Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger

While we discuss the relative merits of various contraceptive methods, and the difficulty in educating "backward" people to limit population growth, we may forget that only a few decades ago it was illegal and generally considered immoral to give any information about birth control. As late as 1932, the AMA executive committee refused a proposal to conduct a study of contraception because it was a controversial subject. The gradual acceptance of birth control in the United States is largely due to the efforts of a few people, especially Margaret Sanger. Mrs. Sanger, a nurse married to an architect, after a few years of sub-urban domesticity, became involved with a group of radicals, including Eugene Debs, John Reed, and Emma Goldman. She crusaded for various causes, but after witnessing a death from attempted abortion, decided to devote all her efforts to the emancipation of women and the dissemination of birth control