Overview

Margaret Higgins Sanger (1879-1966) was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse who founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. While Sanger pioneering advocacy for contraception empowered millions of women and challenged the repressive Comstock laws, her movement was deeply entangled with the eugenics ideology of the early 20th century. Sanger spoke at Ku Klux Klan rallies, endorsed eugenic sterilization of those she called "the unfit," and wrote in 1932 that her plan for peace included sterilizing or segregating people she deemed "dysgenic." She served on the board of the American Eugenics Society. Most critically, Sanger funded Gregory Pincus development of the oral contraceptive pill and facilitated the Puerto Rico clinical trials (1955-1960) in which over 1,500 women in impoverished housing projects were given high-dose experimental hormone pills without informed consent, with three women dying during the trials and no autopsies performed. Sanger specifically chose Puerto Rico because its colonial status and poverty allowed experimentation that mainland laws prevented. Her legacy remains deeply contested: she expanded reproductive freedom while simultaneously endorsing policies that targeted poor, disabled, and minority communities for elimination.

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Related Investigations (1)

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Sources & Documentation

2 documented sources from official records, investigations, and reports