Sanger’s new book about birth control

One hundred years ago today … Margaret Sanger’s The Pivot of Civilization, and her views of birth control, were stirring up strong reactions around the world.

The Broklyn Eagle listed some of the central tenets of Sanger’s argument. Columnist “I. Kaufman” reports that Sanger’s book asks the questions:

Why so distressingly careful about the unborn child, while the children already born are allowed to work long hours in factories and mills, to grow up ignorant or viciously taught, to go hungry and ill-clad and to attend schools which are fire-traps and breeders of disease?

Why keep the knowledge how to limit the size of a family from those least capable of adjusting themselves to conditions of modern life–that is, the "unfit"–while the intelligent and capable are making use of this knowledge in spite of morality and law?

What virtue is there in a mere increase of population, without regard to the human quality of it?

What other way is there of limiting populations except periodic famines and wars; and are these to be preferred?

– “Children–More or Less?” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 24 June, 1922, p. 3.

[Read the full text of The Pivot of Civilization here.]

Sanger was, one hundred years ago today, on a tour of East Asia. Earlier in June, the Associated Press had reported that her lectures on birth control had shocked her interpreter into quitting (“Mrs. Sanger Shocks Her,” New York Times, 10 June, 1922, p. 3).

Reports of Sanger’s trip would continue throughout the summer. 

In recent years, Sanger has been criticized for being a eugenicist.

– Jonathan Goldman, Jun 24, 2022

TAGS: family planning, contraception, health, eugenics, women