By Doreen Baingana
Broadcast: December 19, 2004
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VOICE ONE:
I’m Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Sarah Long with the VOA Special English Program, People in America. Today, we tell about one of the leaders of the birth control movement, Margaret Sanger.
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VOICE ONE:
Many women today have the freedom to decide when they will have children, if they want them. Until about fifty years ago, women spent most of their adult lives having children, year after year. This changed because of efforts by activists like Margaret Sanger. She believed that a safe and sure method of preventing pregnancy was a necessary condition for women’s freedom. She also believed birth control was necessary for human progress.
VOICE TWO:
The woman who changed other women’s lives was born in Eighteen-Eighty-Three in the eastern state of New York. Her parents were Michael and Anne Higgins.
Margaret wrote several books about her life. She wrote that her father taught her to question everything. She said he taught her to be an independent thinker.
Margaret said that watching her mother suffer from having too many children made her feel strongly about birth control. Her mother died at forty-eight years of age after eighteen pregnancies. She was always tired and sick. Margaret had to care for her mother and her ten surviving brothers and sisters. This experience led her to become a nurse.
Margaret Higgins worked in the poor areas of New York City. Most people there had recently arrived in the United States from Europe. Margaret saw the suffering of hundreds of women who tried to end their pregnancies in illegal and harmful ways. She realized that this was not just a health problem. These women suffered because of their low position in society.
Margaret saw that not having control over one’s body led to problems that were passed on from mother to daughter and through the family for years. She said she became tired of cures that did not solve the real problem. Instead, she wanted to change the whole life of a mother.
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VOICE ONE:
In Nineteen-Oh-Two, Margaret married William Sanger. They had three children. Margaret compared her own middle-class life to that of the poor people she worked among. This increased her desire to deal with economic and social issues. At this time, Margaret Sanger became involved in the liberal political culture of an area of New York City known as Greenwich Village. Sanger became a labor union organizer. She learned methods of protest and propaganda, which she used in her birth control activism.
Sanger traveled to Paris, France, in Nineteen-Thirteen, to research European methods of birth control. She also met with members of Socialist political groups who influenced her birth control policies. She returned to the United States prepared to change women’s lives.
VOICE TWO:
At first, Margaret Sanger sought the support of leaders of the women’s movement, members of the Socialist party, and the medical profession. But, she wrote that they told her to wait until women were permitted to vote. She decided to continue working alone.
One of Margaret Sanger’s first important political acts was to publish a monthly newspaper called The Woman Rebel. She designed it. She wrote for it. And she paid for it. The newspaper called for women to reject the traditional woman’s position. The first copy was published in March, Nineteen-Fourteen. The Woman Rebel was an angry paper that discussed disputed and sometimes illegal subjects. These included labor problems, marriage, the sex business, and revolution.
Sanger had an immediate goal. She wanted to change laws that prevented birth control education and sending birth control devices through the mail.
VOICE ONE:
The Woman Rebel became well-known in New York and elsewhere. Laws at that time banned the mailing of materials considered morally bad. This included any form of birth control information. The law was known as the Comstock Act. Officials ordered Sanger to stop sending out her newspaper.
Sanger instead wrote another birth control document called Family Limitation. The document included detailed descriptions of birth control methods. In August, Nineteen-Fourteen, Margaret Sanger was charged with violating the Comstock Act.
Margaret faced a prison sentence of as many as forty-five years if found guilty. She fled to Europe to escape the trial. She asked friends to release thousands of copies of Family Limitation. The document quickly spread among women across the United States. It started a public debate about birth control. The charges against Sanger also increased public interest in her and in women’s issues.
