Margaret SangerMargaret Sanger.Margaret Higgins Sanger (September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist. Initially meeting with fierce opposition, Sanger gradually won the support of the public and the courts and was instrumental in opening the way to universal access to birth control. LifeSanger was born in Corning, New York. Her mother was a devout Roman Catholic who had 11 children before dying of tuberculosis. After graduating from Claverack College in Hudson, Sanger trained as a nurse and worked for ten years in the affluent New York suburb of White Plains. In 1902, she married William Sanger. Although stricken by tuberculosis, she gave birth to a son the following year, followed in subsequent years by a second son and a daughter who died in childhood. In 1912, Sanger and her family moved to New York City, where she went to work in the poverty-stricken East Side slums of Manhattan. That same year, she also started writing a column for the New York Call entitled "What Every Girl Should Know." Distributing a pamphlet, Family Limitation, to poor women, Sanger repeatedly risked scandal and imprisonment by acting in defiance of the Comstock Law of 1873 which outlawed as obscene the dissemination of contraceptive information and devices. In 1914, Sanger launched The Woman Rebel, a newspaper advocating birth control. She also separated from William Sanger. In 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States. It was raided by the police and Sanger was arrested for violating the post office's obscenity laws by sending birth control information by mail. Sanger fled to Europe to escape prosecution. However, the following year, she returned to the U.S. and resumed her activities, launching the periodical The Birth Control Review and Birth Control News. She also contributed articles on health for the Socialist Party paper, The Call. In 1916, Sanger published "What Every Girl Should Know," which was later widely distributed as one of the E. Haldeman-Julius "Little Blue Books." It not only provided basic information about such topics as menstruation, but also acknowledged the reality of sexual feelings in adolescents. It was followed in 1917 by What Every Mother Should Know. That year, Sanger was sent to the workhouse for "creating a public nuisance." Sanger founded the American Birth Control League (ABCL) in 1921 with Lothrop Stoddard and C. C. Little. The next year, she married oil tycoon James Noah H. Slee. In 1923, under the auspices of the ABCL, she established the Clinical Research Bureau. It was the first legal birth control clinic in the U.S. (renamed Margaret Sanger Research Bureau in her honor in 1940). That year, she also formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control and served as its president of until its dissolution in 1937 after birth control under medical supervision was legalized in many states. In 1927, Sanger helped organize the first World Population Conference in Geneva. In 1928, Sanger resigned as the president of the ABCL. Two years later, she became president of the Birth Control International Information Center. In 1937, Sanger became chairperson of the Birth Control Council of America and launched two publications, The Birth Control Review and The Birth Control News. From 1939 to 1942, she was an honorary delegate of the Birth Control Federation of America. From 1952 to 1959, she served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation; at the time, the largest private international family planning organization. During the 1960 presidential elections, Sanger was dismayed by candidate John F. Kennedy's position on birth control (though a Catholic, Kennedy did not believe birth control should be a matter of government policy). She threatened to leave the country if Kennedy were elected, but evidently reconsidered after Kennedy won the election. In the early 1960s, Sanger promoted the use of the newly available birth control pill. She toured Europe, Africa, and Asia, lecturing and helping to establish clinics. Sanger died in 1966 in Tucson, Arizona at age 87 only a few months after the landmark Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which legalized birth control for married couples in the US. It was the apex of her fifty-year struggle. Sanger's books include Woman and the New Race (1920), Happiness in Marriage (1926), and an autobiography (1938). PhilosophyAlthough Sanger was greatly influenced by her father, a freethinker, her mother's death left her with a deep sense of dissatisfaction concerning her own and society's medical ignorance. She also criticized the censorship of her reproductive literacy message by the civil and religious authorities, justified on moral grounds, as an effort by men to keep women in submission. An atheist, Sanger attacked the Christian church for its opposition to her message, blaming it for obscurantism and insensitivity to women's concerns. Sanger was particularly critical of the lack of awareness of the dangers of and the scarcity of treatment opportunities for venereal disease among women. She