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This digital document, covering the life and work of Margaret (Higgins) Sanger, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thomson Gale. The length of the entry is 402 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
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• A description of the author's work
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Customer Reviews (7)

Margaret Sanger Autobiography
Margaret Sanger is clearly a eugenics fanatic.She worked for years to set up programs to exterminate the "feebleminded" (euphemism for minorities), and created Planned Parenthood.Her autobiography is a study in egoism.Sanger had family, but basically shows little interest in her husband and children because her main interest was genocide of the "unfit".Her whole book is full of name-dropping of the rich and famous who shared her view of the "lower classes".To this day, Planned Parenthood had not denounced Sanger's genocide activities.They still ply their trade in minority communities throughout the country.

What About Non Religious Problems With Sangers Work
Ms. Sanger founded Planned Parenthood but was also a proponent of eugenics, advocating selective breeding, sterilization and euthanasia.In 1932 Sanger urged"a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring." In her 1938 autobiography, she describes how well she got along with the woman's branch of the KKK at Silver Lake, N.J. in a speech she gave to them, hanging on well into the night talking with the ladies after the speech.She was associated with The Negro Project, whose main idea was to recruit charismatic black ministers to encourage black women topractice birth control, thereby reducing the number of black babies being born.In a December 10, 1939 letter, Sanger wrote to Dr. Gamble, head of The Negro Project: "We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten that idea out if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
These are hew own words.The KKK still quotes her and Hitler gave her an award.The harm she caused, even if you agree with abortion is demonstrable and inexcusable.That the author glossed over her crimes is understandable given the viewpoint but any work on Sanger is lacking if there is no backdrop of the vileness of what she preached.

Exhaustively detailed autobiography
Margaret Sanger's autobiography is a long, detailed account of the woman's life told from her own perspective. In her lifetime, Sanger encountered countless women, burdened by poverty and many mouths to feed, begging to hear the "secret" method to prevent pregnancy. Sanger's campaign took her across the nation and the continents, often times running a step ahead of church and legal authorities.

I learned a great deal about the fight for birth control than I had ever thought possible. I learned that Sanger abhorred abortion while embracing contraception as a means to prevent conception. Ironically, I think this would exclude her from both of today's pro-life and pro-choice sides. An interesting autobiography of a remarkable woman and an important document on the public health struggles at the turn of the twentieth century.

know your history
It is difficult for women of today to understand a time when knowledge of basic biology was denied them.We don't know the fear of producing children which we are not healthy enough to produce or care for.

Before you it in judgement of Margaret Sanger or any feminist, read your history.Learn how laws were written and interpreted 100 years ago and realize how much things have changed because of such women.

As much as religious conservatives want to villify Sanger
...the reality is that she fought hard to make access to BASIC contraceptive information available to ALL families--wealthy, middle-class, poor, immigrant, WASP, African-American, etc.

Her battle against Anthony Comstock's puritanical Comstock Law--which made it illegal to give a pamphlet to a woman explaining basic menstruation--is legendary.Her article "Comstockery in America," written in 1915 and discussed in this book, highlighted the campaign by government officials to keep basic information out of the hands of the average person.

Special interest groups have created a campaign over the past 20 years to smear Sanger as a eugenicist, writing books that are published by biased publishing companies as part of a clear agenda.This autobiography stands on its own as one woman's story about her work to spread basic information to families who asked for it. ... Read more

Product Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Historical, not political
I thought it was a factually written work of history. Having my degree in historical studies, I thought that she did a wonderful job delving into the facts, and citing the appropriate references for her arguments. I would encourage readers to read this book, and not to shy away from a work for fear of what facts it might bring forth. It is most definitely a historical, not political work.

A Brave New World, American Style
Well documented and astute study of the Huxley-like world Sanger would have loved to see come to fruition.Those intersted in this topic should also read "the War Against The Weak."A stark reminder that those who know what is best for us are just waiting for their chance.Sanger did not invent the blueprint, she sought to further it.

A Book That Ties The Birth Control Movement To Eugenics
This book connects some dots in history that our public education and college educations don't want connected namely Margaret Sanger's hand in helping to motivate the most sinister scientific idealogy in history EUGENICS! It examines Planned Parenthood's many leaders who were also eugenicists. Keep in mind that eugenics was anathema to woman's rights to reproduce being that at it's apex it led to the administration of mandatory sterilization of thousands of womenfrom disadvantaged backgrounds. This book led me to gems like this article featured in the NY Times in 1950 of Margaret Sanger calling for the government to forcebly sterilize women [...]

The book's references are all listed in the extensive bibliography and all the author's research was done in the library of congress so most of the book is based on the key player's own quotes. She even gets into how eugenics is connected to the genetic engineering movement. The book is written in a very eloquent manner but is not difficult to read or bogged down with overly academic terminology also the author doesn't tow the line that most authors do when criticising the birth control movement and evagelizing through the entire book with religious passages.

