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Margaret Sanger was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. She opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, founded Planned Parenthood, and was instrumental in the development of the first birth control pill. Sanger is regarded as a founder and leader of the U.S. birth control movement.
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culture · American birth control activist and nurse (1879–1966) · nurse · sex columnist · activist · trade unionist · women's rights activist · film director · writer · educator · feminist · also Margaret Sanger, Margaret Sanger Slee, Margaret Higgins, Margaret Hennessy Higgins, Margaret H. Sanger, Margaret Higgins Sanger
Born 14 September 1879 · Died 6 September 1966 · Q285514
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The ministers work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the [Birth Control] Federation [of America] as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.
A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.
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“The ministers work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the [Birth Control] Federation [of America] as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
“A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”
Snopes rated the claim “Margaret Sanger said, “Colored people are like human weeds and need to be exterminated.”” Incorrect Attribution.
Shown as reported and rated by a fact checker, not as an established fact.
PolitiFact rated the claim ““79% of Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority neighborhoods. This is not by accident. That is by its founder, Margaret Sanger's, eugenicist design."” Mostly False.
Shown as reported and rated by a fact checker, not as an established fact.
PolitiFact rated the claim ““The woman in this photograph is Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, meeting with the Ku Klux Klan in 1926, Silver Lake, New Jersey.”” False.
Shown as reported and rated by a fact checker, not as an established fact.
PolitiFact rated the claim “Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger said "Slav, Latin and Hebrew immigrants are human weeds . . . a deadweight of human waste. Blacks, soldiers and Jews are a menace to race."” Pants on Fire.
Shown as reported and rated by a fact checker, not as an established fact.
Time created 89 new covers to celebrate women of the year starting from 1920; it chose Sanger for 1925
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PolitiFact rated the claim “Margaret Sanger “wanted a black Christian leader to be like a Judas goat and lead the blacks to genocide. Remember that? And they picked Martin Luther King as their spokesman.”” Pants on Fire.
Shown as reported and rated by a fact checker, not as an established fact.
Snopes rated the claim “A photograph documents Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger speaking to women of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).” Miscaptioned.
Shown as reported and rated by a fact checker, not as an established fact.
PolitiFact rated the claim “Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger “believed that people like me should be eliminated.”” False.
Shown as reported and rated by a fact checker, not as an established fact.
Snopes rated the claim “Margaret Sanger said "Slavs, Latin and Hebrew immigrants are human weeds" in need of eradication.” False.
Shown as reported and rated by a fact checker, not as an established fact.
Planned Parenthood – hoping to improve relations with minority communities – took steps to distance itself from its founder: it removed Sanger's name from its annual awards, published an editorial in which it repudiated
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Time magazine designated Sanger as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century
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The United States National Park Service designated the Margaret Sanger Clinic – where she provided birth-control services in New York in the mid-twentieth century – as a National Historic Landmark
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Awarded Arizona Women's Hall of Fame (1991).
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Awarded National Women's Hall of Fame (1981).
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Sanger was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame
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Sanger has become a target of frequent attacks by opponents of abortion
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Died 1966-09-06.
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Planned Parenthood began issuing its Margaret Sanger Awards annually to honor "individuals of distinction in recognition of excellence and leadership in furthering reproductive health and reproductive rights"
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Awarded Humanist of the Year (1957).
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The American Humanist Association named her Humanist of the Year
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Sanger returned to Japan for her fourth visit, and gave a speech before a committee of the National Diet on the topic of "Population Problems and Family Planning"
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The committee evolved into the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which – as of 2025 – is the world's largest family planning NGO, consisting of 150 member associations working in 146 countries
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Founded an exploratory committee, the International Committee on Planned Parenthood, which brought together representatives from birth control organizations in several countries around the world
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More conservative forces within the organization changed the name to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a name Sanger objected to because she considered it too euphemistic
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As the Birth Control Federation of America and, simultaneously, Sanger stepped down from her role as President/Chairman
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Worked with fellow birth control advocates Mary Lasker and Clarence Gamble to create the Negro Project, an effort to deliver information about birth control to impoverished African American people
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To mend the rift between the ABCL and the BCCRB
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Ordered diaphragms from Japan to trigger a decisive battle in the courts
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Sixteen years after the first clinic opened, Sanger authorized staff to refer patients to hospitals for medically necessary abortions
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“[Abortion] is an alternative that I cannot too strongly condemn. Although abortion may be resorted to in order to save the life of the mother, the practice of it merely for limitation of offspring is dangerous and vicious.”
There were an estimated 800,000 illegal abortions performed in the U
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Showed that twelve of the clinics were, collectively, seeing a total of about 8,000 new patients per year
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Hubert approached Sanger again, this time suggesting a clinic in Harlem
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Sanger formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control to lobby for legislation to overturn restrictions on contraception
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City officials under the leadership of Boston's Catholic mayor James Curley threatened to arrest her if she spoke
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And took full control of the CRB, renaming it the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB)
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Began to endorse voluntary sterilization (in addition to contraception)
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Sanger's second husband, Noah Slee, contributed to the birth control movement by smuggling diaphragms into New York from Canada, hidden inside his company's cargo
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Established the Clinical Research Bureau (CRB) – a medical clinic with physicians on staff
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Soon after the formation of the ABCL, Sanger raised her international profile by traveling to Asia – giving speeches in Korea, Japan, and China
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Sanger was a socialist, bohemian atheist – according to biographer Ellen Chesler
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To attend the Fifth International Neo-Malthusian Conference – where she became the first woman to chair a session; and she organized the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth-Control Conference that took place in
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Married her second husband, businessman James Noah H
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“We hold that children should be (1) Conceived in love; (2) Born of the mother's conscious desire; (3) And only begotten under conditions which render possible the heritage of health. Therefore we hold that every woman must possess the power and freedom to prevent conception except when these conditions can be satisfied.”
(after Sanger had served her sentence) the birth control movement secured a major victory when the New York Court of Appeals (New York's highest court) issued a ruling which allowed physicians in New York to dispense con
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When she published an article on eugenics by Paul Popenoe in her periodical Birth Control Review
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Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic – the first in the United States – in the Brownsville neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City
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Embarked on a cross-country lecture tour, speaking in dozens of cities – at churches, women's clubs, homes, and theaters
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Distributed flyers to women, exhorting – in all capitals – "Do not kill, do not take life, but prevent
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Encountered diaphragms and became convinced that they were a more effective means of contraception than the suppositories and douches that she had been distributing back in the United States
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An undercover representative of anti-vice politician Anthony Comstock asked Sanger's estranged husband, William, for a copy of Family Limitation, and William obliged
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Wrote that every woman is entitled to make a choice of whether to have an abortion or not, and she suggested (incorrectly) that quinine could be used to induce abortion
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Published The Woman Rebel with the express goal of triggering a legal challenge to the Comstock anti-obscenity laws banning dissemination of information about contraception
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Undertook a decades-long campaign to free women, starting with The Woman Rebel, an eight-page monthly newsletter that used the slogan "No Gods, No Masters
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Discussed syphilis and gonorrhea, so Comstock issued an order prohibiting publication
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Sanger visited public libraries, searching for publications that instructed women how to avoid conception, but she found none
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After a fire destroyed their home, the Sangers abandoned the suburbs for a new life in New York City
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Born 1879-09-14.
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