Margaret Sanger

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Margaret Sanger (1922)
Lived	September 14, 1879-September 6, 1966
Occupation	nurse
Spouse	William Sanger (1902-1913/1921) James Noah H. Slee (1922-1943)

Margaret Higgins Sanger (1879-1966) was an American birth control^[wp] activist, sex educator, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America^[wp]. Sanger's efforts contributed to several judicial cases that helped legalize contraception in the United States. Sanger is a frequent target of criticism by opponents of birth control and has also been criticized for supporting eugenics^[wp], but remains an iconic figure in the American reproductive rights movement.

James Noah H. Slee

James Noah H. Slee (1861-1943) was an US oil businessman and family planning advocate. He was the foremost financial sponsor of early US campaigns for birth control and family planning. 2nd husband of Margaret Sanger.

Margaret Sanger's Case For Eugenics "The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics." - Birth Control Review, 1921 As the Founder of Planned Parenthood[wp], Margaret Sanger is considered a hero to many for bringing choice to women in America. However, it becomes obvious from Sanger's own words and publications that she did not care about freedom of choice, but cared only for a superior race, and she had a plan to "prevent multiplication of this bad stock". Sanger was a member of the American Eugenics Society[wp]. She was a eugenicist who wanted to forcefully sterilize people, she wrote many articles and books on the subject. In 1922 she wrote The Pivot of Civilization, (H. G. Wells[wp] wrote the introduction) and she refers to people as "human weeds" and morons who did not deserve to have children. In The Case for Birth Control she offers a vague list of random reasons that would justify sterilization, it included anyone that was "poor" and people with children that are "not normal". With such ambiguous standards, virtually anyone could be labeled as unfit. The US Supreme Court[wp] authorized forced sterilization of "undesirables" for over 40 years in America, and by 1933 most states had adopted Eugenics Sterilization Laws, before Hitler began Eugenics[wp] in Germany. Hitler admired the work of Margaret Sanger, and modeled many of his Eugenics Laws[wp] after America's. Coincidentally, Hilter's director of the German Society for Racial Hygiene[wp], Ernst Rudin[wp] was the same man that Sanger had previously commissioned for her own agenda, publishing his work in her magazine, the Birth Control Review. In 1939 Margaret Sanger began "The Negro Project" and to bring people along willingly she enlisted black preachers to support sterilization. She outlined the deceitful plan in a letter to Clarence Gamble of the Procter and Gamble Empire, "We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population." Sanger's personal "Plan for Peace" outlines what she really thought of our human rights. The second step of her plan "would be to take an inventory of the secondary group such as illiterates, paupers, unemployable, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection, and segregate them on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct." Margaret Sanger has been paraded around as an advocate for "women's rights", her historic value has been overinflated, and her dark history has been, (and is being) rewritten by the main stream media. Life Magazine for example, has even placed Margaret Sanger as one of the "most important people of the century" which may be true... if you are a eugenicist. "The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."

– Amy de Miceli: Margaret Sanger's Case For Eugenics, No One Has to Die Tomorrow on June 9, 2009

Literature

• Lawrence Lader: The Margaret Sanger Story and the Fight for Birth Control, Garden City 1955, 352 pages, ISBN 0-8371-7076-1; Greenwood Press 1975, 348 pages, ISBN 0-8371-7076-1

Wir stehen nicht allein: "We do not stand alone". Nazi propaganda poster from 1936. The woman is holding a baby and the man is holding a shield inscribed with the title of Nazi Germany's 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring[wp] (their compulsory sterilization[wp] law). The couple is in front of a map of Germany, surrounded by the flags of nations which had enacted (to the left) or were considering (bottom and to the right) similar legislation. The countries which had enacted compulsory sterilization laws (and the date shown) were: United States (date illegible, Indiana enacted first laws in 1907), Denmark (1929), Norway (1934), Sweden (1935), Finland (193?)

U.S. eugenics advocacy poster from the Philadelphia Sesqui-Centennial Exhibition, 1926 U.S. eugenics poster advocating for the removal of genetic "defectives" such as the insane, "feeble-minded" and criminals, and supporting the selective breeding of "high-grade" individuals

A poster from a 1921 eugenics conference displays the U.S. states that had implemented sterilization legislation by then.

External links

• Wikipedia has an article about Margaret Sanger
• Quotations from Margaret Sanger's books