Margaret Sanders influences - Essay Example

At that time it was the early deaths of many women forced to bear far too many children that prompted Sanger’s actions. We know today that bearing many children takes a huge toll on the mothers, and we also recognize the importance of population control. However, in the early part of the twentieth century the attitude was very different. Many churches taught that it was the Christian duty to have as many children as possible to honor God and love Jesus. Though Sanger never said it in so many words, she certainly believed, as shown by her actions, that Jesus does not love hunger forced upon children by men who think they know God’s mind.

In her debate with Russell she even mentions that poor children are destined to a life of hard labor and an early death. She blames rising insanity on the reproduction of women in the sex trade with venereal disease. The Roman Catholic church still forbids artificial birth control as do some protestant churches, citing several quotes from the Bible that could be interpreted as forbidding it. At the same time, the rights of women in marriage were nonexistent. A woman had to submit to her husband whenever he wanted sex or he could simply stop feeding her, as Sanger also pointed out in that debate.

Frankly, Sanger was desperate to free women from this kind of slavery and she believed that she was also saving the children and even their fathers from losing the mother. Her own mother died young after having six children. "She associated it with dim fears of her father, sorrow and drudgery after the death of her mother, bitterness over the ostracism which a Catholic town dealt the village agnostics daughter, and jealousy toward the gracious ladies who lived on the hilltops.1 Sanger’s activism was actually begun when she started associating with the activists who populated.

Her husband’s successful career allowed them access to Mabel Dodge’s Salon where Sanger met such luminaries as Big Bill Haywood,