#TUEmpower by Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) was the founder of the birth control movement, and was in fact credited with originating the term birth control. At a time when matters surrounding family planning or women’s healthcare were a taboo, she penned columns for a newspaper and then published What Every Girl Should Know. She taught your great-great-great-grandma how to make love. As if that wasn’t radical enough, she went much further. She was a pioneer in the American birth control movement and founded what is now Planned Parenthood.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of the birth control movement and an organization
that is now known as Planned Parenthood.
What Every Girl Should Know (1922/23) - Front and back covers of Margaret Sanger's pamphlet What Every Girl Should Know, a compilation of Sanger's writings on sex education and birth control.
This speech below was banned. Sanger’s magazine Woman Rebel was banned. She opened the first birth control clinic in the US and was locked up in jail. The first birth control conference in the US, at which she was supposed to be speaking, was closed down by the police. But, just five days later, she braved it out at the Park Theatre in New York to give this speech.
Sanger retired in 1942 and moved to Tucson, Arizona, though she remained a passionate advocate for birth control. In her late 70s, Sanger recruited researcher Gregory Pincus to develop an oral contraceptive. The “pill” was approved by the Food and Drug Administration just 6 years before she died at age 87.
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The one issue upon which there seems to be most uncertainty and disagreement exists in the moral side of the subject of birth control. It seemed only natural for us to call together scientists, educators, members of the medical profession and the theologians of all denominations to ask their opinion upon this uncertain and important phase of the controversy. Letters were sent to the most eminent men and women in the world. We asked in this letter the following questions:
Is overpopulation a menace to the peace of the world?
Would the legal dissemination of scientific birth control information through the medium of clinics by the medical profession be the most logical method of checking the problem of overpopulation?
Would knowledge of birth control change the moral attitude of men and women towards the marriage bond or lower the moral standards of the youth of the country?
Do you believe that knowledge which enables parents to limit their families will make for human happiness, and raise the moral, social, social and intellectual standards of population?
We sent such a letter not only to those who, we thought, might agree with us, but we sent it also to our known opponents. Most of these people answered. Everyone who answered did so with sincerity and courtesy, with the exception of one group whose reply to this important question as demonstrated at the Town Hall last Sunday evening was a disgrace to liberty-loving people, and to all traditions we hold dear in the United States. I believed that the discussion of the moral issue was one which did not solely belong to theologians and to scientists, but belonged to the people. And because I believed that the people of this country may and can discuss this subject with dignity and with intelligence I desired to bring them together, and to discuss it in the open.
When one speaks of moral, one refers to human conduct. This implies action of many kinds, which in turn depends upon the mind and the brain. So that in speaking of morals one must remember that there is a direct connection between morality and brain development. Conduct is said to be action in pursuit of ends, and if this is so, then we must hold that irresponsibility and recklessness in our actions is immoral, while responsibility and forethought put into action for the benefit of the individual and the race becomes in the highest sense the finest kind of morality.
We know that every advance that woman has made in the last half century has been made with opposition, all of which has been based upon the grounds of immorality.
When women fought for higher education, it was said that this would cause her to become immoral and she would lose her place in the sanctity of the home. When women asked for the franchise it was said that this would lower her standard of morals, that it was not fit that she should meet with and mix with the members of the opposite sex, but we notice that there was no objection to her meeting with the same members of the opposite sex when she went to church.
The church has ever opposed the progress of women on the ground that her freedom would lead to immorality. We ask the church to have more confidence in women. We ask the opponents of this movement to reverse the methods of the church, which aims to keep women moral by keeping them in fear and in ignorance, and to inculcate into them a higher and truer morality based upon knowledge. And ours is the morality of knowledge. If we cannot trust woman with the knowledge of her own body, then I claim that two thousand years of Christian teaching has proved to be a failure.
We stand on the principle that birth control should be available to every adult man and woman. We believe that every adult man and woman should be taught the responsibility and the right use of knowledge.
We claim that a woman should have the right over her own body and to say if she shall or if she shall not be a mother, as she sees fit.
We further claim that the first right of a child is to be desired. While the second right is that it should be conceived in love, and the third, that it should have a heritage of sound health.
Upon these principles the birth control movement in America stands. When it comes to discussing the methods of birth control, that is far more difficult. There are laws in this country which forbid the imparting of practical information to the mothers of the land.
We claim that every mother in this country, either sick or well, has the right to the best, the safest, the most scientific information.
This information should be disseminated directly to the mothers through clinics by members of the medical profession, registered nurses and registered midwives.
Our first step is to have the backing of the medical profession so that our laws may be changed, so that motherhood may be the function of dignity and choice, rather than one of ignorance and chance.
Conscious control of offspring is now becoming the ideal and the custom in all civilised countries. Those who oppose it claim that however desirable it may be on economic or social grounds, it may be abused and the morals of the youth of the country may be lowered. Such people should be reminded that there are two points to be considered. First, that such control is the inevitable advance in civilisation. Every civilisation involves an increasing forethought for others, even for those yet unborn. The reckless abandonment of the impulse of the moment and the careless regard for the consequences, is not morality. The selfish gratification of temporary desire at the expense of suffering to lives that will come may seem very beautiful to some, but it is not our conception of civilisation, nor is it our concept of morality.
In the second place, it is not only inevitable, but it is right to control the size of the family for by this control and adjustment we can raise the level and the standards of the human race. While nature’s way of reducing her numbers is controlled by disease, famine and war, primitive man has achieved the same results by infanticide, the abandonment of children, and by abortion. But such ways of controlling population is no longer possible for us. We have attained high standards of life, and along the lines of science we must conduct such control. We must control conception. This is a better method; it is a more civilised method, for it involves not only greater forethought for others, but finally a higher sanction for the value of life itself.
Society is divided into three groups. Those intelligent and wealthy members of the upper classes who have obtained knowledge of birth control and exercise it in regulating the size of their families. They have already benefited by this knowledge, and are today considered the most respectable and moral members of the community. They have only children when they desire, and all society points to them as types that should perpetuate their kind.
The second group is equally intelligent and responsible. They desire to control the size of their families, but are unable to obtain knowledge or to put such available knowledge into practice.
The third are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regards for the consequence of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent entirely upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped. For if they are not able to support and care for themselves, they should certainly not be allowed to bring offspring into this world for others to look after. We do not believe that filling the earth with misery, poverty and disease is moral. And it is our desire and intention to carry on our crusade until the perpetuation of such conditions has ceased.
We desire to stop at its source the disease, poverty and feeble-mindedness and insanity which exist today, for these lower the standards of civilisation and make for race deterioration. We know that the masses of people are growing wiser and are using their own minds to decide their individual conduct. The more people of this kind we have, the less immorality shall exist. For the more responsible people grow, the higher do they and shall they attain real morality.
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Speech taken from the book Outspoken: 50 Speeches by Incredible Women.