Pro-life zealot wrote this hatchet job
The author, Angela Franks, is a pro-life zealot.She is violently anti-choice, and anti-birth control.Like many pro-life zealots, she views Planned Parenthood and its founder, Margaret Sanger, as satan incarnate.

Margaret Sanger's primary concern, as clearly expressed in her own writings, was (1) the health of women, and (2) to empower women to space-out their children in accordance with their family circumstances.It is true that Sanger discussed voluntary eugenics in some of her writings, as many of her contemporaries did, as well.But - putting things in proportion - eugenics are a very tiny part of Sanger's philosophy.

The pro-life movement in the U.S. has demonized Sanger, and the primary tool they use is to seize on the few eugenic-related writings of Sanger and blow them up all out of proportion.And that is what this book does. It is a propaganda piece, written by a pro-life zealot.

If you want a more balanced portrayal of Sanger, you can try her own autobiography, or "Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America".A good book for teenagers is "Margaret Sanger: Rebel For Women's Rights" by Cox.The most objective, detailed book is "Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger" by Kennedy.

The sordid truth about margaret sanger
If people really want to read about the real racist, and monster in regards to goverment sanction of regulating groups of people especially the helpless, poor, dregs of society and the unborn this is a excellant book that describes, how disgusting this fraction of a human being really is. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1916, Margaret Sanger made her legal stand against the repressive laws forbidding the distribution of obscene articles-including any information on contraception. Though embraced by feminists, socialists, birth-control advocates, and the working class, her ideas are still as controversial and valid today as they were ninety years ago.

Margaret Sanger, the controversial fighter for legalized birth control and visionary whose ideas formed Planned Parenthood, has never had her story told with as much scope as Margaret Sanger: Her Life in Her Words. Here Miriam Reed compiles insightful historical and personal commentary on a broad selection of Sanger's letters, articles, and speeches. These original documents venture beyond Sanger's involvement in the contraception movement and depict the untold autobiography of Sanger's wide social impact.

This book includes Sanger's writings on marriage and children, the labor movement, socialism, prison reform, pacifism, eugenics, and sex education. The chronological arrangement of documents illustrates Sanger's impact on these issues, the development of the struggle between working class and middle class, and the clash between conservative mores and the freethinking women that have shaped today's society. It features the original articles "Nothing" and "What Every Girl Should Know" from The New York Call, which sparked the ongoing struggle for women's reproductive freedom. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Text tempered with analysis
This book is a great way to study Margaret Sanger. She has many works and too many for a single person to read in a short time. Even reading full lengths of some of her documents can be long, so this book offers a way to read works spanning her entire life in short order. The documents offered in this book are all surrounded by analysis which gives background and explanations of much of what is occurring in not only the documents themselves but in Margaret Sanger's life. Many of Margaret Sanger's own words are edited down in size so as to not overwhelm the reader and the small selections used really bring out the best in Margaret's writing. If you are looking for a place to start studies on Margaret or on anything relating to all which she accomplished, this can be a good source to start with, although there is much more out there.

A Great Book
An interesting book on early 20th century America that many of the recent immigrants like me are not aware of. It is fascinating and I highly recommend it.

All the truth, painful or not
First, I'm a Margaret Sanger fan.Her work did as much to ultimately liberate women as did the right to vote and the attempted passage of the ERA.I love this book because Dr. Reed has read every single piece of primary research available on Sanger, and then overlaid it with her own (Reed's) summations and conclusions.It is deeply researched, has the blessings of the Sanger family, and provides a non-biased look at a woman, though changing the world, who still had personal flaws and failings.It's arranged chronologically and also contains short biographies of each soul mentioned in the book, an in-depth section of footnotes, a thorough bibliography, and a complete index.This was not Dr. Reed's disseratation -- but it certainly could have been.

Margaret Sanger continues to inspire
A beautifully written, passionate, intimate look at a seminal figure in America's history. While Sanger has been justly honored as an early 20th century feminist icon, her fight to publicize the importance of family planning and legalized birth control have shaped rights and institutions we take for granted today. Miriam Reed has crafted an excellent new resource for anyone interested in learning more about this fascinating woman. Good job!