claimed that these social ills were the result of the male establishment's intentionally keeping women in ignorance. Sanger also deplored the contemporary absence of regulations requiring registration of people diagnosed with venereal diseases (which she contrasted with mandatory registration of those with infectious diseases such as measles). Sanger was also an avowed socialist, blaming the evils of contemporary capitalism for the unsatisfactory conditions of the young working-class women. Her views on this issue are evident in the last pages of What Every Girl Should Know. Psychology of sexualityWhile Sanger's understanding of and practical approach to human physiology were progressive for her times, her thoughts on the psychology of human sexuality place her squarely in the pre-Freudian 19th century. Birth control, it would appear, was for her more a means to limit the undesirable side-effects of sex than a way of liberating men and women to enjoy it. In What Every Girl Should Know, she wrote: "Every normal man and woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and woman who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells thinking deeply, are never sensual." Sexuality, for her, was a kind of weakness, and surmounting it indicated strength:
Her thoughts on human development were also laden with racism:
Sanger also considered masturbation dangerous:
For her, masturbation was not just a physical act, it was a mental state:
EugenicsSanger found supporters among believers in eugenics, a social philosophy (ultimately embraced in Nazism) that led to the rise of such practices as compulsory sterilization to discourage unsuitable persons from breeding in the name of perfecting the human race. In 1932, for example, Sanger argued for
"...certain dysgenic groups in our population," she continued, should be given their choice of "segregation or sterilization." [1]. While considered enlightened in some circles at the time, today such measures would be regarded as violations of human rights. And yet in "The Birth Control Review of February" 1919, she clarified her position: "Eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother." In a mix of socialist and eugenic thought, Sanger blamed economic factors involved in choice of spouse for contributing to suboptimal human reproduction, and argued for more assertive public health and eugenics measures. LegacyAlthough Margaret Sanger espoused racist beliefs, she fought for the rights of minorities. In their article about Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood notes:
Sanger remains a controversial figure. She is widely acknowledged to have been the founder of the birth control movement and remains an iconic figure for the American reproductive rights movements. She is reviled, however, 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) or who disagree in principle with Eugenics. Although Sanger's views on abortion (like many of her opinions) changed throughout the course of her life, she was acutely aware of the problem of abortion in her early years, typically self-induced or with the aid of a midwife. Her opposition to abortion stemmed primarily from a concern for the dangers to the mother, and less so from legal concerns or the welfare of the unborn child. She wrote in a 1916 edition of Family Limitation, "no one can doubt that there are times when an abortion is justifiable," though she framed this in the context of her birth control advocacy, adding that "abortions will become unnecessary when care is taken to prevent conception. (Care is) the only cure for abortions." Sanger consistently regarded birth control and abortion as the responsibility and burden first and foremost of women, and as matters of law, medicine and public policy second.1 Quotes
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(Care is) the only cure for abortions." Sanger consistently regarded birth control and abortion as the responsibility and burden first and foremost of women, and as matters of law, medicine and public policy second.1. Time Magazine included Berners-Lee in its list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, published in 1999. She wrote in a 1916 edition of Family Limitation, "no one can doubt that there are times when an abortion is justifiable," though she framed this in the context of her birth control advocacy, adding that "abortions will become unnecessary when care is taken to prevent conception. [4]. Her opposition to abortion stemmed primarily from a concern for the dangers to the mother, and less so from legal concerns or the welfare of the unborn child. On January 27, 2005 he was named Greatest Briton of 2004 for his achievements as well as displaying the key British characteristics of "diffidence, determination, a sharp sense of humour and adaptability" as put by David Hempleman-Adams, a panel member. Although Sanger's views on abortion (like many of her opinions) changed throughout the course of her life, she was acutely aware of the problem of abortion in her early years, typically self-induced or with the aid of a midwife. On July 21, 2004 he was presented with an Honary Doctor of Science (honoris causa) from Lancaster University.