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    Appendix B

    Appendix B

    List of Margaret Sanger Quotes and Inspiration

    By Punkerslut, Made with Graphics by David Drexler
    Image: By Punkerslut, Made with Graphics by David Drexler, CC BY-SA 2.0

    List of Margaret Sanger Quotes and Inspiration


    "...militancy succeeds in arousing 'married' women to a realisation of their subservience and implants in them and their children the ideal of a new erotic ethic, to that extent will militancy in England have shown itself to be a revolution. That the militants in England are doing this, consciously or unconsciously, is unquestionable, and the most daring of them have been impelled to action by outraged feelings which have awakened their womanhood and inspired them with an extraordinary and amazing courage."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Militants in England"


    "Woman's acceptance of her inferior status was the more real because it was unconscious. She had chained herself to her place in society and the family through the maternal functions of her nature, and only chains thus strong could have bound her to her lot as a brood animal for the masculine civilizations of the world. In accepting her role as the 'weaker and gentler half,' she accepted that function. In turn, the acceptance of that function fixed the more firmly her rank as an inferior."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1921
              "Woman's Error and Her Debt"


    "The Postmaster did not like the first number [edition] of the WOMAN REBEL. He even took the trouble to tell the WOMAN REBEL so. He advised her not to send any more copies through the United States mails. He said the WOMAN REBEL was unmailable under Section 211 of the Criminal Code, as amended by the act of March 4, 1911. Of course the Postmaster was acting within his rights. He is empowered by the federal government to stop the circulation of any printed expression of honest convictions."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Humble Pie"


    "The inconsistency of the Government of New York show themselves more and more, as it proceeds to interfere with the private relations of the individuals. The latest laughable act in the action of the Court of Appeals of New York State which upheld the Board of Education in New York City in dismissing Mrs. Bridget C. Peixotto because she remained away from her duties as a teacher to become a mother. It was no objection to her as a married woman, but does object to her as a mother. Yet this same government holds it a crime to tell the woman how to prevent conception and thereby avoid motherhood."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Consistency"


    "The working women evidently are not aware that POLITICAL FREEDOM does not mean INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM and it is the object and desire of Socialist women to show the working woman that Socialism stands not only for her political freedom, but for her industrial freedom and her intellectual freedom."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1911
              "Dirt, Smell, and Sweat"


    "...stripped of all pretense and hypocrisy, capitalism shows its fangs of despotism and murder by appearing upon the scene to protect its tottering structure with glistening bayonets and rapid-fire guns to mow down the workers, if necessary, in order to cling to its stolen property."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1912
              "The Fangs of the Monster at Lawrence"


    "If society cannot do without masters and wage slaves, so much the worse for society. For we are prepared to sacrifice our machines, our wheels and tunnels and wires and systems and slave lives for one hour of happiness."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "No Masters"


    "Why should these countless fathers and mothers, almost one million times greater in number, surrender to these few monster exploiters -- to this Capitalistic System which bases its existence on the fiendish exploitation, and ultimate murder of these children?"
              --Margaret Sanger, 1911
              "To Mothers -- Our Duty"


    "A woman's body belongs to herself alone. It is her body. It does not belong to the Church. It does not belong to the United States of America or to any other Government on the face of the earth. The first step toward getting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for any woman is her decision whether or not she shall become a mother."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1912
              "Suppression"


    "...woman is enslaved by the world machine, by sex conventions, by motherhood and its present necessary child-rearing, by wage-slavery, by middle-class morality, by customs, laws and superstitions."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1912
              "Why the Woman Rebel"


    "The object is to inject into the working woman a class independence which says to the masters 'produce your own slaves--keep your religion, your ethics and your morality for yourselves-- I'll have none of it and we refuse to be longer enslaved...'"
              --Margaret Sanger, 1915
              "Fabian Hall Speech"


    "It is seldom that character is associated with women; but always with men. A woman may be 'sweet,' 'dainty,' 'good-hearted,' 'a good wife,' 'a good mother,' and so forth, but seldom do they say that she is a woman of character."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Class and Character"


    "Then one day, while I was absent making preparations for the opening of the Avenue A rooms, a woman came ostensibly to seek advice. She was of Irish type, with detective stamped plainly all over her. She told her story of a large family, a brutal husband and several abortions and received advice from the nurse, like all those before her.

    "A few days later, the same woman came in charge of a detective squad and arrested Fania Mindell, Ethel Byrne and myself.

    "Then began months of activities quite beyond description. All the forces of opposition were on hand to malign individuals and to misrepresent the cause. The influence of the Roman Catholic Church was seen everywhere. It was especially seen in the Court's refusal to allow us a jury trial, and in refusing to allow physicians to present such medical testimony as was necessary in challenging the constitutionality of Section 1142 of the Penal Law of the New York State.

    "Comstock's successor was also present to represent the "Society for the Suppression of Vice," but everywhere, and at every turn, the strongest opposition came from subtle underground workings of that Church which apparently dominates American courts of justice and political life today.

    "We all spent one night in jail and were allowed out on bail. I returned to the clinic and opened the doors but was re-arrested on the charge of 'maintaining a public nuisance.'"

              --Margaret Sanger, 1918
              "Clinics, Courts, and Jails"


    "That apologetic tone of the new American feminists which plainly says 'Really, Madam Public Opinion, we are all quite harmless and perfectly respectable' was the keynote of the first and second mass meetings held at Cooper Union on the 17th and 20th of February last.

    "The ideas advanced were very old and time-worn even to the ordinary church-going woman who reads the magazines and comes in contact with current thought. The 'right to work,' the 'right to ignore fashions,' the 'right to keep her own name,' the 'right to organize,' the 'right of the mother to work'; all these so-called rights fail to arouse enthusiasm because to-day they are all recognized by society and there exist neither laws nor strong opposition to any of them.

