Ashley Wilson
History 110
Professor Rosalski
November 14, 2017
The Birth Control Movement Outline
I. Introduction
a. History of The birth control movement
i. During the Progressive Era, the birth control movement was an essential cause for many activist women to fight against the prevention of birth control methods. The birth control movement was a social reform campaign from 1914 to 1945 of which women began to gain sexual freedom and sexual education.
b. The cause of The birth control movement
i. Many Americans were opposed of birth control because they believed that it promoted promiscuity and gave the approval to men to pursue greater sexual urges outside of their marriages. ii. In regards to women’s sexual freedoms, laws prohibited
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Margaret Sanger was the founder of the birth control movement in America and was credited with originating the term “birth control. Sanger believed in the right to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and devoted herself to removing the legal barriers of contraception.
d. Thesis Statement
i. Leader and activist of the Birth Control Movement, Margaret Sanger, successfully encouraged Progressive activist women to fight for the control of their own body by overturning anti-birth control laws, legalizing contraceptives, and demanding reproductive choices.
II. Margaret Sanger
a. Before the Birth Control Movement
i. Born on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York. While growing up, Sanger witnessed poverty, uncontrolled fertility, high rates of infant, and deaths from illegal abortions. ii. Sanger found that about 250,000 abortions occurred every year and that the United States had the largest number of deaths from these abortions. This caused her to take immediate action in fighting for women’s rights.
b. Influential goals
i. Devoted herself to publishing a series of articles including “What Every Girl Should Know,” The Woman Rebel, and Family Limitation. ii. Encouraged progressive activist women to fight for their sexual freedoms and gain knowledge on sexual education by speaking out and passing out contraceptives and pamphlets on birth
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Sanger found that over 300,000 babies under a year old died every year in the U.S, due to neglect, poverty, and hunger. ii. If women were given the proper knowledge about their bodies and different birth control methods, deaths from abortions and unwanted child births would decline substantially.
b. “What Every Girl Should Know”
i. Sangers advocated her novel to provide information to young girls on topics as puberty, menstruation, venereal disease, pregnancy and menopause.
c. Family Limitation
i. Sangers published this pamphlet to provide a basic instructional manual of basic family planning techniques
IV. Overturning anti-birth control laws
a. The Women Rebel
i. Sanger formed a group of radical women to fight the issue of banned contraceptives and worked towards the legalization of birth control. This group of women worked together to publish a monthly magazine, The Women Rebel, which addressed gender oppression, women and labor, and other feminist issues. ii. The Comstock Act of 1873 prohibited the circulation of "obscene and immoral materials,” including contraceptive information. This meant that publication of The Women Rebel was illegal because it violated this act by sending out information on contraception through the
Margaret Sanger’s Goals and Objectives in Creating Social Change for Women’s Reproductive Freedom Margaret devoted her life’s work to create social change by fighting to make contraceptives and sexual education universally available to women. Sanger actively participated in movement to challenge the Comstock Law, which was a U.S. Federal Law that made it illegal to send “obscene” materials in the mail. Contraception was termed an obscene material (biography.com, 2014) of the time. How Margaret Sanger Ignited the Movement for Women’s Reproductive Freedom :
These two pieces jumpstarted Sanger’s campaign for a woman’s right to access birth control. The Notably, Margaret Sanger debuted her tabloid---The Woman Rebel---in 1914. In regards to this, Sanger argued in “Why the Woman Rebel?” that deep down in every woman lies a spirit of revolt. Women in the early twentieth century were accustomed to listening to their husbands and having no voice of opinion. Women never felt the freedom of independence. The government ruled it illegal to distribute information on birth control, but that did not stop Sanger from rebelling against this law. When Sanger states, “…I believe that not until wage slavery is abolished can either woman’s or man’s freedom be fully attained,” she compared women to slaves, held down by the chains of restriction from gaining their own wages. Sanger argued for women’s freedom to make their own decisions. Falling into the child-bearing standard did not give women a choice on whether they wanted to be a part of the working class or to spend their lives as housewives. Publishing tabloids influenced many women across the country to reconsider their lives, but it was never easy for radical feminists to voice their opinion
She did this by being determined to bring women the right to their own bodies. Sanger did not care what she had to do to eventually get what she was fighting for and she was not going to stop fighting until she did. Not until United States v. One Package in nineteen thirty-six, did Sanger achieve her goal of reversing the Comstock Act’s classifications of birth control obscene ( Mikula). Once Margaret Sanger accomplished what she believed was right, which was give women the right to birth control if they wanted to use it, doctors also came up with medical reasons that could be solved by birth control and began to support birth control as a group of doctors. Birth control is still used today in women of all ages for health related problems not just as a contraceptive.
Margaret Sanger’s efforts for women’s rights lead to the founding of Planned Parenthood in 1916. Initially she grew up in a large poverty-stricken family of eleven, which greatly impacted her stance on reproductive privileges. Her mother had a total of eighteen pregnancies, seven in which resulted in miscarriages, dying at age 43. Sanger decided she did not want to suffer the same way her mother did, so she had a plan. Later on, she went on to be a nurse for women who suffered from pregnancy symptoms during a time that had little to no medical care for the poor. After a while of doing this, Sanger saw and heard things that in her mind, needed to be changed. From thereon, she had created a newspaper that focused on the importance of contraceptives
Margaret Sanger was a controversial and historical nurse. She lived during a time of revolutionary change when the women’s rights movement was in full motion. Born in 1879, to a large impoverished family, she was the sixth of eleven children. Sanger was part of a family of devoted Catholics. During that time it was a common practice for women to birth as many children as possible. As a result, she was a witness to the effects of diseases, miscarriages, and multiple pregnancies that eventually led to her mother’s premature death. This had a significant impact on her ideologies. She eventually became known for advocating women’s reproductive rights and founding what is now known as Planned Parenthood.
