Margaret Sanger is the woman who can be held responsible for birth prevention medicine. She had fought a lone battle, in the face of oppressive, conservative Christians. She served lots of time in jail and many of her writings were suppressed by Christian Fundamentalists who were serving office. Her mother was pregnant eighteen times, and seven were miscarriages. Her father was a Freethinker and a Socialist. In her childhood, her father had once invited Ingersoll to speak at a local hall, but angry Christians threw tomatoes at Ingersoll, Margaret Sanger, and her father. Margaret Sanger's first newsletter, entitled "The Woman Rebel," had information on safe sex practices. Anthony Comstock, a prominent and Christian Fundamentalist congressman, had suppressed and censored the newsletter. She began writing in a Socialist magazine and her series was entitled: "What Every Girl Should Know." However, when Comstock censored it, it read, "What Every Girl Should Know: Nothing!" The article, however, was about preventing syphilis and gonorrhea. In July 15 of 1915, she wrote an article entitled "Comstockery in America." It read...

"The passing of the Comstock laws in 1873 was designed to aid and abet both moral and religious prejudice and persecutions. This aroused the wrath of the free-thinking and liberty- loving populace, and in 1878 great agitation was aroused against these laws: a petition was presented to Congress, headed by the name of Robert G. Ingersoll and signed by 70,000 "freemen," requesting the repeal of these outrageous laws. They were passed and executed ostensibly to prevent the passage of obscene literature through the U. S. mails, but actually were designed and enforced to destroy the liberty of conscience and thought in matters of religion and against the freedom of the press."

     She was a Socialist and a Feminist. She fought for the rights of women and children, the impoverished and underappreciated. The children who had to work in mills, who had to die in mills, were the ones she defended. Today, there is much talk among the conservatives about how vile a person Sanger was. How cruel she may have been. How vindictive she may have been. And how heartless she may have been. The religious right today lags behind in moral reform just as it did a hundred years ago! There is no difficulty in understanding why the church bans abortion, just like there should have been no difficulty in understanding why the church allowed slavery. Whatever produces the greatest tears, the deepest woes, the most significant pains will be the very thing that the church endorses. Whether it is the crude debaucheries of Atheists to the very burnings of their bodies, the church has never been the friend of happiness or freedom. The little children who worked in the factories of Carnegie, Rockefeller, and other impressive businessmen, were not friends of their bosses. These businessmen often donated money to the Christian Church, that it may grow more powerful and extend its grip on more naive individuals and tighten its grip on the procured believers. It handed out happiness in small rations, comparable to the money earned by these children and wage slaves. But it was Margaret Sanger who fought the endless system of oppression and indignity. She fought for the children and for their birthrights. To the cries of the child that held no avail to any clergyman, she had heard and made it her life duty - over half a century - to end this abominable injustice. On March 26, 1911, Margaret Sanger wrote the article, "To Mothers--Our Duty." It read...

"This is the case of the most abused, most dejected, most imposed upon class of mothers which our social system presents to us, and their number is legion.

"Here we find the little mothers at 8, 9 and 10 years of age; here we see them already at work carrying responsibilities of the home, factory or mill; education is a thing apart from this child, childhood yearnings are crushed, childish joys are barred here, there is time for but one thing -- work. Work through childhood, through girlhood and womanhood.

"We follow this child-mother up to the marriage day and find she has given her childhood, girlhood, womanhood, her strength, her very life to the factory or mill for an existence, an existence which the owner of the factory would not allow his horse or dog. Her face is pale and pinched with that hunting look of poverty; it never changes -- she is born, lives and dies with that look. She is married at night after the day's work, that she lose not one day's time.

"On, on in the same monotonous way; on, on, waiting for the end.

"There's no time for her to think of the little one's coming; she must work only the harder because of its coming.