    "It is evident they represent a middle class woman's movement; an echo, but a very weak echo, of the English constitutional suffragists. Consideration of the working woman's freedom was ignored. The problems which affect the working girl who slaves in the home or the nurse girl who spends her days and nights in the care of the babies of the feminists, were not dwelt upon. The freedom which the new feminists expound can only be obtained through a greater enslavement of the already enslaved workingwoman, and 'where slavery is there liberty cannot be.' Instead of launching a movement for woman's freedom the impression gained was that they aimed to combat the contentions of the conventional anti-suffragists.

    "To those who have been on the firing line for woman's freedom for the past several years, the new movement is sadly lacking in vitality, force, and conviction."

              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "New Feminists"


    "...we fixed ourselves for the regular 'wee hours of the morning' chat, which Socialists the world over take such keen delight in indulging in when ever they meet."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1912
              "An Evening with George De Forest Brush"


    "Our purpose should be clear; our actions clear cut; our convictions true and straight and our aim, to get the highest expression of ourselves. To act on our courage, not on that of others (either individually or in a group), and to refrain from acts which we cannot carry through to the end.

    "If headlines are to be our aim in propaganda we revolutionists are made of poor stuff, and such"

              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "What Makes Propaganda"


    "The only logical cure for all this is our assertion of a human ideal. If we do not strike the fetters off ourselves we shall be knocked about until we forget the fetters. To our society apologists, and to their plausible excuses for modern oppression, the only adequate answer is--we have done with your civilization and your gods. We will organize society in such a way as to make it certain for all to live in comfort and leisure without bartering their affections or their convictions. Let us turn a deaf ear to the trumpet-tongued liars clamoring for Protection, Patriotism, Prisons, Police, Workhouses and Large Families. Leave them to vomit their own filth and let us take the good things mother earth daily offers unheeded, to us her children."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "No Gods"


    "At the end of life you can say 'I have not been dominated by the Dominant Ideas of my Age; I have chosen mine own allegiance and served it. I have proved by a lifetime that there is that in woman which saves her from the absolute tyranny of Circumstance, which in the end conquers and remolds Circumstance, the immortal fire of Idealism which is the salvation of the Future.'"
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Choose!"


    "Naturally, this action on the part of a member of the medical profession aroused the animosity of many of its members against her; but Dr. Jacobs stood firm in her principles, and continued to spread the necessary information among the peasant women in Holland, in the face of professional criticism and gross misunderstandings."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1915
              "Dutch Methods of Birth Control"


    "A white goods manufacturer a few days ago told me that his object was to fill his shop with American girls. 'I don't care if I do have to pay a few cents more; it pays in the end. An American girl is the last one out on strike and the first one back. No talking back, no impudence and fooling--she's a hustler--easily satisfied. It's these devilish foreigners who start the trouble, and there is no reasoning with them--they act like a pack of wolves. Yes, indeed, I'll fill my shop with American hands and have peace!'

    "Then he related the incident of the famous White Goods Strike and spoke of his girls going out like a lot of crazy, unreasonable creatures, excepting the American girls, who came to him and apologized that they had to strike, for they were afraid of their lives if they did not.

    "This is serious comment, and food for thought. Will some American girls speak up and enlighten us?"

              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Is This True?"


    "When an abortion is properly done by one specialized to do so, the cost is usually tremendous. What a wholesale lot of misery, expense, unhappiness and worry will be avoided when woman shall possess the knowledge of prevention of conception!"
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Abortion in the United States"


    "...because the oil industry, the copper and other industries of Mexico are endangered, and because certain fusillades and cannonades did not take place in honor of 'the flag'--whatever that may be -- we and the Mexican people are now bidden to rush at each other like wild beasts and rip up each others' bellies.

    "And this startling order, issued in accordance with the supposed public opinion of the United States and of other civilized countries, is coolly repeated in every Liberal and advanced organ of the Press as well as by the leading prelates of the Catholic and other Christian Churches."

              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Blood and Oil"


    "Priests are everywhere. In long black robes and hats they parade the streets chanting their foolishness early in the morning. The church bells are constantly ringing and churches are numerous. And in the train of the church in Spain, as in every country in which it exists, are the police, the army, the beggars, the blind and crippled and maimed--upon whom it feeds, and ignorance and illiteracy upon which its power is based."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "Modern Schools in Spain"


    "Today we are engaged in a GREAT STRUGGLE FOR WOMAN'S LIBERTY, for the freedom of HER OWN BODY, for her RELEASE from the domination and control, of CHURCH AND STATE."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "Chicago Address to Women"


    "Then the promises of Great Britain to India, as well as the war debts to United States of America, I have not mentioned and I try to forget Great Britain's policy of non-intervention in Spain while she allowed Hitler and Mussolini to crush Republic Spain, the only country on earth today who has stood up with every man, woman and child to the brutal advance of Nazi and Fascist Europe."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1939
              "Hitler and War"


    "It is not really absurd to foresee the time in our glorious American life when most of the population will live in jails, either as commissioners or sub-commissioners of correction or as criminals."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Another Woman"


    "Workingwomen! Keep away from the Y. W. C. A. as you would from a pesthouse. It is based upon the slavery and torture of the workers of America, upon the bodies of toilers who have been killed in the mines and factories, and upon the bodies of those who have protested against being so murdered--shot down by Maxim guns and burned up with Standard Oil. These substantial buildings have been built by those Christians who riddled the bodies of women and children with bullets when they attempted to escape from a burning pit to a place of safety. It is they who are conferring favors upon you, in order to rob you of your freedom.