Margaret Sanger was, at large, a birth control activist, but this speech was more about the questioning of birth control corrupting morality in women. People must remember, in the day and age
The Road to Women’s Birth Control “There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger’s early efforts…Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by non-violent direct action may not resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her” (qtd. in Knowles 11). Margaret Sanger was a radical outspoken woman who wanted to change social norms. She was the 6th out of eleven children that lived in poor conditions, even as she struggled to go to school she made it through nursing and focused on how she could help end unwanted pregnancies due to her own personal family tragedy.
Starting in November of 1912, “What Every Girl Should Know” by Sanger was being published every Sunday in The Call, a commonly read socialist newspaper. Within her articles, Sanger covered puberty and the changes that occurred as a result, the functions of the reproductive system, and the causes and ways to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. At the time, the Comstock laws were in place which defined contraceptives obscene and made it illegal for information regarding contraceptives to be sent through the U.S Postal Service. For this reason, “What Every Girl Should Know” was no longer allowed to be published, the last article published was blank except for the words “What Every Girl Should Know. NOTHING! By order of the Post Office Department” (qtd. in Lader 37). Refusing to give up, Sanger prepared herself to fight the Comstock Laws and provide the women and girls of New York with information about contraceptives and their bodies. From 1913 to 1914, Sanger travelled to Paris. At this time in Europe, contraceptives were much more accepted and information was plentiful. Sanger spent her days researching and gathered a collection of information on the best and latest douches, sponges, suppositories, and pessaries. She also bought some of the devices to bring back with her to the United States. Having gathered enough research, Sanger headed back to the United States. In
In the mid-1800s American women united to participate in social reforms movements more than ever before. This movement’s involved: struggle to abolish slavery, outlaw alcohol, and ban child labor among others (Rupp, 1987). Despite the failure of the women's movement to attain one among its primary goals, the passage of the ERA , the movement overall accomplished an excellent deal. For several women activists, management over their bodies was a central issue in the campaign. Women needed to be liberated to explore and control their gender, while not being judged by society. An oversized a part of management during this arena concerned having access to birth control, or contraception ways (Fishman, 1998). The contraception pill, associate inoculant,
Margret Sanger emphasized to America on the need for birth control and how it could help America. Having birth control would save many of woman from unorthodox methods of abortions. Having birth control would save people from the burden of bringing a child into a life that they couldn’t afford to raise. Although her thought challenged many views of American standard Margaret Sanger helped change and save many
Thesis: Margaret Sanger changed the world by rallying for the availability and use of contraceptives for all women.
Today, the availability of birth control is taken for granted. There was a time, not long passed, during which the subject was illegal (“Margaret Sanger,” 2013, p.1). That did not stop the resilient leader of the birth control movement. Margaret Sanger was a nurse and women’s activist. While working as a nurse, Sanger treated many women who had suffered from unsafe abortions or tried to self-induce abortion (p.1). Seeing this devastation and noting that it was mainly low income women suffering from these problems, she was inspired to dedicate her life to educating women on family planning—even though the discussion of which was highly illegal at the time (p.1). She was often in trouble with
Although she had met her goal of legalizing birth control, Margaret Sanger still desired to assist women who were already pregnant but didn’t wish to keep the child. After returning from a national tour in 1916, Sanger opened the nation's first birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn (Katz 1). This, however, was a minor advancement considering that the clinic was raided in its first nine days of operation and she was taken to prison. The
Many also believed it was the man’s decision as to how many children his wife should have. Sanger continued her quest opening a birth-control clinic in Brooklyn, New York, in 1916; one year later, the authorities arrested her for giving contraceptives to immigrant women (Bowles, 2011). At first glance it appears that Sanger had good intentions. “Others criticized her for involvement with eugenics, which was a scientific movement in which its practitioners advocated the notion that all mental and physical "abnormalities" were linked to hereditary and, with selective breeding, could be eliminated. They questioned whether or not Sanger's insistence on birth control and abortion was in fact a way to limit the growth of ethnic populations” (Bowles, 2011). “Of course, her activism put her directly at odds with law-enforcement officials and the Catholic Church, but little discussed is the actual extent to which her early Marxism guided much of what she managed to achieve. Her good friends included ultra-radicals like John Reed and Emma Goldman, and the truth is that Margaret’s feminism, and her support for eugenic ‘sexual science’, were both simply part-and-parcel of her own unique Marxist vision. Humanitarianism, per se, had little to do with what motivated Margaret Sanger” (Spooner, 2005). Sanger’s actions and motivations are a controversial topic that have been analyzed and debated for years. “According to her New York Times obituary,
The Birth Control Movement of 1912 in the United States had a significant impact on Women’s Reproductive Rights. Women in the 1800s would frequently die or have complications during or after childbirth. Even if the woman would have died, they would still have a great amount of children. As the years progressed into the 1900s, the amount of children being born dropped. Because of this, birth control supplements were banned, forcing women to have a child that she was not prepared for or did not want to have in the first place.