Was Margaret Sanger, (Founder of Planned Paretnhood) A Great American?

Answer 1

No, just an amoral nurse who sold out millions of babies for nothing but an ego trip.

Answer 2

"Margaret Higgins Sanger (September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist, an advocate of certain aspects of eugenics, and the founder of the American Birth Control League (which eventually became Planned Parenthood). Initially met with fierce opposition to her ideas, Sanger gradually won some support, both in the public as well as the courts, for a woman's choice to decide how and when she will bear children. Though her support of eugenics was less well received, Margaret Sanger was instrumental in opening the way to universal access to birth control.

Sanger remains a controversial figure. While she is widely credited as a leader of the modern birth control movement, and remains an iconic figure for the American reproductive rights movements, she also is reviled by some who condemn her as "an abortion advocate" (perhaps unfairly so: abortion was illegal during Sanger's lifetime and Planned Parenthood did not then support the procedure or lobby for its legalisation).

Sanger's 1938 autobiography notes her 1916 opposition to abortion as the taking of life: "To each group we explained what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun.

Sanger was a proponent of eugenics, a social philosophy claiming that human hereditary traits can be improved through social intervention. Methods of social intervention (targeted at those seen as "genetically unfit") advocated by eugenists have included selective breeding, sterilization, and euthanasia. In 1932, for example, Sanger argued for:

'A stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.'"

Though I do not agree with eugenics, Sanger did a lot for reproductive rights, and every woman that can now decide when to have a child has her to thank for this.

Answer 3

Margaret Sanger is one of the greatest Americans who ever lived, male or female. She has helped liberate women more than just about anybody I can think of.

Answer 4

I do not know if she was a great American but I do believe she would be considered a great influence throughout the 20th century and enable women tosee a different side to themselves that was necessary over the preconceived Victorian notions of the time in which she lived .

Answer 5

Wow, what a leading question. Why don't you just post an anti-abortion blog. Planned Parenthood does a lot for womens' health if anyone cares about that. The availability of abortions saved millions of women's lives...but we don't want to discuss that do we?