Margaret Louise Sanger (1883–1966,) née Higgins, was an American social reformer and founder of the reproductive-rights movement. Her experiences as a nurse prompted her to distribute the pamphlet Family Limitation in 1914 and to found the first American birth-control clinic in 1916 in Brooklyn.
Born in Corning, New York, and educated at Claverack College, Sanger became a trained nurse. Appalled by some of her experiences as a nurse, she published in 1914 a radical feminist magazine, The Woman Rebel, which advised on contraception.
In 1916, she founded the first American birth-control clinic in Brooklyn, New York City. The clinic remained open nine days before police shut it down and arrested Sanger for distributing obscene materials.
After a world tour, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She is credited with originating the term birth control.
Sanger’s many books include What Every Mother Should Know (1917,) Motherhood in Bondage (1928,) and My Fight for Birth Control (1931.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Margaret Sanger
Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.
—Margaret Sanger
Topics: Challenges
No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.
—Margaret Sanger
Topics: Birth Control
Some lives drift here and there like reeds in a stream, depending on changing currents for their activity. Others are like swimmers knowing the depth of the water. Each stroke helps them onward to a definite objective.
—Margaret Sanger
Topics: Goals
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Hans Hofmann American Painter
Victoria Woodhull American Social Reformer
Jane Addams American Social Reformer
Tim Robbins American Actor, Director
Charlotte Perkins Gilman American Feminist, Writer
Frank O’Hara American Poet, Art Critic
Elizabeth Blackwell American Physician
Nikola Tesla Serbian-American Inventor
Alice Paul American Suffragist
Elizabeth Cady Stanton American Social Reformer