[3]. She is reviled, however, 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) or who disagree in principle with Eugenics. [2]. She is widely acknowledged to have been the founder of the birth control movement and remains an iconic figure for the American reproductive rights movements. He was given the rank of Knight Commander (the second-highest rank in the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II as part of the New Year's Honours on July 16, 2004. Sanger remains a controversial figure. The cash prize, worth one million euros (about £663,000 or USD$1.2 million), was awarded on June 15, in Helsinki, Finland by Tarja Halonen. In their article about Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood notes:. On April 15, 2004 he was named as the first recipient of Finland's Millennium Technology Prize for inventing the World Wide Web. Although Margaret Sanger espoused racist beliefs, she fought for the rights of minorities. He shared the prize with Lawrence Roberts, Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf. In a mix of socialist and eugenic thought, Sanger blamed economic factors involved in choice of spouse for contributing to suboptimal human reproduction, and argued for more assertive public health and eugenics measures. In 2002 he received the Principe de Asturias award in the category of Scientific and Technical Research. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother.". In 1997 he was made an Officer in the Order of the British Empire, became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001, and received the Japan Prize in 2002. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. "Eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state. He was the first holder of the 3Com Founders Chair at MIT, and is also now a Senior Research Scientist there. And yet in "The Birth Control Review of February" 1919, she clarified her position:. The University of Southampton was the first to recognise Berners-Lee's contribution to developing the World Wide Web with an honorary degree in 1996 and he is currently Chair of the university's Electronics and Computer Science department. While considered enlightened in some circles at the time, today such measures would be regarded as violations of human rights. In Berners-Lee's book Weaving the Web, several recurring themes are apparent:. "...certain dysgenic groups in our population," she continued, should be given their choice of "segregation or sterilization." [1]. In 1994 he founded World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in 2003, the organization decided that their standards must be based on royalty-free technology, so they can be easily adopted by anyone. In 1932, for example, Sanger argued for. Perhaps his greatest single contribution, though, was to make his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. Sanger found supporters among believers in eugenics, a social philosophy (ultimately embraced in Nazism) that led to the rise of such practices as compulsory sterilization to discourage unsuitable persons from breeding in the name of perfecting the human race. While the component ideas of the World Wide Web are simple, Berners-Lee's insight was to combine them in a way which is still exploring its full potential. For her, masturbation was not just a physical act, it was a mental state:. To this day, Tim Berners-Lee maintains a low profile, not intent on gaining popular status. Sanger also considered masturbation dangerous:. He will be working closely with the University on the Semantic Web — his new project. Her thoughts on human development were also laden with racism:. In December 2004 he accepted a chair (professorship) in Computer Science at the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK. Men and woman who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells thinking deeply, are never sensual." Sexuality, for her, was a kind of weakness, and surmounting it indicated strength:. It was not until 2000 and 2001 that popular browsers began to support this standard, which shows Berners-Lee's first goal to maintain the freedom of the Web. In What Every Girl Should Know, she wrote: "Every normal man and woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. In 1996, in conjunction with Håkon Wium Lie, the W3C announced a standard entitled Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Birth control, it would appear, was for her more a means to limit the undesirable side-effects of sex than a way of liberating men and women to enjoy it. Many of the World Wide Web Consortium's achievements are able to be seen in many websites on the Internet. While Sanger's understanding of and practical approach to human physiology were progressive for her times, her thoughts on the psychology of human sexuality place her squarely in the pre-Freudian 19th century. It comprised various companies willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Internet. Her