Margaret Sanger and the Progressive Era Margaret Sanger was a radical, a feminist, a writer, and a leader of the birth control movement. Sanger published a journal, The Woman Rebel, all about her thoughts on this subject, in 1914. Her mission was to defy the law and provide women with contraceptive information. She believed that women could change the social structure of society by obtaining sexual equality through birth control.
She soon became an activist and was determined to educate women about their bodies and options. Her crusade for birth control became one of the major reform movements of the twentieth century. It changed the way people viewed women’s sexuality, and altered females’ reproductive and professional lives. Sanger was indicted for violation of federal obscenity laws.
She illegally fled from prosecution, and eventually ended up with 13-months of exile in Europe. Sanger returned to New York in the fall of 1915 and had to go to trial. She opened the nation’s first birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn in 1916. Sanger soon became one of the main leaders of the birth control movement in the United States. Sanger was an active and controversial for the times that she lived in. She became a strong figurehead for the feminist voice.
She protested for the rights of women to use birth control. She was a true American reformer and helped define the Progressive era. She started the beginning of a possible national birth control movement dedicated to women during a time when it was thought impossible. Women had no rights before this era, but with the help of Margaret Sanger, they gained the right of their own body. Women no longer had to have a lot of children, they could put off families, which was a major characteristic of the era, and have professional careers. She gave women a choice and that choice helped to lead to social and economic change for women all over America..
The Term Paper on The Woman Rebel Birth Control
... women to avoid orgasm and, she believed, intensified and prolonged pleasure. In the first decades of the twentieth century a renewed birth-control movement ... comes from the introduction to a book Sanger edited called The Case for Birth Control (1917). In this essay, she summarized much ... argued her case fully in the style of the Progressive Era: fact-laden, scientific, and analytical. She now spoke in ...
