Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.Sanger, Margaret
History
Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control -- United States -- Biography; Sanger, Margaret, 1879-1966
Having settled the principles, I left the details to work themselves
out. I realized that a price must be paid for honest thinking—a price
for everything. Though I did not know exactly how I was to prepare
myself, what turn events might take, or what I might be called upon to
do, the future in its larger aspects has actually developed as I saw it
that night.
The same thoughts kept repeating themselves over and over during the
remainder of the otherwise uneventful voyage. As soon as possible after
reaching New York, I rented an inexpensive little flat on Post Avenue
near Dyckman Street, so far out on the upper end of Manhattan that even
the Broadway subway trains managed to burrow their way into sunlight and
fresh air. My dining room was my office, the table my desk.
A new movement was starting, and the baby had to have a name. It did not
belong to Socialism nor was it in the labor field, and it had much more
to it than just the prevention of conception. As a few companions were
sitting with me one evening we debated in turn voluntary parenthood,
voluntary motherhood, the new motherhood, constructive generation, and
new generation. The terms already in use—Neo-Malthusianism, Family
Limitation, and Conscious Generation seemed stuffy and lacked popular
appeal.
The word control was good, but I did not like limitation—that was too
limiting. I was not advocating a one-child or two-child system as in
France, nor did I wholeheartedly agree with the English Neo-Malthusians
whose concern was almost entirely with limitation for economic reasons.
My idea of control was bigger and freer. I wanted family in it, yet
family control did not sound right. We tried population control, race
control, and birth rate control. Then someone suggested, “Drop the
rate.” Birth control was the answer; we knew we had it. Our work for
that day was done and everybody picked up his hat and went home. The
baby was named.
When I first announced that I was going to publish a magazine, “Where
are you going to get the money?” was volleyed at me from all sides. I
did not know, but I was certain of its coming somehow. Equally important
was moral support. Those same young friends and I founded a little
society, grandly titled the National Birth Control League, sought aid
from enthusiasts for other causes, turning first to the Feminists
because they seemed our natural allies. Armed with leaflets we went to
Cooper Union to tell them that in the _Woman Rebel_ they would have an
opportunity to express their sentiments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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