Sanger's LifeNOT in Her Own Words
This poorly written book offers more of the words of the author, Miriam Reed, thanSanger's. There is no doubt that Margaret Sanger was and is one of the most unforgettable and fascinating figures in American history, but this book (I don't know how to define it) does not do her justice.Snippets of Sanger's words arescattered throughout undermining the author's intent, the documents are badly introduced andoddly over-interpreted. If the author wanted to write a biography she should have. If readers want to read Sanger's own words, check out her Autobiography. This one just doesn't do it.I, for one, am extremely disappointed. ... Read more

Product Description
The birth control crusader, feminist, and reformer Margaret Sanger was one of the most controversial and compelling figures in the twentieth century. This first volume of "The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger" documents the critical phases and influences of an American feminist icon and offers rare glimpses into her working-class childhood, burgeoning feminism, spiritual and scientific interests, sexual explorations, and diverse roles as wife, mother, nurse, journalist, radical socialist, and activist. These letters and other writings, including diaries, journals, articles, and speeches, most of which have never before been published, have been selected and assembled with an eye to telling the story of a remarkable life, punctuated by arrests and imprisonments, exile, love affairs, and a momentous personal loss -- a life consumed with the quest for women's sexual liberation. Because its narrative line is so absorbing, volume 1 may be read as a powerful biography.Volume 1 covers a twenty-eight-year period from her nurse's training and early socialist involvement in pre-World War I bohemian Greenwich Village to her adoption of birth control (a term she helped coin in 1914) as a fundamental tenet of women's rights. It traces the intersection of her life and work with other reformers, activists and leaders of modernity on both sides of the Atlantic, including Havelock Ellis, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Emma Goldman, Max Eastman, and Eugene Debs, as well as many leading radical artists and writers of the day. It highlights her legislative and organizational efforts, her support of the eugenics movement, and the alliances she secured with medical professionals in her crusade to make birth control legal, respectable, and accessible. This volume also includes letters from women desperately in need of fertility control who saw Sanger as their last hope. Supplemented by an introduction, brief essays providing narrative and chronological links, and substantial notes, the volume is an invaluable tool for understanding Sanger's actions and accomplishments.The documents assembled here, more than 80 percent of them letters, were culled from the Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm Edition, edited by Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo, and Peter C. Engelman. Two subsequent volumes will address later periods in her life, and an additional volume will cover her international work in the birth control struggle. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

A heartfelt thank you.
This is a brilliant collection of Margaret Sanger's personal letters, diary entries, and the pamphlets and tracts that she wrote during the younger part of her adult years.It is a truly inspiring look at one woman's strength and courage as she faced down religious tradition, the law, and public opinion in her stand for women to govern their own bodies. She not only describes the poverty, the meanness, and the ignorance of her day, in chilling and able detail, but devotes her life to correcting what she sees wrong while inspiring others to do the same.I am so thankful for the hard work and dedication that went in to this magnificent work.

Disturbing Omissions
It got into her personal life, creating the hero myth but it left out much that is troubling.
Ms. Sanger founded Planned Parenthood but was also a proponent of eugenics, advocating selective breeding, sterilization and euthanasia.In 1932 Sanger urged"a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring." In her 1938 autobiography, she describes how well she got along with the woman's branch of the KKK at Silver Lake, N.J. in a speech she gave to them, hanging on well into the night talking with the ladies after the speech.She was associated with The Negro Project, whose main idea was to recruit charismatic black ministers to encourage black women topractice birth control, thereby reducing the number of black babies being born.In a December 10, 1939 letter, Sanger wrote to Dr. Gamble, head of The Negro Project: "We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten that idea out if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
These are hew own words.The KKK still quotes her and Hitler gave her an award.The harm she caused, even if you agree with abortion is demonstrable and inexcusable.That the author really didn't touch on this is a crime.

Inappropriate Praise
Some of the praise for Margaret Sanger being posted here is inappropriate. I've spent hundreds of hours exploring the marvelously complete Margaret Sanger Papers (microfilm) on which this book is based.I have two file cabinet drawers filled with material from those papers. I edited for publication her 1922 bestseller and added 31 chapters of period documents so readers can understand the coded language she's using to offer different messages to two different audiences, one a 'progressive' elite that thinks inferior 'unfit' women should be kept from having children and the other ordinary people honestly concerned about the plight of poor women. That's The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective.

I also edited an edition of G. K. Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils, one of the few books critical of eugenics to be published in the 1920s. In nine appendices I placed articles by his English eugenic opponents, including Marie Stopes, Margaret Sanger's English counterpart. Even the most casual reading of her Birth Control News makes it clear Stopes was not a champion of reproductive freedom. The full name of her organization was the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress.

As a feminist, Margaret Sanger did not even pioneer the idea that the solution to our social ills lies in curtailing the birthrates of the "unfit" women. Victoria Woodhull did that with a series of speeches across the U.S. in the 1870s, speeches I'm republishing in the soon-out Lady Eugenist: Feminist Eugenics in the Speeches and Writings of Victoria Woodhull. Merely listing the titles of two of her short books: The Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit (1891) and The Scientific Propagation of the Human Race (1893), makes her point of view clear. That's why a good case can be made that Woodhull--and not Francis Galton--pioneered eugenics as a movement both in the U.S. and the U.K, where she moved in in 1876. In what were perhaps her last public remarks,the New York Times described an interview in which she praised the 1927 Supreme Court decision legalizing forced sterilization, Buck v. Bell, and said she had "advocated that fifty years ago in my bookMarriage of the Unfit."

