Lynn Taylor Rick: Sanger fought for safe birth control

By Lynn Taylor Rick, Journal Staff Writer | Sunday, September 19, 2004

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Tuesday was Margaret Higgens Sanger's birthday.

Until this week, most of what I knew about Sanger came from the anti-abortion movement in America, which vilifies her as the founder of Planned Parenthood.

But that's not the complete story of who Sanger really was.

Sanger is the reason that women like me can choose to wait two years after marrying before starting a family. She is the reason that women like me can choose to have only three children. To put it simply, she is the reason that American women like me have access to safe, effective birth control.

Sanger was born in 1879, the sixth of 11 children. She believed that her own mother's premature death was at least partially the result of too many pregnancies.

She worked as a nurse in public health in New York City during the early 1900s, seeing firsthand what happened to poor women who had no control over their fertility.

She saw families with far more children than they could care for, women with worn out bodies and worse yet, women dying from botched abortions because they had no access to birth control.

Her work there convinced her that providing safe birth control to men and women was crucial for any social progress to take place.

She quit nursing in 1912 and began to almost "single-handedly" spread the word about birth control, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

This was no small task considering that at that time, doing so was against the law.

Sanger was arrested for her work, spent time in jail and faced overwhelming odds.

I'm certainly not arguing that Sanger was a perfect human being. None of us is. But Sanger's goal to provide birth control to women in need was a compassionate and sincere desire.

In an article she wrote about providing women with birth control, published in the Woman Citizen in 1924, Sanger wrote, "We want mothers to be fit. We want them to conceive in joy and gladness. We want them to carry their babies during the nine months in a sound and healthy body and a happy, joyous, hopeful mind."

Thanks to her persistence and bravery, the tide of public opinion eventually shifted to believe that Americans deserved the right to safe birth control.

For most people, this little tale of victory seems like a done deal. But what so many of us don't know is that within our society resides a movement that would love to send us back in time, and, unfortunately, it carries a lot of political clout.

Sounds radical, I know. But sometimes, the radical-sounding stuff is the stuff we need to sit up and take notice of.

I did just that when the Journal ran a simple quote by South Dakota Eagle Forum's lobbyist Kitty Werthmann last February. Talking specifically about the proposed House bill outlawing abortion, she said that the bill didn't go far enough because it didn't affect birth control. "Pro-lifers," she said, do not favor the use of birth control.

"We do not consider that pro-life language." I highlighted this quote in green and kept it as a reminder. Taking away a woman's right to use birth control appeared to be a goal of that organization, and I didn't ever want to forget it.

Werthmann said this week that criminalizing birth control has "never come up" within the Eagle Forum but emphasized that the organization does not approve of birth control of any type. "It's not pro-life, and we are pro-life."

Rob Regier of the South Dakota Family Policy Council said his organization "disagrees with the Eagle Forum" on this topic. But Regier isn't condemning the Eagle Forum's view on this topic, either. "I certainly empathize with the Eagle Forum's position," he said.

Regier said he would support regulation and control over the access to birth control. He adds that he doesn't see birth control as an entirely positive thing for society. "I think birth control has created a promiscuous society. It has probably done more damage than it has done good."

Access to birth control has perhaps played a role in our society's openness about sex, but to suggest that it has done more harm than good is frightening.

Birth control has allowed women to delay motherhood until a time they can best do the job. Birth control has allowed women to give their bodies the needed recovery time between pregnancies. Birth control has given women the ability to choose their family sizes - whether that's 10 kids or two.

The mere fact that certain political groups see a world without birth control as positive change should give us all pause.

Sanger died in 1966, the year I was born. Until her death at age 86, she continued to fight to provide safe birth control to women.

She did something important, something crucial. And it's important that we don't let political organizations lump her accomplishments into the heated debates about abortion.

It's even more important that we don't let our right to safe birth control be chipped away, little by little, until it's gone.

Lynn Taylor Rick can be reached at lynn.taylorrick@rapidcityjournal.com.