views on this issue are evident in the last pages of What Every Girl Should Know. In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sanger was also an avowed socialist, blaming the evils of contemporary capitalism for the unsatisfactory conditions of the young working-class women. It was also the world's first web directory, since Berners-Lee later maintained a list of other web sites apart from his own. Sanger also deplored the contemporary absence of regulations requiring registration of people diagnosed with venereal diseases (which she contrasted with mandatory registration of those with infectious diseases such as measles). It provided an explanation about what the World Wide Web was, how one could own a browser, how to set up a web server, and so on. She claimed that these social ills were the result of the male establishment's intentionally keeping women in ignorance. The first website Berners-Lee built (and therefore the first web site) was at http://info.cern.ch/ (which has been archived) and was first put online on August 6, 1991. Sanger was particularly critical of the lack of awareness of the dangers of and the scarcity of treatment opportunities for venereal disease among women. He used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire system to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first browser (called WorldWideWeb and developed on NeXTSTEP) and the first web server simply called httpd (which was short for HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon). An atheist, Sanger attacked the Christian church for its opposition to her message, blaming it for obscurantism and insensitivity to women's concerns. In his words, "I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web" [1]. She also criticized the censorship of her reproductive literacy message by the civil and religious authorities, justified on moral grounds, as an effort by men to keep women in submission. By 1989, CERN's internet site was the largest in Europe, and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to marry hypertext and internet. Although Sanger was greatly influenced by her father, a freethinker, her mother's death left her with a deep sense of dissatisfaction concerning her own and society's medical ignorance. After leaving CERN in 1980 to work at John Poole's Image Computer Systems Ltd, he returned in 1984 as a fellow. Sanger's books include Woman and the New Race (1920), Happiness in Marriage (1926), and an autobiography (1938). With help from Robert Cailliau he built a prototype system named Enquire. It was the apex of her fifty-year struggle. In 1980, while an independent contractor at CERN (June - December 1980), Berners-Lee proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. Connecticut decision, which legalized birth control for married couples in the US. He currently lives in the Boston, Massachusetts area with his wife and two children. Sanger died in 1966 in Tucson, Arizona at age 87 only a few months after the landmark Griswold v. In 2001 he became a patron of the East Dorset Heritage Trust having previously lived in Colehill in Wimborne, East Dorset, UK. She toured Europe, Africa, and Asia, lecturing and helping to establish clinics. Nash Limited where he worked on typesetting software and an operating system. In the early 1960s, Sanger promoted the use of the newly available birth control pill. He worked at Plessey Telecommunications Limited in 1976 as a programmer, and in 1978 he worked at D.G. She threatened to leave the country if Kennedy were elected, but evidently reconsidered after Kennedy won the election. Whilst at Oxford he was caught hacking with a friend and was subsequently banned from using the university computer. Kennedy's position on birth control (though a Catholic, Kennedy did not believe birth control should be a matter of government policy). He is an alumnus of Queen's College, Oxford University, where he built a computer with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television. During the 1960 presidential elections, Sanger was dismayed by candidate John F. Berners-Lee attended Emanuel School in Wandsworth. From 1952 to 1959, she served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation; at the time, the largest private international family planning organization. His parents, both mathematicians, were employed together on the team that built the Manchester Mark I, one of the earliest computers. From 1939 to 1942, she was an honorary delegate of the Birth Control Federation of America. Berners-Lee was born in London, England, the son of Conway Berners-Lee and Mary Lee Woods. In 1937, Sanger became chairperson of the Birth Control Council of America and launched two publications, The Birth Control Review and The Birth Control News. . Two years later, she became president of the Birth Control International Information Center. Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, KBE, FRS (TimBL or TBL) (born June 8, 1955) is the inventor of the World Wide Web (along with Robert Cailliau) and head (president) of the World Wide Web Consortium, which oversees its continued development. In 1928, Sanger resigned as the president of the ABCL. Cailliau (Oxford University Press, 2000) ISBN 0192862073. In 1927, Sanger helped organize the first World Population Conference in Geneva. How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web Robert Cailliau, James Gillies, R. That year, she also formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control and served as its president of until its dissolution in 1937 after birth control under medical supervision was legalized in many states. Tim Berners-Lee: Inventor of the World Wide Web (Ferguson's Career Biographies) Melissa Stewart (Ferguson Publishing Company, 2001) ISBN 089434367X children's biography. (renamed Margaret Sanger Research Bureau in her honor in 1940). Tim Berners-Lee and the Development of the World Wide Web (Unlocking the Secrets of Science) Ann Gaines (Mitchell Lane Publishers, 2001) ISBN 1584150963. It was the first legal birth control clinic in the U.S. Weaving the Web: Origins and Future of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee (Texere Publishing, 1999) ISBN 0752820907. In 1923, under the auspices of the ABCL, she established the Clinical Research Bureau. Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential Tim Berners-Lee (Foreword), Dieter Fensel (Editor), James Hendler (Editor), Henry Lieberman (Editor), Wolfgang Wahlster (Editor) (The MIT Press, 2005) ISBN 026256212X. Slee. Computer scientists have a moral responsibility as well as a technical responsibility. The next year, she married oil tycoon James Noah H. Notable current exceptions are the Domain Name System and the domain naming rules managed by ICANN. Little. Every aspect of the Internet should function as a web, rather than a hierarchy. C. Computers can be used for background tasks that enable humans to work better in groups. Sanger founded the American Birth Control League (ABCL) in 1921 with Lothrop Stoddard and C. (Wiki is a step in this direction, although Berners-Lee considers it merely a shadow of the WYSIWYG functionality of his first browser.). That year, Sanger was sent to the workhouse for "creating a public nuisance.". It is just as important to be able to edit the web as browse it. It was followed in 1917 by What Every Mother Should Know. Haldeman-Julius "Little Blue Books." It not only provided basic information about such topics as menstruation, but also acknowledged the reality of sexual feelings in adolescents. In 1916, Sanger published "What Every Girl Should Know," which was later widely distributed as one of the E. She also contributed articles on health for the Socialist Party paper, The Call. and resumed her activities, launching the periodical The Birth Control Review and Birth Control News. However, the following year, she returned to the U.S. Sanger fled to Europe to escape prosecution. It was raided by the police and Sanger was arrested for violating the post office's obscenity laws by sending birth control information by mail. In 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States. She also separated from William Sanger. In 1914, Sanger launched The Woman Rebel, a newspaper advocating birth control. That same year, she also started writing a column for the New York Call entitled "What Every Girl Should Know." Distributing a pamphlet, Family Limitation, to poor women, Sanger repeatedly risked scandal and imprisonment by acting in defiance of the Comstock Law of 1873 which outlawed as obscene the dissemination of contraceptive information and devices. In 1912, Sanger and her family moved to New York City, where she went to work in the poverty-stricken East Side slums of Manhattan. Although stricken by tuberculosis, she gave birth to a son the following year, followed in subsequent years by a second son and a daughter who died in childhood. In 1902, she married William Sanger. After graduating from Claverack College in Hudson, Sanger trained as a nurse and worked for ten years in the affluent New York suburb of White Plains. Her mother was a devout Roman Catholic who had 11 children before dying of tuberculosis. Sanger was born in Corning, New York. . Initially meeting with fierce opposition, Sanger gradually won the support of the public and the courts and was instrumental in opening the way to universal access to birth control. Margaret Higgins Sanger (September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist. BlackGenocide.org Article opposed to Margaret Sanger. The Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Profile in Women's History section of About.com. Profile on Time.com. Planned Parenthood profile of Margaret Sanger. ISBN 0-399-90019-5. New York: Richard Marek Publishers. 280. Margaret Sanger: A Biography of the Champion of Birth Control, p. Note 1: Gray, Madeline (1979). Works by Margaret Sanger at Project Gutenberg. Correspondence between Sanger and Katharine McCormick. "The Case for Birth Control" (first published in the Woman Citizen, February 23, 1924). What Every Girl Should Know. The Pivot of Civilization. |