1879-1966

American Nurse and Birth Control Advocate

Margaret Sanger was an early champion in the struggle for women to gain control of their own reproductive systems. She opened the first birth control clinic in America, braved frequent arrest and censorship by civil authorities and lifelong persecution by the Roman Catholic Church, and founded the two organizations that later merged into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

She was born into an Irish Catholic family in Corning, New York, the sixth of eleven children. Her father, Michael Hennessy Higgins, was an immigrant stonecutter and a decorated veteran of the American Civil War. Her mother, Anne Purcell Higgins, was a sickly, passive, obedient woman, completely devoted to the idea that the husband was the natural lord and master of the house. Margaret never accepted that idea.

The family fortunes declined after 1894 when Michael, a...