HIST 1152
Adam Maxwell
Primary Source Review #1
09/10/2014
Margaret Sanger
Need for Birth Control
Margaret Sanger was born on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York. And started a publication promoting a woman 's right to birth control but due to Obscenity laws forced her to flee the country until 1915. In 1916 she opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. Sanger fought for women 's rights her entire life.
Born Margaret Higgins on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York. She was one of 11 children born into a Roman Catholic working-class Irish American family. Sanger attended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute in 1896. She went onto study nursing at White Plains Hospital four years later and …show more content…
Through her work, Sanger treated a number of women who had undergone back-alley abortions or tried to self-terminate their pregnancies. Sanger objected to the unnecessary suffering endured by these women, and she fought to make birth control information and contraceptives available. She also began dreaming of a "magic pill" to be used to control pregnancy. "No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother."
In 1914, Sanger started a feminist publication called The Woman Rebel, which promoted a woman 's right to have birth control. The monthly magazine landed her in trouble, as it was illegal to send out information on contraception through the mail.
Sanger rebelled against the unnecessary suffering endured by these women, and she fought to make birth control information and contraceptives available. In 1922 Sanger wrote an article called The Need of Birth Control, I think one of the things that prompted Sanger to write this article was the fact that her mother, Anne, had several miscarriages, and Margaret believed that all of these pregnancies took a toll on her mother 's health and contributed to her early death at the …show more content…
It also made mailing and importing anything related to these topics a crime.
Rather than face a possible five-year jail sentence, Sanger fled to England. While there, she worked in the women 's movement and researched other forms of birth control, including diaphragms, which she later smuggled back into the United States. She had separated from her husband by this time, and the two later divorced. Embracing the idea of free love, Sanger had affairs with both psychologist Havelock Ellis and writer H. G. Wells. She died in 1966.
During my research of Sanger’s life I found the two following websites very helpful. One of the websites, the first website I used is called bio.com, this website provided a great example of Sanger’s life starting from her family life as well as life as a nurse and so on from there. I believe this website is extremely reliable because it also includes mini documentaries that go more in depth about different