Remembering Margaret Sanger on Her Birthday

Brooklyn Daily Eagle: On This Day in History: September 14 Birth Control Crusader Born, by Vernon Parker:

Margaret (Higgins) Sanger was born on September 14, 1879, the sixth of 11 children, in Corning, New York. Her father was a poor Irish tombstone cutter. Her mother died at the age of 48 of tuberculosis. When she was 17, Margaret came to New York. She married William Sanger, an architect; joined the Socialist Party and nursed tenants in the tenements of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

On a hot, muggy day in July, 1912, Nurse Sanger was called to attend Sadie Sachs, 28, a mother of three who was near death from attempting to abort another child on the way. Sadie begged Sanger and the doctor to tell her what she could do to prevent having more babies. The doctor told her to tell her husband to sleep on the roof. When Sadie Sachs died three months later of another self-induced abortion, Margaret Sanger felt it was time to crusade for birth control. . . .