Birth Control: The Story of the Woman Who Dedicated Her Life to Finding the “Magic Pill”

Despite the importance of her work, Sanger’s methods and motives remain controversial, and her association with “eugenics”, or what is known as birth control with the aim of improving it, has led her to be accused of having racist motives.

Sangam Ahluwalia, professor of history and women’s and gender studies at Northern Arizona University and author of Reproductive Restrictions: Birth Control in India 1877-1947, says Sanger’s legacy is really a mixed one.

“I think it’s too simplistic to eliminate a character like Sanger… It needs to be read historically and critically,” Ahluwalia told BBC Radio World.

Sanger was born in 1879 in upstate New York, the sixth of 11 children. Her father, Michael, was of Irish descent and worked in a quarry. The family was poor, and lived in a hut. Her mother became pregnant 18 times and miscarried seven times.

Sanger began her career working as a psychiatric nurse, dedicated to relieving the suffering of critically ill and complex patients, and there she saw a woman die of pregnancy complications, and also witnessed the dangerous results of clandestine abortions.

“The Comstock laws were in effect, prohibiting the use of the Postal Service to distribute contraceptives or birth control kits or information about them,” says Elaine Tyler May, author of America and the Pill: A History of Promises, Perils, and Liberation and professor of American Studies and History at the University of Minnesota. There were also laws against contraceptives in many states.”

The laws behind Anthony Comstock were passed in the United States in 1873, and also prohibited the circulation and distribution of any information about abortion, sex, and sexually transmitted diseases, as well as preventing the publication and circulation of “obscene literature” and “immoral articles.”

In addition to the legal aspect, Sanger also had to deal with the powerful Catholic Church, which considered the use of contraception a “sin”.

the right Women in birth control

In March 1914, Sanger published her book The Rebel Woman, in which she defended women’s right to birth control. The book quickly became a legal case, putting its author in the face of accountability. To avoid possible imprisonment, Sanger left for Britain by ship.

During her stay in Britain, Sanger was influenced by the ideas of Thomas Robert Malthus, who warned that the food resources on the planet would not be sufficient if the population continued to grow unchecked, and recommended restraint and postponement of marriage.

At the time, activists who believed in his ideas, known as the “neo-Malthusians”, were pressing for the promotion of contraception.

Dr Caroline Resterholz, who specializes in history at the University of Cambridge, especially in population, medicine and sexuality, says Sanger “has also begun to develop another approach, that birth control is the way to keep the peace and avoid food shortages”.

first Birth control clinic

Sanger left her self-imposed exile and returned to the United States. She opened the nation’s first birth control clinic in an area of ​​New York City populated mostly by poor and immigrants.

The police raided the clinic just a few days after it opened, and Sanger was arrested.

However, she did not hesitate to reopen the clinic a few days later, and was arrested again on charges of causing public harm.

Sanger was tried in 1917 in a case that caused a huge stir, and she was convicted, and she was sentenced to 30 days in prison or a fine, so she chose prison, and there she was providing female prisoners with information about birth control.

Sanger biographer Ellen Chesler says, “Sanger became a widely known figure in the United States because of this incident. Her sister was also in prison, and she went on hunger strike.”

After her release, Sanger filed an appeal against her conviction, which was denied, but the court ruled that doctors could prescribe contraceptives for health reasons.

In the midst of her legal battles, Sanger was facing turmoil in her personal life. She separated from her husband in 1914, and the following year her only daughter died suddenly at the age of five.

Sanger has had affairs with many men, including behavioral psychologist Havelock Ellis and writer H.G. Wells, author of The Time Machine.

In 1922, she married businessman and oil tycoon James Noah Sly, who became one of the main financiers of her campaign.

Sanger sought to obtain broader support for her campaign, joined the groups that were calling for birth control, and established the so-called “eugenics” theory, or the science of birth control with the aim of “improving it”, and this theory is considered completely unacceptable today.

“I partnered with eugenics advocates… and got funding from them,” says Dr. Caroline Resterholz.

The National Human Genome Research Institute defines eugenics as “scientifically inaccurate in that it claims that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations”.

This theory did not face much opposition during the period leading up to the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis.

“Sanger was really trying to fight poverty, but she endorsed some (ethically) problematic eugenics measures, such as sterilization of people with disabilities,” says Resterholz.

Biographer Ellen Chesler says Sanger had her own opinion: “Traditional eugenicists were against birth control for middle-class women. They were interested in hierarchies of race, color, and social class. But she wasn’t like them. What she sought was fewer children.” children for all women.

Margaret Sanger traveled the world during the 1920s and 1930s, promoting birth control in China, Japan, Korea, and India.

In a letter to the Eugenics Society of London, which funded her trip to India in 1935, she focused on “educating the poor and biologically worse off about birth control”.

It promoted the use of double foaming powder (spermicide powder) in India, but it raised many complaints about causing a burning sensation, and its use was difficult without medical supervision.

“The rhetoric was very strong about birth control and access to contraceptives, especially for the working class poor. But the technology just wasn’t there,” says Sangam Ahluwalia.

Sanger met with senior leaders and influential figures in India, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore.

While Tagore supported birth control, Gandhi preached celibacy and self-control. Sanger did her best to influence Gandhi, but she was unable to change his mind.

World War II forced eugenics back on both sides of the Atlantic. But it gained new momentum after the end of the war, and renewed fears of a population explosion.

It was around this time that Sanger, frustrated by the impracticality or effectiveness of available contraceptives such as the diaphragm, began pressing for an oral contraceptive that was cheap and easy to use.

She wrote in 1939 of her dream of getting a “magic pill”, but needed help to move from idea to reality.

Her primary and primary ally was feminist Catherine McCormick, a rich widow, who funded research into hormonal contraceptives (the pill), and persuaded controversial fertility and biologist Dr. Gregory Pincus to join the project.

McCormick initially provided $40,000 in research funding, which later grew to more than $1 million.

After ten years in the making, the contraceptive pill was ready, but there was a problem with its testing and approval by the Food and Drug Administration, which required clinical trials before approval could be granted.

Distributing and researching contraceptives was still considered a crime in the US under the Comstock laws in the mid-1950s, so the team went to Puerto Rico and Haiti to run the tests there.

The tests were conducted on slum women and inmates of asylums and shelters, many of whom may not have been aware of the nature of the pills they were being given.

“Of course, there were abuses,” says Elaine Tyler. “There’s no doubt about that.”

In 1965, in the United States, married women were allowed to use the pill, and then it was allowed for all women in 1972.

Many countries have joined the United States in allowing birth control pills. Sanger had the satisfaction of seeing her efforts to provide birth control pills bear fruit before her death in 1966.

Margaret Sanger has been linked to decades of allegations of racism in the field of eugenics and her work with African Americans.

Her project, called the “Negro Project”, aimed at disseminating contraceptive advice among poor black communities in the southern United States, later became a source of controversy raised by black activists, and later criticized by anti-abortion activists.

At the same time, Sanger is behind the foundations for abortion, sexual health and family planning services in the United States.

The pill has become the most popular form of birth control in the world, and today it is used by more than 150 million women worldwide.

Interviews collected from BBC World Service’s The Forum.