    "They want to inculcate in you the stupid spirit of submission to their mastery. They want to feed you upon the vapid innocuities of religion. They want to make you keep books with their God. They want to keep you in stupid ignorance of your own body, so that you, too, will some day be forced to breed children who can perform their horrible wholesale murders for them--who will shoot down all men and women and children who may dare question their mastery and their tyranny. They will force you to breed the cowards who murder those who are willing to die for freedom rather than to live in slavery.

    "But remember Ludlow! Remember the men and women and children who were sacrificed in order that John D. Rockefeller, Jr., might continue his noble career of charity and philanthropy as a supporter of the Christian faith.

    "Steer clear of those brothels of the Spirit and morgues of Freedom!"

              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Cannibals"


    "Even today, in some of the more backward countries reading and writing is stoutly discouraged by the clerical powers because 'women may read about things they should not know."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1918
              "Morality and Birth Control"


    "All that we have undergone thus far is but a faint foretaste of the disorganization that is to come. It now appears that no power on earth can prevent the money panic of which everyone is talking and if this comes, no power on earth can prevent idleness, want and starvation. And these things the United States seems to have earned--they are coming to us and apparently we are going to get the full benefit of them within the next few years."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1920
              "Women and the Rail Strike"


    "The workers themselves must carry on the battle--by acting, by living it, by keeping alive with renewed effort those very ideas that the Powers of Darkness are trying to stamp out."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "No Defense Fund"


    "A weak and exploitable humanity has perpetuated itself for the benefit of its Machiavellian masters."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "A Message to Mothers"


    "...the fact is that today the Church of Rome has the Spanish Government by the throat and both together in harness have killed the peoples' faith in government, as well as crushed all public initiative, which a people so naturally individual might have. The Spanish are a people born for action and passionate deeds, but these two vipers have continually cramped their development, while it held them in its toils."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "Modern Schools in Spain"


    "...the government has always tended to capture and employ the Philosopher of its age, but what State would patronize Plato or Schopenhauer?"
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Frederick Nietzsche"


    "The war is good. No better education could be given the workers. After the tumult and the murder ceases, workers will realize to what ends availed their slavish toil--what was the aim of this flamboyant civilization. Comrades killed, life made even more precarious, the burden of it all on the shoulders of working men and women."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "The War's Lesson"


    "As editor and publisher of 'The Woman Rebel,' I felt a great satisfaction and inspiration in the response which came from working men and women all over America. For fourteen years I have been much in the nursing field, and know too well the intolerable conditions among the workers which a large family does not decrease."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1915
              "Comstockery in America"


    "Scratch beneath the skin of the patriot and you find the blood of the exploiter."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "A Statement on Ettor and Giovannitti Trial"


    "The younger generation of women are no more anxious than their uptown sisters to have large families, and these young women are easy victims for the many fake and quack physicians who inhabit the East Side. One woman aged 72, said she would gladly have another baby if nature were willing, but her daughters and sons, who had endured poverty and neglect, remembering what a nightmare their childhood had been, preferred risking imprisonment and death, rather than bearing children and have them go though what they lived through."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1911
              "Impressions of the Lower East Side"


    "...the idea of the Catholic Church... they understand the value of influence at this crucial age. How cowardly and base to take advantage of the undeveloped youth, to use him, to mold his life and actions for the benefit of their class: the Master Class."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1912
              "The Boy Scout Movement"


    "Relief authorities are alarmed by the rapid increase in population among the destitute families of the nation. The high birth rate among the unemployed boosts our relief burdens. We find parents who cannot feed two or three children continuing to bring into the world more children regardless of the effect upon the mother's health and regardless of the future of the child."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1934
              "The Case for Birth Control"


    "This Union 'stands for the submerged half of humanity--for the women and men who bear the work and sorrows of civilization, and share none of its joys or pleasures.' Every member must pledge himself not to scab on any workers, not to bear arms against any workers nor to act as detective or informer for any financial interests."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "To the Bottom Dog"


    "These children and women of the Lawrence strikers could teach the working class of our city much in the line of solidarity. They breath it and act it and live it. What could be grander than that children be taught international solidarity? The teachers of this spirit are fighting one of the greatest battles of this day."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1912
              "The Fighting Women of Lawrence"


    "...I found the wise men, the sages, the scientists, discussing birth control among themselves.

    "But their ideas were sterile. They did not influence nor affect the tremendous facts of life among the working classes and the disinherited!"

              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "Hotel Brevoort Speech"


    "...the great problems of unemployment and child labor which we are facing today. It has been my experience that the woman with an income of $10. a week does not desire a large family. I have worked among thousands of them. I have found them with 7, 8 and 9 living children, and I have never yet known one of them to desire another mouth to feed. On the contrary I have found them in constant terror of the coming of another baby and submitting to unwanted childbirth only because of their ignorance. Picture a woman with five or six little ones living on the average workingman's wage of $10. a week. Another baby is coming as fast as nature can manage it. She is already broken in health and spirit, a shadow of the lovely woman she once was. Where is the man or woman who would reproach me for trying to put into this woman's hands knowledge to prevent giving birth to any more?"
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "Woman and Birth Control"


    "Mothers of today let us look at each other unmasked--let us tear this mask of indifference and hypocrisy from off our eyes, and face these conditions and meet them squarely. These children who work in the mills and factories, and cellars, these neglected and starved children of the slums; these diseased and deformed children of neglect. The children who are pushed about in the streets by every one, the children of the reform schools and jails, yes even the children who walk the streets at night to sell their bodies are all ours--they are ours. Mothers-- yours and mine. Our sisters are their mothers -- they are and all belong to us-- for we are mothers of the human race-- These children cry out to us for protection --These creatures of our creation are the products of our neglect. And the time has come for mothers of today to face this neglect."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1912
              "Wanted-- A Bigger Motherhood"


    "The most barbaric nations would not allow their children to toil and pass away their child lives under such conditions that we of civilization allow."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "Prolific Child-Breeding"


    "What is Birth Control?... A Science which teaches that poverty and social evils can be greatly reduced by encouraging people to have small families....