This history of bigotry, mostly focused on poor immigrants, does not mean that Sanger was the personification of evil. In her private correspondence she comes across as a loyal friend, even to people such as H. G. Wells, who snubbed her in one of his novels, and Havelock Ellis, who scarcely mentioned her in his autobiography. She was also, within her personal limitations, quite supportative of her much older second husband, including in the late 1930s, when he was considering evading prosecution for tax evasion by paying off someone in government. It'll be interesting to see if that correspondence finds its way into a later book in this series.

Even Sanger's negative eugenics does not appear to have come naturally to her. The daughter of a Catholic mother and an immigrant father, her early efforts on behalf of the poor appear to be as genuine as any such activity by an affluent 'parlor pink' can be. It was only on a visit to Glasgow's public housing projects that the Fabians taught her that a progressive welfare state had, of necessity, to reduce the birthrates of the poor to below the replacment level to avoid being swamped by a prolific poor. Glasgow did that by offering marvelous public housing to the poor with small families while cruelly consigning larger families to the horrors of the city's slum lords. Sanger first protested the policy, then agreed, and then returned to the U.S. to start a birth control movement with a similar agenda.

With all that in mind, I would recommend that readers, if they can't afford this rather pricey book, at least get their local library to purchase a copy. Like many of the more radical feminists, Sanger's variety of self-asserting individualism, which I call "heroic selfishness," was the first wave of what is now our much larger "culture war" between red states and blue states. (It's why the 25 states most generous in their personal charitable giving all went for Bush, a very revealing statistic.) To understand the real Sanger,turn to the biblical book of Esther and contemplate the fact that Sanger considered Vashti the real hero of the story and Esther, risking her life to save the Jewish people, a mere "washboard." I only hope the editors have the good sense to include those early remarks in some part of this book series. As Sanger herself hinted, it's a near perfect illustration of what motivated her and it's an attitude that comes through more clearly in the shrill pages of her The Woman Rebel than in her later writings.

And if you want to grasp just how interesting a study of Sanger can be, contemplate the fact that, almost alone on the radical left, in The Woman Rebel (July 1914) she praised some terrorists who intended to blow up the Manhattan home of John Rockefeller and yet a little over a decade later was exchanging polite little notes with members of the Rockefeller family. Politics does makefor strange bedfellows. The politics in that case was eugenics, the once-favorite cause of both the radical left and very wealthy. It's why today both are great fans of legalized abortion, particularly for the poor and minorities.

Soldier Nurse
As one always interested in the feminist movement, I rank "Margaret Sanger: Her Life in Her Words" as one of my favorite books. After reading this book, I truly understand who Margaret Sanger was, and why her work was so important to all women everywhere in the past and today more than ever. Sanger pioneered the availability of birth control for all women, giving women control over their lives, which is so counter to today's trends to eliminate birth control and abortion. Reed has written with great knowledge and perception of her subject and of the field of women's rights. Reed's writing draws the reading into a book that is difficult to put down. Highly recommended.

From the Publisher
This long-awaited collection of letters, diaries, articles and speeches, most of them never before published, were selected with an eye to telling the story of a remarkable life--a life consumed with the quest for women's sexual liberation. The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger (Volume 1) gives us, with dramatic immediacy, the first 28 years of Margaret Sanger's quest.

The birth control crusader, feminist, and reformer Margaret Sanger was one of the most controversial and compelling figures in the twentieth century. This first volume of The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger documents the critical phases and influences of an American feminist icon and offers rare glimpses into her working-class childhood, burgeoning feminism, spiritual and scientific interests, sexual explorations, and diverse roles as wife, mother, nurse, journalist, radical socialist, and activist.

These letters and other writings, including diaries, journals, articles, and speeches, most of which have never before been published, have been selected and assembled with an eye to telling the story of a remarkable life, punctuated by arrests and imprisonments, exile, love affairs, and a momentous personal loss--a life consumed with the quest for women's sexual liberation. Because its narrative line is so absorbing, volume 1 may be read as a powerful biography.

Volume 1 covers a twenty-eight-year period from nurse's training and early socialist involvement in pre- World War I bohemian Greenwich Village to Sanger's adoption of birth control (a term she helped coin in 1914) as a fundamental tenet of women's rights. It traces the intersection of her life and work with other reformers, activists and leaders of modernity on both sides of the Atlantic, including Havelock Ellis, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Emma Goldman, Max Eastman, and Eugene Debs, as well as many leading radical artists and writers of the day. It highlights her legislative and organizational efforts, her support of the eugenics movement, and the alliances she secured with medical professionals in her crusade to make birth control legal, respectable, and accessible. This volume also includes letters from women desperately in need of fertility control who saw Sanger as their last hope. Supplemented by an introduction, brief essays providing narrative and chronological links, and substantial notes, the volume is an invaluable tool for understanding Sanger's actions and accomplishments.

