margaret and her family moved to a small village in Manhattan, New York known for radicalism in the world of political ideas. She moved there in the year 1910. While there, she acquainted with the famous writer, Upton sinclair (Biography. com). Later in life, Sanger became a writer, so this may have sparked her interest in putting her opinions to paper to share to the public.
Sanger joined many activist groups while living in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, including the Women’s Committee of the New York Socialist Party and the Liberal Club and she went to marches and strikes(Biography. com). This allowed her to stand up for her beliefs on women’s rights and more specifically, women’s rights to know they have the option to use contraception to avoid undesired pregnancy (britannica. com).
In the year 1912, Margaret quit her job as a nurse and began a campaign to teach women and girls around her about safe sex and options to avoid pregnancies. She started her campaign by writing an article in her local paper titled What Every Girl Should Know. Two years later, sanger published her own magazine full of information about contraception. She began mailing it out to educate the public. However, during this time it was illegal, according to the Comstock Act of 1873, to send out obscene and immoral materials.