    "How can people limit their families? In two ways. One is by ceasing to live a natural mated life. The other is to employ the means which have been discovered for avoiding having children without giving up the sex-life."

              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "A Little Lesson For Those Who Ought To Know Better"


    "I saw the women of wealth, the masters' wives, obtain birth control information with little difficulty.

    "I saw that, if the working man's wife refused to have more children, she was compelled to resort to abortion. Over 50,000 abortions are performed in the United States each year, and 25,000 deaths occur as the result of them.

    "I saw that it is the working women who fill this death list, for though the master's wife may resort to abortions, too, she is given the best care and attention which money can buy.

    "I saw that the Comstock laws produce the abortionist, make him a growing and thriving necessity, while the lawmakers close their Puritan eyes."

              --Margaret Sanger, 1915
              "Margaret Sanger Defends Her Battle for the Right of Birth Control"


    "I believe that birth control, when disseminated among the working people who are less able to carry the burdens of the race than any other class, would help to reduce immediately the present burden upon the man and woman with their insufficient existing wage. It would wipe out charity, an institution so destructive to self respect and independence in the working class. It would enable the working man and woman to be better educated and consequently more efficient to develop for their emancipation.

    "It would enable the children of the workers to be better nourished and better educated preparing them in turn to become something better than wage slaves. It would positively do away with child labor.

    "It would reduce competition among the workers, and if carried on internationally, it would raise labor power to its rightful plane whereby the intelligent workers would be the controlling factors in the world."

              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "Birth Control and Society"


    "Is it moral for two adult people to bring children into the world knowing that there is no possible provision made for their survival? Is it moral to leave the welfare and health of your offspring to the charity of a few kindly and well-intentioned philanthropists or is it not the duty of two people to be responsible for the consequences of their acts, securing to the best of their ability all advantages for their children's development?"
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "Notes on Address before the Woman Rebel Trial"


    "Women of the working class consider it wrong to bring children into the world to die of hunger and privation. They prefer to risk their lives through abortion, if need be, rather than give birth to children they cannot properly feed and clothe. A few simple words of advice would avoid the horrible slaughter of abortion going on in this country today."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "The Fight for Birth Control"


    "The workers themselves must carry on the battle--by acting, by living it, by keeping alive with renewed effort those very ideas that the Powers of Darkness are trying to stamp out."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "No Defense Fund"


    "We have been proud of erecting schools for the education of our children; we have erected lofty and magnificent churches for their religious instruction; but for their moral instruction, upon which depends their happiness and their welfare, we have erected nothing but the streets and the gutter."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "Tell Girls Things They Should Know"


    "The Rationalist Schools sprang from the Modern School of Spain and are synonymous with Modern Schools. Ferrer created a new idea in education in Spain of anti-church, anti-capitalism, anti-patriotism, anti-militarism, and combined these teachings in the Modern School for the promotion of universal peace through economic justice. In the year 1901 Ferrer opened the Modern School in Barcelona. He had the cooperation of many of the most eminent educators in Europe."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "Portet and Ferrer"


    "As society became more complex, a caste arose whose duty it was to administer justice. In the course of time, however, the law grew up out of their decisions and accumulated a stolid mass of outworn tradition, until to-day legality has become so encumbered with lifeless relics of the past that the courts no longer express living social standards and the ideal of Justice, but merely the dead weight of legal precedents and obsolete decisions, hoary with age."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1917
              "Shall We Break This Law?"


    "That is Nature's answer to the argument that birth control is 'unnatural.' Incidentally, the crime that society committed in preventing the overburdened mothers from avoiding their load of misery, comes home hard to that same society in the cost of taking care of the unfortunate offspring in prisons and in hospitals for the insane."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1918
              "How Nature Gets Even"


    "Advocates of scientific Birth Control are sometimes met with the absurd statement that such methods are injurious to the health of the woman. It is even asserted that they cause cancer and other disease and that they bring about sterility.

    "As applied to scientific Birth Control, these statements are both false and silly. In the light of the best authoritative information of the day, it can be unequivocally set down that modern Birth Control methods, properly employed, are not only not injurious but are often positively beneficial to the woman's health. The contrary is maintained for the most part by those who are mentally honest but uninformed or by such as are altogether prejudiced.

    "The clergy, bound to its theological dogmas is usually opposed to Birth Control methods and is only too ready to accept any bald statement leveled against them."

              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "Prudence or Prudery in Sex Matters"


    "...all our basic convictions must be tested and transmuted in the crucible of experience--and sometimes, the more bitter the experience, the more valid the purified belief."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1953
              "This I Believe"


    "...in Indianapolis the interest was tremendous--all social workers--and all had been feeling the terrible need for this work for years. Nevertheless, the Catholic element was strong in the meeting, and when one woman rose to ask me "What about the order from the Divine book?--'suffer the little children to come unto Me,'" the house went into a rage with her. They--the social workers, always on the fence in any really vital issue--actually hissed the woman down, and also every other opponent who dared to raise his head against birth control that day. It was thrilling. Then after the conference the women living in the city formed a League there, and a very representative group was interested."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "A 'Birth Control' Lecture Tour"


    "The time has come to dispute and challenge those who would encourage numbers and the increase of population regardless of the personal factors of responsibility and health.

    "Men and women are not mere statistical units who are born, marry, produce their kind, and die."

              --Margaret Sanger, 1935
              "Responsibility of Parenthood"


    "Let it also be said that neither this arrest, nor those which have been made before, nor all the arrests that can be made, will for a moment deter us from this fight to which we have committed ourselves.

    "Agents provocateur may ply their obscene trade; misguided masculine-minded Puritans may oppress, the authorities may fill the jails with women, but this fight will go on. For every woman you jail, we will raise up ten for this struggle. Woman's right to control her own destiny is being established for all time and it is being establish by women, in and out of jail."

