I would have loved the opportunity to sit down for a day and talk to Margaret Sanger. To sit and listen to her, as she recounted her struggles, her beliefs, her work. Despite the controversy that surrounded her on some issues, I would have loved to have found out what made her tick. I would have loved to have the opportunity to have met her. More importantly, I would love to have those who wish to push back or compromise on reproductive rights to have met her.
For those who are not aware of just who Margaret Sanger is...
1* Margaret Sanger was educated as and worked as a nurse. In her work with poor women on the Lower East Side of New York, she was aware of the effects of unplanned and unwelcome pregnancies. Her mother's health had suffered as she bore eleven children. She came to believe in the importance to women's lives and women's health of the availability of birth control, a term which she's credited with inventing.
If we could ask our great-grandmothers, what it was like to be a young woman in the early 1900s, what do you think they would say? Would they have told us how they lived a life of substance or how they struggled to raise a family? For Margaret Sanger, she saw the results of a society that had forbidden it's women to take control of their own bodies and their own reproductive rights. Women were dying, their bodies not being able to withstand the stress of pregnancy, after pregnancy, after pregnancy. Women were dying due to botched and illegal back alley abortions.
There was no public healthcare system at the time for the poorest of the poor. They were at the mercy of local women who called themselves midwives. Most weren't experienced or qualified to handle the simplest of complications and often, mother, or both mother and baby had died during child birth.
In 1912, Margaret Sanger began actively working to ensure that women had the resources available for birth control. She founded the American Birth Control League, which later became Planned Parenthood Federation of America. It took 53 years, when in 1965, Griswald vs Connecticut, made birth control legal to married couples in all states. She didn't live long enough to see birth control available to all women.
When Snyder Drugs stopped providing birth control to women, they showed they were not truly concerned for the health of women, despite their signs stating that they did. When our elected leaders introduce legislation or compromise on reproductive rights, they're indirectly placing women's health and lives at risk. If they don't believe it, they just need to go back and look at history.
- About.com: Women In History, Margaret Sanger