The documents assembled here, more than 80 percent of them letters, were culled from the Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm Edition, edited by Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo, and Peter C. Engelman. Two subsequent volumes will address later periods in her life, and an additional volume will cover her international work in the birth control struggle. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

The rantiest book I have ever read - and that's saying something
For many years, Maragret Sanger has revealed herself as, for the conservative movement in America, history's worst villain (if challenged by Marx and Kinsey) and because of this I was always interested to read a detailed biography of her.

"Killer Angel" was the first Sanger biography I encountered, both on the web and in print, and its hyperbolic title made me - at first - think a good deal about how bad a woman Sanger really must have been. I have over the near never been remotely immunised against extremist views and very frequently do not realise I am reading them when I am, but with "Killer Angel" the story was different. From the first it was very easy for me to see that George Grant was exaggerating every detail of Margaret Sanger's life and providing nowhere near sufficient depth about how she experienced important events during her lifetime.

This begins at the beginning with his discussion of Sanger's legacy in Planned Parenthood (which is surprisingly not referred to by one of the terms of abuse given it by many of Grant's colleagues) and comparing it to Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini, Whilst there may be some truth, given demographic conditions in Eurasia, Canada and New Zealand today, that Sanger has been destructive, Grant does not so much as provide details thereof that could have been sobering if he had tried. Rather, he makes Sanger guilty without evidence - like being convicted without trial. Again, he may be right about how Sanger's background as the daughter of a militantly socialist father spoiled her for life, but Grant provides little detail and absolutely no depth concerning how this affected Sanger's childhood. Nor does he discuss whether Sanger inherited her political radicalism from her father, who was one of the earliest supporters of female suffrage, or what happened to her father and some other family members after her mother died.

The way in which Grant lack depth continues to be seen as we move through Sanger's life, from her attempts to be educated as a teacher and nurse to her marriage and separation from husband William. Whilst Grant is not bad at saying what happened, he gives not the slightest clue as to the personal or psychological motivations that lead Margaret Sanger to do what she did. The impression one gets is that nothing could ever stop Margaret Sanger from doing what she wanted to: that she was a spoiled child of the first order who never had any thought for other people at all. If this were true, Grant could have added a great deal of richness to his biography and tremendously more imagination to the reader trying to understand her. As it is, reader will be left with a biography that may well be largely true, but like children's history textbooks with so little explanation.

When we get to Sanger's career in the field of eugenics, a crucial reason why she is arguably the most hated person among conservatives today, Grant becomes even more hyperbolic in his language, and even less willing to use reason or evidence to back up his assertions - for instance, about the number of pseudosciences he says resulted from Malthusian population theories. The later part of Sanger's life, from her efforts to avoid being charged for publishing material on abortion, is covered in an even more shallow fashion: for instance, Grant does not provide any detail of how Sanger managed to "face up to the year-old legal charges still outstanding against her". The last years of her life, during which Western society turned in exactly the direction Sanger had wanted in the 1910s and 1920s, is barely covered at all.

"Killer Angel" might be listed as a biography, but it is better described as a children's book: the evidence is so shallow that "Killer Angel" makes the concise history books I read to study the settlement of Australia and basic twentieth-century history seem sophisticated. Even if you hate Margaret Sanger, look elsewhere.

An exposé by an author who believes that the historical record of Margaret Sanger amounts to little more than revisionism
This very short biography (~100 pages) is by Christian author, George Grant. The focus of the biography is the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger.

As is obvious from the title, this is not a flattering examination of Sanger. Grant is not trying to find common ground on which to dialogue with Sanger fans. Rather, he is presenting an exposé. Grant argues that the appellations often ascribed to Sanger (e.g., reformer, heroine, champion, saint) are tantamount to historical revisionism:

"The 'champion of birth control' and the 'patron saint of feminism' was no less horrific in her disdain for the helpless and the hapless than any of the other monsters of progressivism during the first half of the twentieth century--Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Mao. The only difference is that they have all been duly discredited, while she has not-at least, not yet." (p. 75)

And so the end to which Grant writes his brief biography is that "the proper standing of Margaret Sanger in the sordid history of this bloody century be secured." (pp. 7-8)

Grant presents Sanger as one with nonexistent sexual mores, a promiscuous woman, whose sexual life was outdone only by her intellectual life. Her views on sexual liberation and radical socialism led her down the path of Malthusianism and eugenics so that she "had openly endorsed the euthanasia, sterilization, abortion, and infanticide programs of the early Reich....She even commissioned her friend, Ernst Rudin, the director of the Nazi Medical Experimentation program, to serve the organization as an advisor." (pp. 91-92)

Grant offers several disturbing quotations from Sanger throughout his booklet:

- "The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. 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."

