Abstract
The year 1979 marked the centennial of Margaret Sanger, birth control pioneer. Sanger worked to secure two new human rights: the right to decide whether to have a child and the right of a child to be wanted. Beginning in 1873, antipornography crusader Anthony Comstock lobbied through Congress and the state legislatures laws forbidding the distribution of contraceptive devices and even information. He equated these with erotic postcards as "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, indecent and disgusting." Sanger's strategy was to challenge the Comstock laws in the courts. She studied birth control methods abroad and published a pamphlet, Family Limitation, in 1914. It was the first modern marriage manual; it was also illegal. The publicity her trial generated was immense and highly sympathetic. The government dropped its case when it saw it could only make her a martyr. An obstetrical nurse, Sanger had seen the plight of factory women in the poorest sections of New York City. In order to provide the medical advice and supplies women clamored for, Sanger opened the first U.S. birth control clinic, in Brooklyn in 1916. The New York City Vice Squad raided and closed it, and jailed Sanger. Margaret Sanger underwent other trials, raids, and harassments, but each time won additional public support for her organization--Planned Parenthood--and her cause.
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