Today in Labor History September 6, 1966: Margaret Sanger died. She was a sex reformer, birth-control advocate, anti-authoritarian socialist, eugenicist. Sanger was famous for popularizing the term "birth control." She also opened the first birth control clinic in the United States and established the organizations that evolved into Planned Parenthood. Her protests, civil disobedience and arrests contributed to court cases that helped legalize contraception in the U.S. Many on the Christian right have targeted her for her role in supporting women’s reproductive rights, yet Sanger was opposed to abortions and, as a nurse, she refused to participate in them.
In the early 1910s, Sanger joined the Women's Committee of the New York Socialist party. She also participated in labor actions by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), including the notable 1912 Lawrence textile strike and the 1913 Paterson silk strike. She also became close with many left-wing writers and activists, like John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Mabel Dodge and Emma Goldman. During this period, she saw the toll unwanted pregnancies and back-alley abortions took on poor, working class and immigrant women. And it was at this point that she shifted the focus of her activism toward promoting birth control as a way to prevent abortions and the economic strain of having unwanted pregnancies.
In 1914, she launched “The Woman Rebel,” a monthly newsletter with the anarchist slogan, “No Gods, No Masters.” It promoted contraception, with the goal of challenging the federal anti-obscenity laws, which were then used to suppress education and outreach about birth control. In 1916, she opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S., leading to her arrest. In 1921, she founded the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She argued that women who are educated about birth control are the best judge of the time and conditions under which they should have children, and that it is their right to determine whether or not to bear children.
After World War I, Sanger increasingly appealed to the social necessity of limiting births among the poor. She was a eugenicist and believed that it was necessary to reduce reproduction of those who were “unfit.” While she defined “fitness” in terms of individual fitness, and not race, she supported restricting immigration, and she was known to “look the other way” when racists spoke in favor of eugenics. She even gave a presentation to the women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan. And she supported compulsory sterilization for those with cognitive disabilities.
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