Serial: Progressives - Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger, the so-called mother of birth control and founder of what has become modern day Planned Parenthood, believed in a policy of improvement to “create a race of thoroughbreds.” In 1922, Sanger wrote: Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly. People who cannot support their own offspring are encouraged by church and state to produce large families. Many of the children thus begotten are diseased and feebleminded. Many become criminals. Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to the maintenance of those who should have never been born.   In 1926, Sanger presented her views to a women’s chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, which led to more speaking engagements to similar groups. How did an American woman arrive at this kind of thinking? As with many progressive leaders, a traumatic childhood event helped shape her radical beliefs about preventing birth among certain “undesirables.”