              --Margaret Sanger, 1918
              "Trapped!"


    "The working women can use direct action by refusing to supply the market with children to be exploited, by refusing to populate the earth with slaves."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1918
              "Family Limitation"


    "The tragedy of the unwanted child--of the accidental child--only begins with whatever evil prenatal effect the emotional condition of the mother may have upon it. The right to be wanted is it first right but only the first of many that are ignored. Usually it suffers a further handicap by being carried by a mother who is physically ill or overworked. Fear of pregnancy is frequently inspired in the mind of the mother by the burden of too many children, or by want or by both. When it arrives, the accidental child usually finds itself in the ranks of the millions of hungry and neglected infants. Often it is merely a candidate for an item in the infant mortality statistics. We have before us always the horrible spectacle of hundreds of thousands of children dying miserably before they have lived twelve months, of other hundred of thousands dying just as miserably before they reach the age of five. Worse still, is the lot of those other millions who after the age of five take their places among the toilers in mills and factories."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "The Tragedy of the Accidental Child"


    "...we will never wipe out infant mortality until we stop at the source the stream of unwanted and death doomed infants and you can never push back the stream with the broom of charity..."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1929
              "Address to Pennsylvania Birth Control Leagues"


    "If children are to be brought into the world by chance--inert, undernourished, victims of hereditary diseases-- to be brought into a world to live their lives as dependent and indigents; if, in short, this differential birth rate is to be still further widened between classes, the doom of this nation is already written. If our New Dealers turn a deaf ear to the cries of the Forgotten Woman, they are attempting to solve the problem of economic security without due consideration for the basic human factors involved in that problem, which must be recognized."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1935
              "National Security and Birth Control"


    "The great horde of the unwanted has proved to be a spineless mass, which did not have the courage to control its own destiny. Had woman had knowledge of birth control and brought into the world only such offspring as she desired and was physically and spiritually prepared to receive, society would have been far too individualistic to tolerate wholesale massacre for the benefit of money kings. Under such an order, the child would have been considered a priceless gift to the community. Manhood would have been too valuable to be sacrificed on battlefields. Motherhood would have been revered, and the mother's voice raised to forbid the slaughter of her offspring would have been heeded."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1917
              "Woman and War"


    "If anyone sincerely believed that poverty and hardship produced the best results, he would deliberately choose them for himself and his children. But no one does. Health, happiness and opportunity are unquestionably a benefit to humanity, otherwise we should not be justified in struggling for them."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "Birth Control: Yes or No?"


    "In the past population has been limited by war, famine and pestilence. Our organization hopes to accomplish the same end by the more humane method of limiting the birth rate."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1926
              "Americans are 'Headline Thinkers'"


    "Let us face the fact that unemployment is not a temporary condition."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1935
              "Providence Speech Material"


    "...fear and ignorance are not conducive to the highest morality."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1920
              "Women Enslaved by Maternity"


    "...indeed my vision of a future when motherhood will be really free would seem on its way to fulfillment. For the time will come when the bearing of children, no longer an enforced burden, no longer haphazard and accidental, need only be undertaken as a cherished privilege; and every child will be a wanted child, born to its rightful heritage of love and care and comfort. Then truly will motherhood be the flower of womanhood."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1930
              "Early Years of Margaret Sanger's Work in the Birth Control Movement"


    "Many of these were poor married workers, and those with money could buy a poorer one to be sent in his place. This war was not popular in Spain even with those who had but few ideas. Barcelona took the initiative to protest against the war, by calling a general strike on July 24. This was not difficult to do, for the storm of indignation and protest had been gathering; so on Monday morning the demonstration, led by women, compelled the workers in the factories, workshops, stores,--everyone who was a wage earner--to come out on strike. The whole city of Barcelona was on strike and the workers were masters of the city for four days. The strike spread to all the provinces. The strikers formed themselves into groups to carry out different parts of a general plan for a republic. Convents and Churches to the number of 53 were set on fire after warning had been given to the occupants to get out."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1917
              "Portet and Ferrer Continued - Part 2"


    "Interest in 'political meetings and movements' may induce women to think independently of the Catholic teachings--and in thus thinking she will know that the Catholic Church is one of the greatest enemies against the achievement of her economic, intellectual and sexual independence."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "'The Menace's' Advice"


    "They [women] have all rights of the union and vote upon all questions the same as men. The men themselves seem amazed at the spirit of the women, for those who came out came with true colors flying and are there to stay."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1912
              "The Women of the Laundry Workers' Strike"


    "It is true that labor must organize more closely; it is true that it suffers from exploitation; it is true that the modern industrial system is breaking labor upon a merciless wheel."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1920
              "From Woman's Standpoint"


    "...experience is a bitter teacher. The more you go through, the less you believe in the miracle of printed words to effect the salvation of the lives of women and children."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1929
              "Opening Address for Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau Dinner"


    "We are in a battle--every foot of ground we win moves the reactionaries to a fresh effort to wipe out all we have done."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1918
              "All Together -- Now!"


    "Civilization is gauged by conditions which promote enlightenment and progress and bring the greatest good to the greatest number."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1935
              "Birth Control and Civilization"


    "We want the help and co-operation of all enlightened women--mothers and potential mothers,--who see the danger and criminality of reckless and indiscriminate child-bearing--women who are not afraid to learn the physiology and hygiene of their own bodies."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "The Birth Control League"


    "Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be told how to use her freedom; she must find out for herself. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that within her which struggles for expression. Her eyes must be less upon what is -- more clearly upon what should be. She must listen only with a frankly questioning attitude to the dogmatized, fossilized opinions of church, state and society. When she chooses her new, free course of action, it must be in the light of her own opinion -- of her own intuition. Only so can she give play to the feminine spirit."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "A Parents' Problem or Woman's?"