- "We can all vote, even the mentally arrested. And so it is no surprise to find that the moron's vote is as good as the vote of the genius. The outlook is not a cheerful one."

- "The dullard, the gawk, the numbskull, the simpleton, the weakling, and the scatterbrain are amongst us in overshadowing numbers--intermarrying, breeding, inordinately prolific, literally threatening to overwhelm the world with their useless and terrifying get."

Grant presents Sanger as a kindred spirit intellectually with those progressives in the first half of the 20th century who, for lack of a better word, have now been condemned as monsters.

Grant completes his study by asserting that the character and vision of Sanger are "perfectly mirrored in the organization that she wrought." (p. 102)

***

Again, this book is not intended to build bridges with those who are fans of Sanger. It is an exposé by an author who believes that the historical record of Margaret Sanger amounts to little more than revisionism. Those who suspect that the details of Sanger's life have been airbrushed will find this book helpful and may be interested in reading two comprehensive works on Planned Parenthood that Grant has written. Everyone else will likely hate this book.

NOTHING BUT LIES!
If Margaret Sanger were still alive, she'd be able to sue for big bucks.

This book is full of lies and misquotes, falsely claiming that Sanger supported euthanasia and infanticide, among other horrors. It attributes to Sanger quotes from other sources, as though they were her words.

Amazon should be ashamed to sell this garbage.

Worthwhile read
It's easy to understand the motives, purpose, and actions of Planned Parenthood in light of its founder.Short, easy to read, and helpful for pro-lifers who are fighting PP at any level.

Killer Lies
The only thing worse than this book, is someone actually believing it to be based on facts.It is a wicked defamation of Ms Sanger's character for the author to express a pro-life platform.

"No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body.No woman can call herself free until she can choose conscientiously whether she will or will not be a mother." --Margaret Sanger ... Read more

Product Description
An excellent historical resource on the American birth control movement. --POPULATION TODAY ... Read more

Product Description
A biography of the feminist who brought safe and legal birth control to the women of America. ... Read more

Product Description
A biography of the woman who sacrified her personal life and health to pioneer safe and legal birth control in the United States and abroad. ... Read more

Product Description
Margaret Sanger was the founder of the birth control movement in the United States. A trained nurse by profession she founded a magazine on birth control as well as the first birth control clinic in the U.S. located in Brooklyn. She organized the first World Population Conference and was the first president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. This is her fascinating story. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

"Do not kill, Do not take life"
What I most took away from this autobiography was confusion. How did the "movement" incorporate and become synonomous with abortion? Mrs. Sanger, at least in this piece that she wrote, was outspokenly anti-abortion. Yet, her brainchild- Planned Parenthood- is the largest national provider of abortions today. I took from this book that Mrs. Sanger was a bit naive and surrounded herself with some sinister circles. Circles that saw the profit that could be made through abortion. Sufficing their desires for population control and greed. Mrs. Sanger helped in the opening of a Pandora's box of eugenics and moral relativeness. Did she really mean what she wrote- "Do not kill, do not take life, but prevent"?

The Repackaging of Margaret Sanger
Don't expect an accurate depiction of Sanger from this propaganda piece.Save yourself a lot of time and read the following quotes if you're really interested in finding out what kind of woman Margaret Sanger really was and what type of agenda she promoted for America:

On the extermination of blacks:
"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," she said, "if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, by Linda Gordon

On abortion:
"The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race (Eugenics Publ. Co., 1920, 1923)

On the right of married couples to bear children:
"Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child." -- Margaret Sanger "Plan for Peace." (Birth Control Review, April 1932)

a continued killer of many
Margaret Sanger was no better than Hitler with her population control.She chose to focus on control because she was one of many children from her family and obviously did not get enough attention.Now she focuses on being selfish.Most of us have children because we love them.For those who have abortions, they need to stay out of other peoples beds if they can't handle the responsibility or the unselfishness of having a child or children.

Sanger Was A Strategist, but a Racist
In reviewing Sanger's autobiography, there is a difficult balance to manage.

On one hand, Sanger had a genuine desire to reduce unwanted births and, indirectly, reduce the population of the poor and mistreated.

On the other hand is the ungirdings of her beliefs: that African-Americans were second-class citizens. Backing what she believed was a growing acceptance of eugenics, that to have a better world, the population needed to be genetically purer. For Sanger, not too different that Hitler, this meant encouraging abortions among African-Americans.

To read Sanger's auto-biography alone might mislead the reader into believing her views were founded in cleanly laid-out welfare theories and of women's rights. That was part of it... but deeper still... and the reason I'm not comfortable fully recommending this book... is her core racial prejudice under the guise of freedom.

I understand my review might offend fans of Sanger, but read it in context.

