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This illuminating biography of Margaret Sanger—the woman who fought for birth control in America—describes her childhood, her private life, her relationships with Emma Goldman and John Reed, her public role, and more. Margaret Sanger went to jail in 1917 for distributing contraceptives to immigrant women in a makeshift clinic in Brooklyn. She died a half-century later, just after the Supreme Court guaranteed constitutional protection for the use of contraceptives. Now, Ellen Chesler provides an authoritative and widely acclaimed biography of this great emancipator, whose lifelong struggle helped women gain control over their own bodies. An idealist who mastered practical politics, Sanger...
This narrative history of one of the most far-reaching social movements in the 20th century shows how it defied the law and made the use of contraception an acceptable social practice—and a necessary component of modern healthcare. A History of the Birth Control Movement in America tells the extraordinary story of a group of reformers dedicated to making contraception legal, accessible, and acceptable. The engrossing tale details how Margaret Sanger's campaign beginning in 1914 to challenge anti-obscenity laws criminalizing the distribution of contraceptive information grew into one of the most far-reaching social reform movements in American history. The book opens with a discussion of th...
Margaret Sanger, the American birth-control and population-control advocate who founded Planned Parenthood, stands like a giant among her contemporaries. With her dominating yet winning personality, she helped generate shifts of opinion on issues that were not even publicly discussed prior to her activism, while her leadership was arguably the single most important factor in achieving social and legislative victories that set the parameters for today's political discussion of family-planning funding, population-control aid, and even sex education. This work addresses Sanger's ideas concerning birth control, eugenics, population control, and sterilization against the backdrop of the larger eugenic context.
The Battle for Birth Control delves into the complex rhetorical history of the American birth control movement in its formative years. In just four decades, advocates, under the strategic guidance of Margaret Sanger, transitioned the fight for contraception from fringe radical movement to a respectable mainstream cause endorsed by powerful professionals and politicians alike. Eschewing their early ideological commitments to obtain widespread acceptance, birth controllers adopted a strategy of political accommodation characterized by deferential rhetoric and careful posturing. This strategy secured significant victories for the movement but at what cost? Informed by a deep commitment to reproductive justice, The Battle for Birth Control traces the duplicity of the movement’s early rhetoric and argues that their accommodationist strategy yielded increased contraceptive access solely because of their willingness to endorse the neoliberal regime of reproductive control largely responsible for the current threats to reproductive autonomy in the 21st century.
A Chicago Tribune "Best Books of 2014" • A Slate "Best Books 2014: Staff Picks" • A St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Best Books of 2014" The fascinating story of one of the most important scientific discoveries of the twentieth century. We know it simply as "the pill," yet its genesis was anything but simple. Jonathan Eig's masterful narrative revolves around four principal characters: the fiery feminist Margaret Sanger, who was a champion of birth control in her campaign for the rights of women but neglected her own children in pursuit of free love; the beautiful Katharine McCormick, who owed her fortune to her wealthy husband, the son of the founder of International Harvester and a schizophren...
In 'Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography,' readers are invited into the intimate historical narrative of a woman whose tireless advocacy for birth control marked a pivotal moment in women's healthcare and autonomy. The book is both a personal account and a chronicling of the social and legal obstacles that Sanger faced in her pursuit of women's reproductive rights. With eloquence and a bold literary style, she navigates readers through the pivotal moments of early 20th-century feminism, embedding her story in the larger tapestry of the socio-political climate that both informed and was reshaped by her work. The autobiography is not only a testament to the struggle for reproductive rights but al...
Undoubtedly the most influential advocate for birth control even before the term existed, Margaret Sanger ignited a movement that has shaped our society to this day. Her views on reproductive rights have made her a frequent target of conservatives and so-called family values activists. Yet lately even progressives have shied away from her, citing socialist leanings and a purported belief in eugenics as a blight on her accomplishments. In this captivating new biography, the renowned feminist historian Jean H. Baker rescues Sanger from such critiques and restores her to the vaunted place in history she once held. Trained as a nurse and midwife in the gritty tenements of New York's Lower East S...
While there is extensive literature on the social history, politics, and legal aspects of birth control and abortion in the United States, the history of family planning as a policy remains to be fully recorded. This volume is intended to contribute to this history by examining birth control and abortion within a larger cultural, policy, and comparative framework. The essays contained in this volume represent a variety of perspectives and scholarly interests. In many instances the authors differ with each other as well as with the editor on fundamental points of historical interpretation. They all, however, share a commitment to study the politics of population within a scholarly framework that emphasizes the importance of policy history for understanding past and contemporary problems.
In the early 20th century, birth control was considered immoral. Margaret Sanger set out to change that law. As a nurse, public health advocate, writer, organizer and rebel she worked tirelessly to gain for women the right to control their own bodies.