“Margaret Sanger went to jail in 1917 for distributing
contraceptives to immigrant women.” She worked from “a makeshift clinic, in a
tenement storefront in of Brooklyn, New York. When she died fifty years later,
the cause for which she defiantly broke the law had achieved international
stature” (Chesler, p. 11). Of course she did not accomplish the acceptance of
birth control on her own. There were many who preceded Sanger in the effort to
secure legal, reliable contraception. There were many who worked on the issue
as volunteers under her, or as rivals for pre-eminence in the movement. And
there were scientists and activists who followed her and expanded upon her
gains. A few of Sanger’s accomplishments include several successful court
rulings mitigating the Comstock Laws, thence allowing the dissemination of
(formerly illegal) birth control information; creation of our country’s first
network of birth control clinics; and introduction of the diaphragm into the
United States. Twenty-first Century proponents and opponents of birth control
agree on very little. But there is one thing historically-minded activists of
these opposing movements do agree upon: Margaret Sanger is the reason why birth
control is so widely accepted in the United States today.
This biography was a twenty-year-long odyssey for
Ellen Chesler. The years of care have paid-off. It is a masterful, detailed and
balanced study, on one of the most effective activists for social change to
appear in the US. One of the strongest features of this biography is one that
has the capability of being a weakness. In her introduction, Chesler cautions
“this study necessarily incorporates some of the history of these sweeping
developments. It veers away at points in the narrative from the woman herself”
(Chesler, p. 12). True, but the veering reveals the culture, the historical
evolution and the placement of Sanger in the context of her time’s political
developments. It is not only necessary, but informative.
Ellen Chesler undeniably supports birth control and
sees Sanger as a hero. After all, the work is entitled Woman of Valor, not Kicker of Dogs. In spite of her
personal admiration, Chesler is capable of fairly portraying the difficult
personality traits and unjust political perspectives of her subject. Sanger was
a thorny, vain, competitive woman. Those who appreciated her company were
thick-skinned people capable of admiring a driven, intelligent, challenging
friend. Additionally, the author freely depicts Sanger as a terrible parent who
abandons her sons, leaving them with “an unappeased hunger for the love and
approval of a mother…who lavished her exuberance on other people and causes but
never found enough time for them” (Chesler, pp. 137-8).
Margaret Sanger’s racism is
a well-known fact and one that Chelser unflinchingly portrays. She supported
the philosophy of eugenics. In the early 1800s, eugenics began with the lofty
and flawed goal of creating a better society by encouraging the best human
stock to breed. Further complicating their misapprehension of humanity and
genetics, eugenicists composed the economic and social elite of the US and
Europe who either quietly felt or explicitly stated that theirs was the
class/culture which should be breeding. Conversely, those of other classes and
cultures should be breeding less. Sanger’s advocacy of birth control caused
members of the Eugenics Movement to approach her with their idea that birth
control could be used to prevent growth of undesirable classes. Sanger was of
an immigrant Irish Catholic background. Furthermore, she had married a Jew and
produced what eugenicists would think of as "mongrel children" from
that marriage. She was from two groups whose reproduction the eugenicists would
want to limit. Nevertheless, Sanger was nothing if not an opportunist. She was
offered vocal support from an elite during a time when she had little else, and
she took it. In the words of her biographer: “eugenics…became an unmitigated
defense of property, privilege and race baiting” (Chesler, p.215).
Other expressions of this
activist’s personal racism are a mass of confusing mixed messages, but
undeniable. Clearly she was prejudiced enough to take support from the Eugenics
Movement. Conversely, she employed African American doctors in her Harlem
clinic when such a practice was unthinkable for a white organization. Also, she
would not permit expressions of racial bigotry among her staff. Finally, she opposed
“racial stereotyping” by eugenicists, “claiming that intelligence and other
inherited traits vary by individual, not by group” (Chesler, p.215). However, Sanger later contradicts this claim. The reviewer has read Ms Sanger’s “What Every
Girl Should Know. Part II: Sexual Impulses.” In this article, which appeared in
the December 29, 1912 issue of “New York Call,” she states “the aboriginal
Australian, the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher
than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that the
police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the
streets.”** Shocking as that sounds, these were not uncommon perceptions among
white people. While there may have been some free-thinking white
individuals who thought that non-whites were entirely our equals in brain
development and were of the same species as whites, the norm of US society was
far less enlightened in 1912. Less than fifty years earlier, African Americans
were slaves and even the most progressive of abolitionists believed that they
were mentally inferior to whites. Racism was so endemic to early 20th Century
America that it existed on both sides of the contraception issue. Some favoring
contraception blatantly supported using it to limit African American
reproduction. Some opposing contraception argued just as fervently that
limiting the size of white families was “race suicide” and would allow African
Americans to dominate politically in areas of the country. Less well-known,
and more disturbing, is a 1926 address Sanger gave to women’s auxiliary
of the Ku Klux Klan (http://www.snopes.com/margaret-sanger-kkk/).
At this point, Ms Sanger’s ignorance concerning race and the Klan approaches
the surreal. The KKK is an immensely anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic
organization. How this Catholic-born activist with her half-Jewish children
came together with a group that hates both of those aspects of her is a
mystery. But more importantly, the KKK was well-known as a hate group that most
thinking people avoided. It is clear that Sanger furthered racism in her time.
Despite the plethora of mixed messages, her public actions (support for
eugenics, addressing the KKK and her published writings) all caused harm to the
cause of African American equality.
Ellen Chesler’s portrayal of Sanger’s life is an
achievement of rare quality: factual, balanced, highly readable and unafraid of
controversy. Some may think that Ms Chesler is the true “woman of valor.” She
never shrinks from the truth and fully, patiently examines the circumstances of
the time. It is a biography that will leave the reader with a strong background
on the history of the Birth Control Movement, the life of Margaret Sanger, and
the zeitgeist of US society during her time period.
Chesler, Ellen. Woman of Valor. Margaret Sanger and
the Birth Control Movement in America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
**Sanger, Margaret. "What Every Girl Should
Know," New York Call,
December 29, 1912. The Public Papers of Margaret Sanger: Web Edition. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2015.
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