Margaret Sanger. An Autobiography.

From Right to Responsibility: Resonance and Radicalism in Feminist‐Led Reproductive Control Movements, 1905‐1942

“…First, the divergence of their movements presents a social movements puzzle as to the success, or failure, of their projects. Second, both women began their work as radical activists and first raised their concerns about reproductive freedoms within these groups; Sanger in the Socialist Women's League, Stöcker in the radical wing of the Women's Movement (Sanger, 1938; Wickert et al., 1982). Third, their activism took place over a period in which reproductive control became increasingly juxtaposed with ethnonationalism and scientific racism; from 1905‐1942, they increasingly framed (or divorced their framing from) reproductive control as a solution to questions of national strength, racial purity, and human value.…”

“…I rely here on personal papers collections, primarily held by the Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University and Helene Stöcker's papers kept in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. I also draw on Sanger's 1938 autobiography and Stöcker's posthumously published notes for her autobiography while maintaining a critical approach to using such writing as data, using them instead as rhetorical properties which can be read as social accounts (Harrison & Lyon, 1993; Sanger, 1938; Stöcker, 2015). I supplement these writings with published conference programs, namely from the International Eugenics Conferences of 1912, 1921 and 1932 and Neo‐Malthusian and Birth Control Conferences in 1910, 1911, 1922, and 1925.…”

“…They also note the agency involved in the process of framing, in that evolution of the movement itself is a result of the actors' driving effect. Sanger and Stöcker's diverse audiences and collaborators could only have been managed with such a flexible palette of frames; between 1924 and 1925 alone, Margaret Sanger had spoken at both a Ku Klux Klan gathering and introduced Bertrand Russell at a society luncheon while Helene Stöcker opened her first sexual counselling center in Berlin and joined the “Group for Revolutionary Pacifists” (Sanger, 1924, 1938; Wickert, 1991).…”

“…Sanger began her work on birth control access as a member of the socialist movement in New York City, in which she and her husband had been active members since 1907. Early on, Sanger was selected to recruit women for the Socialist cause because, in her words, she was American and a mother, thus disrupting negative stereotypes of socialist women (Sanger, 1938). Later Sanger, along with Mary Dennett and Emma Goldman, first began raising awareness of the suppression of contraceptive information using the existing platforms of the socialist movement, including socialist newspaper the New York Call .…”

“…Their argument was that birth control, or at least information on it, was protected as free speech and that restricting access and dissemination violated women's constitutional rights. Sanger and Goldman forged alliances with other leftist groups to promote their cause and published a newsletter called the “Woman Rebel” as well as a pamphlet called “Family Limitations” (Chesler, 2007; Sanger, 1938). These publications ran afoul of the Comstock Act, and in 1914 she was charged with violating postal obscenity laws for sending contraception information through the U.S.…”