, nurse, and birth control
activist. Sanger coined the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established Planned Parenthood
. Sanger's efforts contributed to the landmark US Supreme Court case
which legalized contraception in the United States. Sanger is a frequent target of criticism by the pro-life movement, based primarily upon her racial views and support of eugenics, but she remains an iconic figure for the American reproductive rights
movement.
Her early years were spent in New York City, where she associated with social activists such as Upton Sinclair
and Emma Goldman
.
Usually this desire [for family limitation] has been laid to economic pressure... It has asserted itself among the rich and among the poor, among the intelligent and the unintelligent. It has been manifested in such horrors as infanticide, child abandonment and abortion.
It is apparent that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide.
The basic freedom of the world is woman's freedom. A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman enchained cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.
While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.