Margaret Sanger (1879–1966), born in Corning, New York on September 14, was an internationally renowned leader in the movement to secure reproductive rights for women. Founder of the first birth-control clinic in the United States and later, of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Sanger was a controversial figure with militant feminist and socialist views, working for change in areas of strong traditional values and cultural resistance.

Sanger was the sixth of eleven children born to a devout Catholic Irish-American family. To escape what she saw as a grim class heritage, she worked her way through school and chose a career in nursing. Although she married and had three children, Sanger maintained an intellectual and professional independence. She immersed herself in the radical bohemian culture of intellectuals and artists that flourished in New York City's Greenwich Village. She also joined the Women's...