Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America
Ellen Chesler's 1992 biography of Margaret Sanger is acclaimed as definitive and is widely used and cited by scholars and activists alike in the fields of women's health and reproductive rights.\ Chesler's substantive new Afterword considers how Sanger's life and work hold up in light of subsequent developments, such as U.S. Supreme Court cases challenging the constitutional doctrine of privacy and international definitions of reproductive health as an essential human right.\ \ \...
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Ellen Chesler's 1992 biography of Margaret Sanger is acclaimed as definitive and is widely used and cited by scholars and activists alike in the fields of women's health and reproductive rights.Chesler's substantive new Afterword considers how Sanger's life and work hold up in light of subsequent developments, such as U.S. Supreme Court cases challenging the constitutional doctrine of privacy and international definitions of reproductive health as an essential human right. Publishers Weekly Former Columbia University Faculty Fellow Chesler succeeds admirably in bringing the extraordinary career and controversial personality of Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) to life in this skillfully researched and objective biography. Sanger, a political radical, devoted herself to ensuring women's access to contraception after observing the plight of the poor as a public health nurse. An astute organizer, she fought against the opposition of a conservative political and religious male establishment, building a national and international birth control movement. Chesler explores the negative as well as the positive aspects of Sanger's character, noting that she was known to manipulate people and sometimes modified her views to achieve her ends. A strong believer in her own right to a fulfilled sex life, Sanger married twice and took many lovers, including Havelock Ellis and H. G. Wells. This is an outstanding biography of a feminist reformer whose achievements changed the lives of women forever. Photos not seen by PW. (June)
Introduction 11The Woman Rebel 19Ghosts 21Love and Work 44Seeds of Rebellion 56The Personal Is Political 74Bohemia and Beyond 89A European Education 105The Frenzy of Renown 128The Company She Kept 150The Lady Reformer 177New Woman, New World 179The Conditions of Reform 200Organizing for Birth Control 223Happiness in Marriage 243Doctors and Birth Control 269A Community of Women 287Grande Dame, Grandmere 311Lobbying for Birth Control 313Same Old Deal 336Foreign Diplomacy 355From Birth Control to Family Planning 371Intermezzo 396Last Act 414Woman of the Century 443Afterword 469Notes 493Selected Bibliography 617Acknowledgments 637Index 641
\ Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly\ Former Columbia University Faculty Fellow Chesler succeeds admirably in bringing the extraordinary career and controversial personality of Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) to life in this skillfully researched and objective biography. Sanger, a political radical, devoted herself to ensuring women's access to contraception after observing the plight of the poor as a public health nurse. An astute organizer, she fought against the opposition of a conservative political and religious male establishment, building a national and international birth control movement. Chesler explores the negative as well as the positive aspects of Sanger's character, noting that she was known to manipulate people and sometimes modified her views to achieve her ends. A strong believer in her own right to a fulfilled sex life, Sanger married twice and took many lovers, including Havelock Ellis and H. G. Wells. This is an outstanding biography of a feminist reformer whose achievements changed the lives of women forever. Photos not seen by PW. (June)\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalThe contemporary social debate over women's reproductive rights provides a timely backdrop for this major new biography of Margaret Sanger and her struggle for birth control. Sanger spent 50 years organizing a movement and advocating for birth control rights that are taken for granted in today's Western world. Chesler believes that Sanger's impact on women's lives has not been adequately appreciated or documented. This biography succeeds admirably in filling the gap with a new look at Sanger's private and public life. Interwoven in this account are discussions of the sweeping social and political developments of the 20th century. Chesler presents a Margaret who rejected the conventional restrictive female role and, while living a hidden and unconventional private life, worked publicly to push society into accepting new rights for women. This work is carefully documented and, while not as breezy a read as some biographies, is a major contribution to women's history. Recommended for academic and public libraries.-- Judy Solberg, Univ. of Maryland Libs., College Park\ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsA splendid biography of the woman who fought for more than half a century to bring birth control to America. Planned Parenthood clinics are once again in the thick of political turmoil over a woman's right to choose abortion. It would probably all seem dishearteningly familiar to Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Higgins Sanger, who devoted her life to securing for women the legal right to prevent pregnancy by choosing contraception. In this lively volume, scholar Chesler (formerly of Barnard and CUNY) gives us a portrait of a complex personality who took on a strait-laced society in which the public mention of sex, even in marriage, was against the law. Sanger, born in 1879, battled not only to save the lives of the millions of women who died from illegal abortions and streams of uncontrolled pregnancies, but to give women the freedom to enjoy their own sexuality. She certainly enjoyed hers. No thin-lipped crusader, Sanger was attractive, witty, and bright, with two husbands and a parade of lovers that included Havelock Ellis and H.G. Wells. Her politics and rhetoric were honed in turn-of-the-century leftist movements—Emma Goldman, John Reed, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn were early allies—but she quickly narrowed her focus, urging that when women gained control of their bodies and hence their lives, social and economic change would follow. She made mistakes and she made enemies, the Roman Catholic Church not the least of them, but her tenacity saw the obscenity laws fall, the Pill introduced, and family planning become an international movement. A riveting warts-and-all portrait of a courageous and determined woman who, in a time of foment, wrought fundamental changes inthe human social condition. (Photos—not seen.)\ \