Pick up George Grant's book on it... get past his over-emphasis on his own conservative views, and read his analysis of her own comments. Better yet... if you can find one, read Doug Scott's "Bad Choices" expose of the foundingand practices of Planned Parenthood. Again, exceedingly conservative and not for the close-minded, but his citations of Sanger's letters and official documents are astounding and alarming.

Anthony Trendl

Sanger as Activist & Thinker
Margaret Sanger is not only one of the most influential women in 20th century America, she's the rare sort of individual whose autobiographies arebetterthan the biographies that others have written about her. The Sanger described by others is typically little more than an icon, a stilted"Woman of Valor."The real Sanger you'll discover here is far more interesting and in many ways far more apt to reveal flaws and shortcomings.

This is a reprint of her 1938 autobiography, written by a mature Sanger as she was retiring from public life to become the birth control movement's senior representative. Her 1931 My Fight for Birth Control has more fire to it, but at that time she was much more ill-tempered. She'd beenpushed out of the American Birth Control League that she had founded and was having little success in her attempts to get federal birth control legislation passed. If you read one of her autobiographies, this should be the one.

Just remember that you will not get a full picture ofSanger from this book. Here you get the events of her life told from the inside. To understand what motivated her you need to read the book she termed her 'head' book, her 1922 The Pivot of Civilization (recently republished with additional material). It's her most intellectual book and contains an introduction by her friend H. G. Wells.

It is demeaning of Sanger's legacythat so few of those who claim to take her seriously as an activist take the time to examine her ideas. It was Sanger the thinker who inspired Sanger the activist. We must understand both to understand the movement she founded. ... Read more

Product Description
A biography of the woman who fought for birth control in America describes her childhood; her private life; her relationships with Emma Goldman and John Reed; her affairs with H. G. Wells and Havelock Ellis; and her public role. 30,000 first printing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Extermination of Blacks? Woman of Valor?
I don't understand how Margaret Sanger, beloved of Hitler, friend of the KKK, prominent eugenicist, and hero to people advocating the extermination of African-Americans, sick people, and the poor, can be given the title "Woman of Valor."
The author left out very important details about Sanger's life to justify her glorification. ELLEN CHESLER should be condemned for her praise of one of the most dispicable people to ever walk the earth. What's next? "Man of Valor: Adolf Hitler." Yeah, I'll be looking forward to Ellen Chesler's next book... I'm sure she'll leave out the whole jewish thing and just focus on his vegetarianism.

Thorough Exploration of Sanger's Life
It's a long biography, thoroughly researched.For that I'm grateful.I know I can rely on the information here.But, it does get to be a bit tedious of a read.Fortunately, the drive, dedication and determination of Ms. Sanger comes through all the minutia.Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but seldom indifferent, we pretty much find out who this woman was.Certainly she was a product of her times, as are we all, but also a champion of a most basic human right, to be free to control our own reproductive lives.I'm so glad to know Margaret Sanger and to have developed a deeper understanding of how precious reproductive freedom is.

Glaring omissions cannot be put asside
It got into her personal life, fostering the hero myth but it left out much that is troubling.
Ms. Sanger founded Planned Parenthood but was also a proponent of eugenics, advocating selective breeding, sterilization and euthanasia.In 1932 Sanger urged"a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring." In her 1938 autobiography, she describes how well she got along with the woman's branch of the KKK at Silver Lake, N.J. in a speech she gave to them, hanging on well into the night talking with the ladies after the speech.She was associated with The Negro Project, whose main idea was to recruit charismatic black ministers to encourage black women topractice birth control, thereby reducing the number of black babies being born.In a December 10, 1939 letter, Sanger wrote to Dr. Gamble, head of The Negro Project: "We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten that idea out if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
These are hew own words.The KKK still quotes her and Hitler gave her an award.The harm she caused, even if you agree with abortion is demonstrable and inexcusable.That the author really didn't touch on this is a crime.

A great biography of an amazing woman
This was a great biography of an amazing woman whose life saw and shaped the evolution of the birth control movement. The book was well researched, and the addition of so many pictures brought the book to life.

The book is fairly long so it took me awhile to read but it was worth it. The whole life of Margaret Sanger was covered. Both her personal and public life was explained and shown. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the birth control movement or Margaret Sanger. The book offers a great deal of information about both.

Fascinating, in-depth look at a remarkable woman
I've just finished reading this book for a women's history class.I found it hard to put down.It's a shame that it is out of print, as Margaret Sanger's life story, and her struggle for the reproductive rights of womenand female autonomy, make for enlightening reading.Ellen Chesler put inan enormous amount of work, documenting every detail, and weaving the wholeinto a very readable book.I would definitely recommend this to anyreader, not only those interested in the empowerment of women, but alsothose NOT interested in it, since it might change their minds!Definitelyan important work, and an important woman, for gaining an understanding ofhow the 20th century has been shaped. ... Read more

Product Description
Combines biography of M. Sanger with social history of birth control movement. Winner of Bancroft Prize in American History 1971 and John Gilmary Shea Award of American Catholic Historical Association 1970. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Hero for Women's Rights
Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger. By David M. Kennedy. 320 pp. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1970. $30.

