Margaret Sanger: the Creator of Birth Control

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Margaret Sanger: The Creator of Birth Control "The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."-Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race “I cannot refrain from saying that women must come to recognize there is some function of womanhood other than being a child-bearing machine.” –Margaret Sanger, What Every Girl Should Know Margaret Sanger, the founder of birth control, was a supporter of family planning and population control, and believed that women should be able to have a greater voice when it came to having children. What might have seemed obscene and illegal according to the Comstock Laws, was a cause that Sanger was determined to fight for. She devoted her life to creating a method of contraception that women, specifically those of middle class, could have access to. Sanger’s reasoning for studying eugenics was more often than not seen as controversial and has led many to believe she was racist and immoral for supporting such a belief. Sanger was born on September 14, 1879 in Corning, New York and was the sixth child out of her eleven siblings. Her mother was a catholic as well as her father, Michael Higgins, who later on in his life became atheist. Being the middle child not only meant that she had to rival against her many brothers and sisters, but it also meant that she was able to witness her mother give birth to many children. Sanger’s mother gave birth a total of eighteen times and seven of those were miscarriages. Her mother passed away at fifty years old not only because of tuberculosis, but also because of the strain the pregnancies had caused on her body. Watching her mother slowly weaken after each child had quite an impact on the beginning of Sanger’s journey to birth control because it was what had initially egged Sanger on towards her goal. Sanger’s father also affected her views on

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