Republished with permission from  the meme pool:

Until a few months ago the name Margaret Sanger wouldn’t have meant a thing to me. Maybe that made me some sort of philistine who cares little too nothing about gender issues, but I can’t really help that now. My education started when I decided last month to make a concerted effort to profile more women in my monthly humanist version of Butler’s Lives of the Saints. I try not to focus too much on biographical facts on these posts, because I’d rather try and weave them into an essay about how an individual’s biography impacts on me personal. That way, if you find yourself interested, you can go ahead, follow some of the links, and learn a little more on your own.

Margaret Sanger pretty much defined the debate on reproductive rights for women. She became interested in sex education after working as a visiting nurse and started writing her own newspaper column entitled "What Every Girl Should Know." Having seen first hand the impact of unwanted pregnancy on young, working class women, she became convinced that educating women on birth control could significantly increase a woman’s independence and financial freedom. She also argued that birth control gave women the liberty to enjoy their sexuality since they no longer had to fear the consequences of unplanned pregnancies. Her controversial views and confrontational style quickly earned her a reputation as a troublemaker, and she had numerous run ins with the law for so called violations of obscenity laws as well as laws prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives. Among her many accomplishments throughout her career, we can count the founding of the Birth Control Federation of America in 1939– currently known as the Planned Parenthood Foundation of America.