Margaret Sanger And Birth Control

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Birth control hasn’t always been legal for women in the United States. In 1873 the Comstock Act passing prohibiting advertisements, information, and distribution of birth control. This act also allowed the postal service to confiscate any information or birth control sold through the mail. Margaret Sanger made it her life’s work to make information about birth control and birth control itself available to women in the United States. Margaret Sanger was a nurse on the Lower East Side of New York City and decided to get involved in the Birth Control Movement in 1912 after she watched a woman die as a result of a self-induced abortion. It angered Margaret Sanger when she would hear women ask their doctors for ways to prevent conception, and the …show more content…

Shortly after writing an article about venereal disease, Comstock ordered that the newspaper stop printing this column. Even though her first column was shut down, this did not stop Sanger from starting the newsletter The Women Rebel which contained information specifically about birth control which directly violated the Comstock Law. The Postal Service refused to distribute her newsletters, and Margaret Sanger was arrested in 1914 for violating the Comstock Law. Margaret Sanger was going to do whatever she had to do to make sure women had information on birth control. Instead of facing her charges, Margaret Sanger went to England where birth control was widely accepted. There she could research actual options of birth control to give to women in the US. When she returned to the United States in 1916, she brought back as many diaphragms as she could, and faced her charges. The charges were dropped since the case was two years old and Margaret Sanger continued her fight for birth control. She went to 100 cities in the United States to speak about birth control. When she returned to New York she started The Birth Control …show more content…

The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the physicians’ rights to inform women about birth control. Sanger tried to test the Comstock law by ordering diaphragms from Switzerland. US Customs confiscated and destroyed the diaphragms. Sanger took the case to court, claiming that US Customs was interfering with doctors’ rights’ to server their patients. The Court told US Customs that they must hand over the diaphragms. Sanger claimed that this was, “the greatest victory in birth control history”. With that decision from the courts, US companies were now allowed to import birth control devices from Europe and they even began to manufacture