Back Margaret Sanger Afrikaans مارجريت سانجر Arabic Margaret Sanger AVK Marqaret Senqer Azerbaijani Margaret Sanger BCL মার্গারেট স্যাঙ্গার Bengali/Bangla Margaret Sanger Catalan Margaret Sangerová Czech Margaret Sanger German Μάργκαρετ Σάνγκερ Greek
Margaret Sanger | |
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 Sanger in 1922 | |
| Born | Margaret Louise Higgins September 14, 1879 Corning, New York, U.S. |
| Died | September 6, 1966 (aged 86) Tucson, Arizona, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Social reformer, sex educator, writer, nurse |
| Spouses |
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| Children | 3 |
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Margaret Higgins Sanger (/ˈsæŋər/; born Margaret Louise Higgins; September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966), also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. She opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, founded Planned Parenthood, and collaborated in the development of the first birth control pill. Sanger is regarded as a founder and leader of the birth control movement.
Sanger worked as a nurse in the slums of New York City, where she treated a large number of mothers desperate to avoid additional children. Out of these encounters arose a determination to give women the power to choose when to have children. Her drive to promote birth control was influenced by Malthusian concerns about the detrimental effects of overpopulation. She was also an adherent of the eugenic movement, and believed that birth control would help reduce the number of "unfit" people. She established a network of dozens of birth control clinics across the country, which provided reproductive health services to hundreds of thousands of patients. Sanger was an opponent of abortion, and her clinics never offered abortion services during her lifetime.
To promote birth control, she gave speeches, wrote books, and published periodicals. Sanger frequently provoked arrest by distributing birth control literature in contravention of obscenity laws. She was arrested several times, each time in the hope of getting a favorable legal ruling that would overturn laws that impeded birth control. She was responsible for several major legal victories, including one that enabled physicians to dispense contraceptives; and another – Griswold v Connecticut – which legalized contraception, without a prescription, for couples nationwide.
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