The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger

"A moving story of action — direct, forceful, and plain-spoken.…It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this autobiography." — Saturday Review of Literature. While working as a nurse amid the squalor of New York's Lower East Side in the early twentieth century, Margaret Sanger witnessed the devastating effects of unwanted pregnancies. Women already overwhelmed by the burdens of poverty had no recourse; their doctors were either ignorant of effective methods of birth control or were unwilling to risk defying the law. Sanger resolved to dedicate her life to establishing birth control as a basic human right. Her battles brought a world of troubles — arrest, indictment, and exile among them — but ultimately she triumphed, opening the first American birth control clinic in 1916 and serving as the first president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1953. A fascinating firsthand account of an early crusade for women's healthcare, this autobiography is a classic of women's studies and social reform.