    "...as long as the present system can keep the working class petition-minded, the masters need have no fear of an uprising, and the social and industrial revolution will be far away."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Watchful Waiting"


    "No woman can be healthy or strong who lives continuously in fear."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "Are Birth Control Methods Injurious?"


    "Colonial expansion is still the dream of those militarists who clamor for big battalions of babies, and we see from the past that colonization has aroused a hatred of peaceful nations against the white race, and everywhere in Asia is the growing determination to free themselves from their political domination."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1928
              "Engineer's Auditorium Speech"


    "It is late in the day to point out that all human experience teaches that an attitude of 'splendid isolation' can no longer be logically maintained by any individual in the face of the problems which confront American civilization. If only from the motive of self-protection the well-born and the well-bred can no longer shirk responsibility concerning 'the behavior and the condition of the unfortunates.'"
              --Margaret Sanger, 1929
              "Women and Birth Control"


    "A. Hayday, labor member of Parliament, in a recent speech in the Commons, served notice upon his fellow Britons that if the English imperialists who are demanding more babies should attempt to speak in districts inhabitated by workers, they would be mobbed by women and that 'there is growing in this country today a woman's movement which may be called a birth strike.' This strike would continue, he said, until the mothers were surer of being able to provide for their children."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1920
              "Preparing for the World Crisis"


    "The Child's Rights: To be wanted. To be created in harmony, love. To have the vehicle of its entrance free from disease. To have the guarantee that its own body and brain may be able to function as an instrument for the soul's advancement."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1929
              "The Meaning of Birth Control"


    "...we have the mass of men and women who are ignorant of their own bodies..."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "Meeting the Need Today"


    "The problems of population have been looming upon the horizon of international thought for the past ten years, and with the advance of scientific application to social problems it was only natural that some of us should turn to the scientists with the possible hope that from them might be gleaned the solution."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1927
              "Preface to the Proceedings of the World Population Conference"


    "Science has taught us how to take parenthood out of the sphere of accident, how to plan for the number of children in a family, and the intervals between their births. The idea that this should be done in accordance with the health of the mother and the income of the family seems obvious."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1939
              "Planning Your Children"


    "Perhaps out of woman's contact with the advance movements of the world there will in time arise a more honest and courageous womanhood, devoid of petty shames, which shall be able and willing to contribute to science intelligently the deepest complexities of woman's emotional nature. Then can there be some conclusion arrived at of the antagonism between the sexual and intellectual functions. The book of the woman is yet to be written and it remains for the woman to do it who is able and brave enough to strip herself clean to the soul; to know herself and let herself be known."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Motherhood - Or Destruction"


    "When I arrived one child was gnawing at her mother's breast though her milk had long been exhausted, while another baby lay on the bed gnawing painfully, instead of food, a tiny thumb. The father had gone to the woods in a desperate attempt to find mushrooms on which they might exist over Sunday. Yet the insane cry is still--more children!"
              --Margaret Sanger, 1920
              "Birth Control--The Fundamental Freedom"


    "...what is America doing? We are breeding, breeding, breeding, excess numbers -- -- for what? For another condition like that of Europe in 1914..."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1920
              "Hotel Commodore Speech"


    "...it is not the custom of candidates for office to go deep into the fundamental causes of intolerable conditions."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1918
              "An Open Letter to Alfred E. Smith"


    "Do not be deceived. Your children are commodities--they are bought and sold in industry. And the price of infants like the price of everything else, goes up when the commodity grows scarce."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1918
              "When Should A Woman Avoid Having Children?"


    "The first need in woman's forward advance is to desire Freedom. That desire must come from within.

    "I refuse to ask her to be satisfied with her environment unless that environment is conducive to health for herself and her children.

    "I would not ask her to make peace with poverty, ignorance, illiteracy, or slavery no matter the discipline such an attitude may impell."

              --Margaret Sanger, 1935
              "Women of India"


    "It has required long years of effort to educate the police of New York City into an attitude of forbearance and tolerance toward Birth Control activities."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1928
              "Birth Control Refused Space at Parents Exhibiton"


    "When the Pope speaks about nature he seems to forget that the human mind is also part of nature. The thoughts we think and the emotions we feel are the work of nature. He does not seem to realize that the enjoyment in sexual intercourse is largely psychical. It is a mental and spiritual as well as a physical enjoyment. The stronger the love and the finer the characters of the married pair, the greater is this psychical enjoyment during intercourse. To impose continence is to prevent the finest union of love, to frustrate mental and spiritual nature in its urge toward perfection."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1932
              "The Pope's Position on Birth Control"


    "To-day we are claiming the right to solve our own problems, to make our own mistake and to learn the inevitable lesson to be derived from such mistakes. Our morality is an 'ethics of the dust,' as Professor Edwin Holt has expressed it, a morality of reality, aiming to show men and women the structure of their relationships to each other, to the world at large, and the world to be. It is not a morality concerned with melodramatic rewards and punishments, with absolute rights and wrongs, with unhealthy lingering interests in virginity and chastity, with its propensity for prying into the unwholesome details of sexual behavior, but a morality insisting that men and women shall face honestly and realistically the intimate problems of their own lives, and that they themselves, on the bases of their own experience and own desires, solve those problems with the instruments of intelligence, insight and honesty."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1929
              "The Civilizing Force of Birth Control"


    "In the very nature of the case, it is impossible to get accurate figures upon the number of abortions performed annually in the United States. It is often said, however, that one in five pregnancies end in abortion. One estimate is that 150,000 occur in the United States each year and that 25,000 women die of the effects of such operations in every twelve months. Dr. William J. Robinson asserts that there are 1,000,000 abortions every year in this country and adds that the estimate is conservative."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1918
              "Birth Control or Abortion?"