David Kennedy is the McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.Reflecting his interdisciplinary training in American Studies, which combined the fields of history, literature, and economics, Professor Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history.

Professor Kennedy teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of the twentieth-century United States, American political and social thought, American foreign policy,
American literature, and the comparative development of democracy in Europe and America.

He has had ten books published to date and written over twenty articles with two on Margaret Sanger.He has received numerous awards including the John Gilmary Shea Prize (for Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, 1970 and the Bancroft Prize (for Birth Control in America), 1971.

His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, embraced the medical, legal, political, and religious dimensions of the subject and helped to pioneer the emerging field of women's history.It is a highly critical study of Sanger's pre-World War II career that can still be appreciated by readers in today's society.It is not a true autobiography
of Margaret Sanger but a chronological listing and explanation of the events that occurred involving the American birth control movement which she was a crusader for.To fully
understand Sanger's involvement in the birth control movement the author lets us know who Margaret Sanger was and the events that caused her to become a leading birth control advocate,
feminist, and activist.

Margaret Sanger was born in 1879 in Corning, New York, one of eleven children of Irish-American parents.Her mother was Catholic, her father a radical follower of the freethinker Robert Ingersoll and single-taxer Henry George. Sanger later attributed the family's lack of prosperity and her mother's death at forty-nine to her parents' having had so many children.

The inequality she observed between them stimulated her
lifelong social activism.Margaret, with help from her sisters, attended Claverack College, after which she went to nursing school.She did not immediately use her medical training because, she later wrote, William Sanger "pressured" her into marrying and leaving school in 1902. William Sanger, an
artist and architect, moved the family (soon to include three children) to suburban Westchester.

While he commuted to New York, Margaret grew restless as a result of her isolation and full-time housekeeping.In 1910 the Sanger's moved back to Manhattan, and Margaret began working as a visiting nurse on the Lower East Side.She became active in radical politics, joining the Socialist party and working with the Industrial Workers of the World in supporting several militant strikes.From this network she absorbed feminist ideas and came to agree with Emma Goldman that women had a right to control their sexual and reproductive lives.Her work as a nurse with the poor further convinced her that birth control was vital to women's health and freedom.

In 1912 she began to write and speak on sexual and health issues under socialist auspices and was encouraged by her enthusiastic reception.The censorship of one of her columns by the U.S. Post Office in 1913 brought her more publicity.In 1914 she published several issues of the Woman Rebel, a radical feminist newspaper, and Family Limitation, a pamphlet intended for mass distribution and containing explicit instructions for contraception. A warrant was issued for her arrest, and she fled to Europe, where she studied with Havelock Ellis a sexual
psychologist.

She returned to the United States in 1915 to find a nationwide birth-control movement under way; the charges against her were dropped.In 1916 she and her sister Mrs. Evelyn Byrne, who was also a trained nurse, and a third woman, Fania Mindell
established a birth-control clinic in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn as an act of civil disobedience, since providing birth control remained illegal.Clinics were now opening throughout the country, in defiance of the laws against them, and attracted many clients. Sanger became increasingly angered by the Left-wing party's refusal to make birth control a priority and decided on a strategy of making legalization of contraception a single-issue campaign.Distancing herself from her left-wing friends, she now sought support from physicians and academic eugenicist's.Their influence replaced that of the feminist and socialist movements, then in retreat, and Sanger sometimes used eugenic arguments for birth control that it could help reduce the birthrate of "inferiors."

In 1921 she established the American Birth Control League, a national lobbying group, which became Planned Parenthood in 1942.Very much needing personal recognition, Sanger thought of birth control as her own invention and her leadership as irreplaceable.Her aggressive campaigning, however, did play a large part in the legalization of contraception by many states
between the 1920s and 1960s.This movement was not the true success she had fought for, because contraception became understood, not as a woman's right, but as a medical matter
requiring a doctor's prescription.

This book was extremely well written, well researched, and well organized.The book was fair to the material it was interpreting.The author points out that "despite all her defects of posture and policy, Margaret Sanger, it could be argued, had been indispensable to the ultimate success of her cause.Mrs. Sanger then slipped quietly from the position of leadership after twenty-five years.So effectively had she educated society that it seemed no longer to need her."
This book held my interest all the way to the end.It reinforces my belief that Margaret Sanger should be considered a hero for women's rights.This book is a real contribution to the subject of birth control and to Sanger and helped me understand Margaret Sanger more as a person and a female.

Rachel Dvorkin
Roosevelt University
Schaumburg, IL ... Read more