"After months of worry, toil, privation and physical exhaustion this child, too, is born. Let us see what this woman gives to society. Her child is undersized, underfed, weak, sickly and ofttimes deformed. It, too, has paid the price of birth; it has given its little strength with every heartbeat, that it may be born, and now it is here, cheated and swindled of its birthright.

"Women, women, arouse yourselves! If you are not so unfortunately placed, it is but a trick of circumstances.

"If you are well clothed, well fed, today it is these women who have helped you to do so. And are you doing anything for these women? Ministers of the Gospel, what are you doing for these women and unborn babies? You reformers, conservatives, call yourselves what you wish, what are you doing for this condition of society which demands of its unborn such an awful price of birth? Do you think your duty is done if you have clothed or fed one or fifty of these victims for a day, a week, a year, perhaps? Oh, mothers, sisters, women of this land, awake! How can you slumber when these conditions exist?"

     Sex and sexuality at this time was a completely forbidden subject. Even in medical books, it was difficult for individuals to obtain information concerning sexuality and safe sex practices. Instead, the government and conservatives would rather have it that people spread like the plague with millions of them dying because information on sex is forbidden. When women asked for advice on how to avoid pregnancy at this era, a doctor would most likely say, "Tell your husband to sleep on the roof." (As one doctor had told Sanger's mother.) To make matters worse, not only did Sanger believe in free information; she also believed in Free Love. She believed that sex should not be limited to any specific individual, and she is noted as having sex with Havelock Ellis "King" and H. G. Wells. In 1916, she opened America's first birth control clinic. Unfortunately, a female cop undercover went in and posed as a patient. Sanger was imprisoned for thirty days. When asked what religion she was, she replied, "Humanity." In her autobiography, she recounts the situation, "He had never heard of this form of belief, and rephrased the question, 'Well, what church do you go to?' None. He looked at me in sharp surprise. All inmates of the penitentiary went to church." Sanger's famous motto was, "No gods, no masters."

     She had the support of no groups in the beginning. Sex was too taboo for anyone to consider. Collectively, she had been jailed eight times. In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which would later become the modern Planned Parenthood Federation. In 1929, police raided her clinic and seized files. However, since that date, she has finally had support from many individuals and many groups. In 1957, she was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association. In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut law that outlawed contraception. It was the first major victory for Sanger. It had been over fifty years of campaigning, but she had seen her victory. The following year, unfortunately, she would die. In 1972, the high court killed a Massachusetts law which made it a crime to sell birth-control devices to unmarried people. After that legal battle, sexual liberation had commenced and people were now free to govern their own bodies.

     Not surprisingly, Sanger did not attract praise from everyone. Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, said that Sanger's "legacy is fifty-seven types of sexually transmitted disease." The defamation of Sanger will most likely be ceaseless. As Christian Fundamentalists gain control of radios and television, spreading the great gospel of hatred, her image has constantly and repeatedly been spit on. Little would a Christian Conservative care to browse through the papers of Sanger. For had one done so, it would be the inevitable conclusion that Sanger was a compassionate and caring person who had cared for the plights of beings passed on by society. The scornful remarks about Sanger, about her detestable rage and insignificant care will be stories that will be passed on from Fundamentalist Christian to Fundamentalist Christian. They will forever hold her in contempt as long as they remain arrogant, but Sanger will forever rise above these bloodhounds of cultic Christianity. Perhaps there is a feature of Sanger they are jealous of -- her boldness in the face of the enemy, her firmness, her intellect, her out and out courage and compassion. Understandably so, these are things that Fundamentalist Christians have lacked over the years, and for a cruel individual to mock someone as Sanger would be the crime of a lost heart. The amount of people today who hold Sanger in contempt are an innumerable lot. But to those Freethinking and intelligent Humanitarians whom are only governed by logic, reason, and rationalism, they will forever hold the torch of respect for this woman -- for Sanger -- and for her battle for Socialism, Feminism, and sexual liberation. There has never been another woman who has furthered the movement of Sexual Liberation and liberty of our bodies than Margaret Sanger.

Punkerslut,

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