Margaret Sanger was an American birth control activist during the progressive era. She aided in legalizing birth control. Although she was a strong leader for women’s rights, many claimed she was racist and a supporter of abortion and eugenics. Despite these allegations, Sanger’s negative views of the disabled, fueled her inspiration to promote birth control, not that she wanted to exterminate the black race or that she didn’t value human life.. “Anti-choicers wield misattributed and often outright false quotes about Sanger as weapons to shame Black women” (Gandy 1). Anti-choice believers spread false information about Sanger as a way to make her and her ideals, goals, and achievements look bad. They claimed she was in support of abortion and wanted to exterminate the black race as a whole, fabricating her to be a terrible person. This, however, is not the truth at all. Sanger was very passionately against abortion and wanted all women to have an equal footing in society and lead healthier lives. “Sanger …show more content…
There are direct quotes from her stating that she thought immigrants and African Americans were “‘...human weeds, ' 'reckless breeders, ' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born" (Dew 1). Despite the fact that she did say this, she was not specifically targeting African Americans. Anti-choice fanatics twisted the scenario around to make it so that Sanger seemed to want to wipe out the black population in America entirely. However, Sanger stated her somewhat harsh opinion because she believed that people with a lower intelligence should not be allowed to procreate nor should they be trusted to use birth control correctly. While her true, undistorted opinion doesn’t seem much better, she was not in fact intolerant of African Americans. Instead, Sanger’s abrasive words were driven by her ableist and eugenic