Margaret Higgins Sanger Research Paper

In the early 1900s, women’s health was non-existent. It was not taught in school, it was never spoken about in the media, and many women themselves had no knowledge about reproductive health. During this time it was common to see women with ten, fifteen, even twenty pregnancies throughout their lives. Men and women both were often unaware on how to plan or prevent a pregnancy and birth control was pronounced illegal. Consequently, this was also a period of high childbirth mortality, as well as a time where many women were dying due to self-induced or “back-alley” abortions. Margaret Higgins Sanger was a nurse, reproductive health educator and activist who worked in the very poor neighborhoods of New York City’s lower East Side. She was raised in a very large family and watched her mother pass away after the birth of her eighteenth child. After practicing as a nurse for over a decade, she grew increasing frustrated seeing many other women face the

While she argued that allowing women to control their child bearing gave them better education and job opportunities, some accused her of eugenics. Given that she worked primarily in poor neighborhoods, she was faulted for practicing population control and selective breeding. However, through Sanger’s work, she was able to show how contraceptives gave women healthier lives and a higher change of success in society. In 1921, Sanger opened the American Birth Control League, which today is known as Planned Parenthood. She hired all female doctors, many of them African American, giving job opportunities to those who previously never had any. Today Planned Parenthood provides reproductive health services to men and women across the country. Birth control in now legalized in every state and covered by most health insurances. Sanger herself spearheaded many of these