Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger was a very important and influential person of her time. Back then, women were often mistreated and had many unwanted pregnancies. Lacking effective contraceptives, these women resorted to unsafe and cheap abortions. Margaret Sanger wanted to help women gain planned parenthood while using safe and legal birth control methods. She also wanted to end government censorship of abortion information. This was because Sanger thought it was unfair how the government didn’t want women to have access to abortion information, stating that abortion is a criminal activity. Although Margaret Sanger wanted to improve the lives of many women, she had many eugenic ways of thinking. For instance, she wanted to create a society with a superior race, and thus did not want lower class immigrant women to have more children. She also wanted to improve the human race by preventing certain types of people to reproduce (i.e. mentally ill, homosexuals, African Americans). People were attracted to Sanger’s movement because Sanger advocated the idea that women should have the right to control their own bodies, and when they want to have children. Margaret Sanger’s era was a time when discussion about sexuality was illegal. Her works were basically the only source of information for women to learn about their bodies. But, one the the many challenges Margaret Sanger faced was government censorship of her work. For instance, in 1911, Sanger wrote “What Every Girl Should Know,” but the United States government summed up its education policy for women, and made the article read, “What Every Girl Should Know: Nothing.” Yet another challenge Sanger faced was the fact that her ideas were against the Catholic Church and its beliefs. Christian beliefs say that it is wrong to end the life of a child, and Sanger went against the church’s morals by presenting the idea of birth control. Throughout her movement, Sanger was arrested several times for expressing her views during an era in