Margaret Sanger and the Fight for Birth Control

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Margaret's quest began long before she was known by the public. It started when she was just a young girl. As with most children, her parents were a large influence on her life, but in a way different than perhaps many others. Margaret's father provided her with all the mental tools she would need to succeed. A free thinker and outspoken radical, her father, Michael Higgins, influenced his young daughter to act the same way; to question everything and to stand up for what she believed in. Though Margaret loved her mother, she conceded that definetly her father was the major influence in her early life. Her mother however also had a large influence, yet not in quite the same way. Anna Sanger bore ten children other than Margaret, causing her to be both constantly pregnant and constantly sick, leaving little time for her children. Thus Margaret and her siblings were constantly forced to care for themselves. Anna died at an early age to TB which Margaret attributed to her multiple pregnancies. It was then that she decided to become a nurse and start helping pregnant women.

Working as a nurse in the ghettos of New York, Sanger became all too familiar with some horrible sights. She saw many women die of very preventable deaths due to child labor, and horrible methods of self-induced abortion. After seeing one woman die from a horrific attempt to give herself an abortion Sanger had decided that she had seen enough. It was too late for her to help these women when they came to her as a nurse. She felt she must attack the source of the problem, birth control. She stated, "I went to bed, knowing that no matter what it might cost, I was finished with palliatives and superficial cures; I was resolved to seek out the root of evil, to do s...

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...re apt to accept the concept of birth control, if not completely embracing the idea. Her actions challenged the traditional way of thought and introduced concepts that shifted the course of American society.

Works Cited

1. Coigney, Virginia. Margaret Sanger New York: Doubleday, 1969.

2. Gray, Madeline. Margaret Sanger: A Biography Of The Champion of Birth Control. New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1979.

3. Kennedy, David. Birth Control in America : The Career of Margaret Sanger Boston: Yale Universtiy Press, 1970.

4. Marshall, John M.D. Catholics, Marriage and Contraceptions New York: Heligon Press 1965.

5. Parrish, Michael. Anxious Decades. W. W. Norton: New York, 1992.

6. Sanger, Margaret. Margaret Sanger, An Auto-Biography New York: Dover Publications, 1971.

7. Sanger, Margaret. My Fight For Birth Control. Farrar & RineHart: New York, 1931.

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