Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy

Margaret Sanger, the American birth-control and population-control advocate who founded Planned Parenthood, stands like a giant among her contemporaries. With her dominating yet winning personality, she helped generate shifts of opinion on issues that were not even publicly discussed prior to her activism, while her leadership was arguably the single most important factor in achieving social and legislative victories that set the parameters for today’s political discussion of family-planning funding, population-control aid, and even sex education. This work addresses Sanger’s ideas concerning birth control, eugenics, population control, and sterilization against the backdrop of the larger eugenic context.

Angela Franks lives in Allston, Massachusetts.

Angela Franks

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 359
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2005
pISBN: 978-0-7864-2011-7
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5404-4
Imprint: McFarland

Preface and Acknowledgments      1
Introduction: Taking Sanger Seriously      5

1. Woman and the New Race      21
2. Eugenics as the Control of Births      65
3. Eugenicists, Coworkers, Friends      98
4. Quality, Not Quantity: Population Control and Eugenics      127
5. Money Means Power: The Rich Have Their Say      150
6. “Sterilize All the Unfit!”      179
7. Selling Out the Sisterhood      203
8. Beyond Control: Toward a New Feminism      237

Apppendix 1: List of Abbreviations      253
Appendix 2: Chronology      256
Chapter Notes      259
Works Consulted      307
Index      337

• “a critical piece of scholarship…thorough…an admirable job…highly recommended”—Choice
• “eye-opening and thoroughly documented…extensive”—Touchstone