    "What are the fruits of this woeful ignorance in which women have been kept? First, a tremendous infant mortality--hundreds of thousands of them dying annually of diseases which flourish in poverty and neglect. Next, the rapid increase of the feebleminded, of criminal types and of the pathetic victims of toil in the child labor factories. Another result is the familiar overcrowding of tenements, the forcing of the children into the street, the ensuing prostitution, alcoholism and almost universal physical and moral unfitness."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "Why Not Birth Control Clinics in America?"


    "I started The Woman Rebel early in 1914. The first issue of the magazine was suppressed. Seven issues out of nine were suppressed, and although sent out as first-class mail, the editions were confiscated. The newspapers--even the most radical--declined to give this official tyranny any publicity."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "The Woman Rebel' and The Fight for Birth Control"


    "But the time is coming -- perhaps sooner than some of us can believe-- when these mediaeval legal monstrosities will follow others of their kind to the dustbin."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "A Victory, A New Year and A New Day"


    "Women who hope for recognition of their rights and look for that time when they shall hold office equal with men, have a striking proof of it here. The Club of Capitalism will descend upon their heads with the same brutality in the hands of women as in the hands of their lords and masters."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Cantankerous Katherine"


    "If we have convictions, and cannot express them in words, then let us act them out, let us live them!"
              --Margaret Sanger, 1929
              "Ford Hall Forum Address"


    "The women physicians who follow the old manner of thinking subconsciously know and fear the effect of birth control, which will largely dispense with their services as they are now rendered. These will never take the initiative in freeing the world from its chains. They love their institutions, their prejudices, their own chains, better than they love humanity and the truth."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "Breaking Into the South--A Contrast"


    "We are paying, and paying heavily, for the support of a great police force."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1929
              "The Birth-Control Raid"


    "At Hyde Park Corner, about the end of August, at a meeting of the Anti-Naturalization League, a suggestion came from one of the speakers to interne all the German women and children at present in Great Britain. Then came another suggestion--this one from the audience--to interne the Americans in England first."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1915
              "The Danger of Carrying an American Passport"


    "What else is the meaning of the expansion of the United States within the last generation? Why have we taken over Hawaii, the Phillippines, Puerto Rico, and why have we virtually held a protectorate over Cuba? Why is American capital so interested in Mexico? Why is it that we go to South America for much of our meat supply--and only within the past few years? Why do American packers control much of the cattle and most of the packing industry in South America? What is the meaning of our heavy importations of rice?"
              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "Vanderlip's Speech -- A Warning"


    "Katharine B. Davis was carefully trained in her youth for college; her college training helped and fortified her to become Police Matron of Bedford Reformatory for Women, and subsequently Commissioner of Corrections of New York. Both worthy offices to uphold the present system."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "The Old and the New"


    "One hundred and one of the men and women who have worked hardest, longest and most fearlessly for the wiping out of social and industrial evils are defined and dealt with by the I. W. W., are on trial in Chicago. The charge is conspiracy to obstruct the conduct of the war and 10,000 crimes are alleged against those now under prosecution. The charges, however, are being overshadowed by the great outstanding fact that the I. W. W., as an organization, is on trial for its life. America may be said to be divided into two camps--those who believe that such organizations as the I. W. W. have a right to exist and those who believe that the members of such organizations should be hunted down, jailed or lynched as menaces to society."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1918
              "Let's Have the Truth"


    "Mothers, keep in mind, the beauty and wonder of it all, and as you proceed in the study of the mechanism of the reproductive organs of human beings you cannot but impress upon the child the beauty and wonder of love. Help the child to realize the sacred trust of his organs, the danger in misusing them. Help him to realize the physical and moral development which awaits him in parenthood..."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1911
              "How Six Little Children Were Taught the Truth"


    "Long has woman been called the gentler and weaker half of human-kind; long has she borne the brunt of unwilling motherhood; long has she been the stepping stone of oligarchies, kingdoms and man-made democracies; too long have they thrived on her enslavement. The time has come at last when she demands her physical and spiritual freedom,-- and her liberty."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1917
              "Voluntary Motherhood"


    "Question from the Audience: 'What do you find to be the greatest secret source of opposition to your work?'

    Answer: 'I should say that ignorance was the greatest secret force, but I should say that the Roman Catholic Church was the greatest outward, open force opposed to the birth control movement.'"

              --Margaret Sanger, 1929
              "Shall the Citizens of Boston be Allowed to Discuss Changing Their Laws?"


    "Perhaps the greatest torch that we can hand on to the young lives of today in a hope of leading their feet to safety, is a wholesome knowledge of sex. The age-long teaching that sex is something not to be imparted by parents to their children, but shrouded in mystery, has done more to bring disaster in the lives of young boys and girls than almost anything else."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1925
              "Shrouding Sex in Mystery Brings Disaster"


    "It is an error to suppose that woman avoids motherhood because she is afraid to die. Rather does she fear to live. She fears a life of poverty and drudgery, weighed down by the horror of unwanted pregnancy and tortured by the inability to rear decently the children she has already brought into the world."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1917
              "Birth Control: Margaret Sanger's Reply to Theodore Roosevelt"


    "If Christ Comes Again... He would shock conservative Christians by his 'destructiveness'. He would sweep aside current worldly ideals--wealth, national greatness, chauvinistic patriotism, economic power, culture, and above all selfishness."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1932
              "If Christ Comes Again"


    "A family subsisting upon a certain wage will naturally give better care to one or two children upon that wage than it would to four or six or eight or ten, and the two children are much less likely to have to go into child labor factories and sweat-shops than are the eight or ten. The situation is too plain for argument."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "Prudence or Prudery in Sex Matters"


    "Portet was at that time residing in Liverpool, and, grief-stricken man though he was, he hastened to Paris to consult with the friends of [Francisco] Ferrer on what action was to be taken. The story is told that before he left his home on that memorable day, he called his eldest son to his side in true Spaniard fashion, and requested the lad to promise him on the love of his mother that he would always remember that the Spanish Government and the Catholic Church had that morning assassinated the best friend of his father."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1917
              "Portet and Ferrer Continued - Part 3"


    "When Kitty Marion was sentenced to thirty days in jail or the payment of a five hundred dollar fine, she unhesitatingly chose the jail, although she knew that in the wave of emotion and indignation that swept over the supporters of the Birth Control movement, at the excessive amount of the fine, five hundred dollars, could then and there have been raised.

