Margaret Sanger and Her Contribution to Development of American Culture and Society - Essay Example

She was the one who opened America’s first birth control clinic in1916. She was a nurse by profession even though her major contributions were in sex education and birth control. In 1912, she began writing a column on sex education for the New York call entitled "What every Girl Should Know". In March 1914, Sanger published the first issue of The Woman Rebel, a radical feminist monthly including the right to practice birth control. This paper briefly analyses how Margaret Sanger succeeded in impacting American society in the twentieth century.
Margaret Sanger was aware of the effects of unplanned and unwelcome pregnancies from her personal and professional experiences.  “Her mother's health had suffered as she bore eleven children” (Lewis). She has attended many cases of unwanted pregnancies while she was working in hospitals as a nurse. Moreover, she has realized that how severely these excessive pregnancies and unwanted pregnancies affect the women both physically and mentally. A substantial number of American women lost their health and life as a result of unsafe sexual habits and unawareness about safe sex.
Sanger left her nursing career because of the death of one of her patients due to a self-induced abortion in 1913 (Galvin). This incident forced Sanger to think deeply about the sex-related problems faced by American women. She realized that American women are approaching sex with a lot of concerns about unwanted pregnancies and they fail to enjoy sex properly. In other words, sex was not as enjoyable to the American woman as it is today. Sanger succeeded in making the sexual activities more enjoyable for the women. She claimed that birth control would fulfill a critical psychological need by enabling women to fully enjoy sexual relations, free from the fear of pregnancy.
As soon as she left America, she published a pamphlet, called Family Limitation, and distributed around 100,000 copies in Europe. Sanger remained exiled in Europe until late 1915 and thereafter she returned to America resumed her sex education works. In 1915, she embarked on a nationwide tour to promote birth control. During this tour, she promoted the methods of safe sex and caught the attention of many American women.
In Sanger’s opinion, the aim of birth control should be based on the slogan; more children from the fit, less from the unfit (Schu). She tried to spread the above slogan because of her perceptions that more children from unfit may result in less living standards not only to the children but also to the parents. She educated the public that a person’s life is important for him/her only and sacrificing that life for some others is a meaningless act. Thus she succeeded in removing some of the established traditions and philosophy of life from American social life.
Sanger succeeded in rewriting some of the established norms in American society concerning morality, ethics, and religion. She educated the public that sex can be effective only when is enjoyable both to the male and the female. Before, Sanger’s era, males were the dominant figure in sexual activities as they have nothing to lose. But Sanger’s effort changed the women's perception of sexual activities. The over influence of religion was a big obstacle for the women in enjoying sexual activities. Sanger argued that religion has nothing to do with sexual activities since it is a biological and psychological requirement. Sanger’s arguments influenced American society very much and the misconceptions about sexual activities started to diminish especially among the women community.
To conclude, Margaret Sanger was one of the greatest personalities of the twentieth century who impacted public life in America immensely. She succeeded in making sex activities more enjoyable for American women. Her efforts made the women capable of enjoying sex without any fear or concerns about pregnancy. She was succeeded in developing the first birth control pill and also in influencing the law-making of the Supreme Court concerning birth control, in favor of women.