My closing tribute to women for this month…..afterwards I return to the world of Covid-19…..
Margaret Sanger…….Another woman that does not get much play in our study of history unless you are inn a women’s studies class…..she was an important rights activist for women’s birth control rights…..
The consequences of sexual relations between women and men simply were not fair.
An old double standard dictated that men were rewarded for sexual prowess and women suffered a damaged reputation. Males were encouraged to “sow a few wild oats” while women were told “good girls don’t.”
Most of all, if a relationship resulted in pregnancy, it was the woman who was left with the responsibility. For decades, pioneers like Margaret Sanger fought for contraceptives that women would control. With the introduction of the birth control pill to the market in 1960, women could for the first time deter pregnancy by their own choice.
The fight for reproductive freedoms was intense. Organized religions such as the Roman Catholic Church stood firm on their principles that artificial contraceptives were sinful. Many states in the early 1960s prohibited the sale of contraceptives — even to married couples.
https://www.ushistory.org/us/57b.asp
More on Sanger’s life……
In the early 20th century, at a time when matters surrounding family planning or women’s healthcare were not spoken in public, Margaret Sanger founded the birth control movement and became an outspoken and life-long advocate for women’s reproductive rights. In her later life, Sanger spearheaded the effort that resulted in the modern birth control pill by 1960.
Born September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York, the sixth of eleven children born to Michael Hennessey Higgins, a stonemason, and Anna Purcell Higgins, a devoutly Roman Catholic Irishwoman. Sanger’s life course was shaped by the poverty of her childhood and the death of her mother at age 50, which Sanger understood resulted from the physical toll of eleven pregnancies. Sanger later became a nurse, attending Claverack College and Hudson River Institute in 1896 and completing the nursing program at White Plains Hospital in 1902. That year she married William Sanger, an architect, and moved to Hastings, New York, where the couple had three children
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Sanger strongly believed that the ability to control family size was crucial to ending the cycle of women’s poverty. But it was illegal to distribute birth control information. Working as a visiting nurse, she frequented the homes of poor immigrants, often with large families and wives whose health was impaired by too many pregnancies, miscarriages, or in desperation botched abortions. Often, too, immigrant wives would ask her to tell them “the secret,” presuming that educated white women like Sanger knew how to limit family size. Sanger made it her mission to 1) provide women with birth control information and 2) repeal the federal Comstock Law, which prohibited the distribution of obscene materials through the mails, and regarded birth control information as such.
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/margaret-sanger
Another woman that has been pushed aside in favor of BS history that features men over women……Margaret Sanger deserves better than to be forgotten by the masses when she did so much in their name.
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Class Dismissed!
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”