Margaret Sanger Birth Control Movement Research Paper

The Birth of a Movement One woman from the 1900’s indirectly assisted over 4.5 million people each year (“By the Numbers”). This influential woman was born in 1883 to immigrant parents, Anna Purcell and Michael Higgins, in Corning, New York (Coigney 16). Many believed that she would not amount to much because her father supported eleven children off of extremely low wages (Coigney 16). Despite the odds, Sanger pioneered birth control movement because she wanted to prevent history from repeating itself, believed that women should have control over their own bodies, and thought that all children should be showered with attention and love. Margaret Sanger’s success in the birth control movement has helped millions of people by providing them

At that time, “100,000 illegal abortions” took place each year in New York City because women did not feel emotionally and financially stable enough to have another child (Archer 75). Many women asked doctors about ways to prevent pregnancies, but the doctors provided no help because educating their patients about birth control would result in a fine or imprisonment for both the doctor and patient (Archer 75, “Griswold v. Connecticut”). Without available birth control, women frequently became pregnant and sought illegal abortions as an act of desperation. These illegal and dangerous abortions often lead to many health complications and even death (Archer 75). Mrs. Sachs, a victim of a botched abortion, lit Sanger’s desire to find methods of pregnancy prevention(Coigney 60). Mrs. Sachs’s self-induced abortion caused her to have major health complications, making it lethal to have additional kids. Unfortunately, with no birth control methods available to the masses in America, Mrs. Sachs became pregnant again passed away due to complications, so Margaret Sanger went to Europe to prevent another death like Mrs. Sachs’s from happening