    "But Kitty Marion put the cause before herself and bravely sacrificed her liberty rather than use money that she thought should go the cause of Birth Control. She is now doing hard labor for the sake of humanity."

              --Margaret Sanger, 1918
              "Kitty Marion Gives Up Freedom--What Will You Give?"


    "Does the State ever ask itself if it is economic to support and educate human beings up to the ages specified above, only to lose them in the end, knowing in advance that they should never have been born?..."

    "What a waste of human life our ignorance and stupidity is costing us!""

              --Margaret Sanger, 1917
              "Birth Control and Woman's Health"


    "Speak up, Comrades: get your organizations to send delegates here at the next meeting and let us all together make such a noise that the workers of the country will awaken to the outrageous crime committed against them before it is too late."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1912
              "Lawrence Defense Conference Active"


    "The way is open today for justice in this field. For all parents knowledge which is their right and due, so that they may bring into the world only wanted children, with the heritage of sound bodies and sound minds."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1937
              "At Long Last"


    "...the more these measures are discussed, the more suggestions are put forward, the better the results achieved in the end."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "How Shall We Change the Law?"


    "Miss Edelsohn refused to be censured by the police and refused to give the bond of $300. She declared a hunger-strike if sent to prison, as a protest against her sentence of ninety days imprisonment. She was sent to the workhouse but was transferred to the City Prison, Long Island. The Free Speech League appealed her case meanwhile getting Miss Edelsohn out of bail, April 25th, which for the time being terminated her hunger strike."

    "Pending her appeal Miss Edelsohn continued her agitation against the United States becoming involved in war with Mexico and for the sympathetic strike for the miners in Colorado. It was in connection with this work that she participated in the meetings at Tarrytown where she was arrested with fourteen others for attempting to speak on the Colorado situation at Fountain Square, Tarrytown, N.Y."

              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "The History of the Hunger-Strike"


    "It is a difficult task for any group, advocating a new ideal, to reach the public ear. The difficulties are multiplied when such a group must at the same time educate the members of the police department as to how we may lawfully do this. Nevertheless, these difficulties like all others, must be met and overcome. And the time seems to have arrived when advocates of Birth Control must devote themselves seriously to the work of educating the police as to our legal rights."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "A Law Breaking Policeman"


    "The politician is usually a representative of the great trusts...a creature owned by the big moneyed interests which depends for their profits upon cheap labor...."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1936
              "Birth Control"


    "...the decided shift to direct action indicates how thoroughly they have put aside their faith in the machinery of law making and law enforcement."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1919
              "Western Women Demand Information"


    "The problem of staying out of jail or being sent to jail is merely incidental in this fight. It is discouraging to find that advanced revolutionists of this country are frantically trying to save agitators from jail sentences thereby losing sight of the real and crucial issues of the fight. If we could depend upon a strong and consistently revolutionary support in such battles, instead of weakened efforts to effect a compromise with the courts, there would be much greater stimulation for individuals to enter revolutionary activity."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "Not Guilty!"


    "I hope that all my comrades and friends will work to arouse popular sentiment to such a degree that Emma Goldman cannot be convicted. My plan was to tour to the West Coast to establish birth control clinics in those States where the laws are sufficiently responsive to an intelligent public opinion to abdicate their authority in this regard. But if Emma Goldman goes to prison, it may be necessary to concentrate all our efforts against the archaic puritanism of New York State..."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "A Statement of Support for Emma Goldman"


    "...knowledge does not cause immorality for the cause of immorality and morality lies much deeper than external things. Morality and immorality, all things good and bad, come from a source within and not from without. We are not honest because a policeman stands on the street corner. We are not truthful because there are jails and other methods of punishment. We are not moral because of the fear of venereal diseases or of pregnancy. Morality, truth and honesty come from the depth of our being, from character and integrity."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1935
              "What Birth Control Can Do For India"


    "My attention has just been called to your statement to the delegates at the 18th Annual Convention of the Catholic Press Association, reported in the New York Evening Sun of May 25th, 1928.

    "You are quoted as saying, in your welcome to the delegates on behalf of the Diocese of New York, that you are 'in full agreement that the church should be kept out of politics-- And at the same time let us have the Catholic press keep out of politics.'

    "The American Birth Control League, Inc. is deeply interested in this statement. Every year the League sponsors a bill at Albany which, if passed, would permit physicians to give Birth Control advice to married persons. Every year the only opposition comes from the Roman Catholic Church, through the Dioceses of Albany and New York, and from the Associated Catholic Charities of the state of New York."

              --Margaret Sanger, 1928
              "An Open Letter to Cardinal Patrick J. Hayes"


    "We are all talking revolution and direct action, solidarity and freedom. If we are not willing to back every word that we utter publicly by determined action, we will never accomplish anything except to render ourselves ridiculous."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1914
              "Tragedy"


    "It is impossible to separate Anarchism from Spanish, [Libertarian] education or from anything which is important in Spain, for it is the only spark of life there today. It will be left to the Anarchist to drive out the priests and the robbers, before Spain can step freely in any direction."
              --Margaret Sanger, 1916
              "Schools and Education in Spain"


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