Margaret Sanger: Founder of the Birth Control Movement and Architect of Reproductive Autonomy

Margaret Higgins Sanger (1879–1966) was an American nurse, activist, and reformer who played a central role in founding the modern birth control movement and establishing what would later become Planned Parenthood. Her work transformed access to contraception, reshaped public health policy, and fundamentally altered women’s ability to control their reproductive lives.

Early Life and Influences

Margaret Sanger was born on 14 September 1879 in Corning, New York, the sixth of eleven children. Her mother, Anne Higgins, experienced eighteen pregnancies and died at the age of 49 — an experience Sanger later cited as formative in shaping her views on reproductive health and maternal suffering (Chesler, 2007).

Sanger trained as a nurse and worked extensively with poor and working-class women in New York City’s Lower East Side, where she witnessed first-hand the devastating consequences of repeated, unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and lack of medical information. At the time, dissemination of contraceptive information was illegal under the Comstock Laws, which classified birth control information as obscene material (U.S. Congress, 1873).

Launching the Birth Control Movement

In 1914, Sanger began publishing The Woman Rebel, a radical feminist journal advocating for women’s right to control their own bodies. It was here that she popularised the term “birth control”, deliberately reframing contraception as a matter of autonomy and health rather than morality (Sanger, 1914).

Facing arrest, Sanger fled briefly to Europe, where she studied contraceptive methods and public health models that were more advanced than those permitted in the United States at the time. On her return, she intensified her activism, believing that access to contraception was essential to women’s equality, economic security, and health (Chesler, 2007).

The First Birth Control Clinic

In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in Brooklyn, New York. The clinic was raided within ten days, and Sanger was arrested and imprisoned for violating the Comstock Laws (Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 2023).

However, her legal battles proved catalytic. In 1918, a New York court ruling allowed doctors to prescribe contraception for medical reasons—marking the first significant legal weakening of federal restrictions on birth control (People v. Sanger, 1918).

Founding Planned Parenthood

In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which later evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942. Under this organisation, birth control advocacy became institutionalised, medicalised, and increasingly accepted within mainstream healthcare systems (Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 2023).

Planned Parenthood would go on to become one of the world’s largest providers of reproductive health services, including contraception, cancer screening, sexual health education, and reproductive care.

Scientific and Global Impact

Sanger was instrumental in securing funding for the development of the oral contraceptive pill, collaborating with scientists such as Gregory Pincus and John Rock. The pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1960 and is widely regarded as one of the most influential medical innovations of the twentieth century (Tone, 2001).

Globally, Sanger worked to promote family planning as a public health issue, helping to establish the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) in 1952, which remains active in over 140 countries (IPPF, 2023).

Controversies and Criticism

Sanger’s legacy is complex and contested. She engaged with the eugenics movement, which was prevalent among many early 20th-century reformers and scientists. While Sanger opposed coercive sterilisation and framed birth control as voluntary, her rhetoric sometimes aligned with eugenic ideas about social improvement — particularly regarding poverty and disability (Roberts, 1997).

These associations have rightly drawn criticism, particularly from communities historically harmed by eugenic policies. Contemporary reproductive justice advocates emphasise that access to contraception must be rooted in autonomy, consent, and equity — not population control (Ross & Solinger, 2017).

Legacy

Margaret Sanger died in 1966, just one year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that married couples had a constitutional right to contraception — a legal milestone built on decades of activism she helped initiate (U.S. Supreme Court, 1965).

Her work irrevocably changed the landscape of reproductive healthcare. While her legacy demands critical examination, there is no disputing her role in making reproductive choice a cornerstone of women’s health and human rights.

As historian Linda Gordon has noted, Sanger’s impact lies not in perfection, but in transformation:

“She forced a private suffering into public view and made it a political issue.” - Gordon (2002)

References

• Chesler, E. (2007). Woman of valor: Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement in America. Simon & Schuster.

• Gordon, L. (2002). The moral property of women: A history of birth control politics in America. University of Illinois Press.

• International Planned Parenthood Federation. (2023). Our history. https://www.ippf.org

• People v. Sanger, 222 N.Y. 192 (1918).

• Planned Parenthood Federation of America. (2023). Margaret Sanger and the founding of Planned Parenthood. https://www.plannedparenthood.org

• Roberts, D. (1997). Killing the Black body: Race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty. Pantheon Books.

• Sanger, M. (1914). The Woman Rebel. New York.

• Tone, A. (2001). Devices and desires: A history of contraceptives in America. Hill and Wang.

• U.S. Congress. (1873). Comstock Act.

• U.S. Supreme Court. (1965). Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479.