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Margaret Sanger: Dedication Ahead Of Her Time

Running Head: MARGARET SANGER

Margaret Sanger: Dedication
Ahead of Her Time
Patricia Fay
Wagner College

Abstract
This paper researches the ideas and work of Margaret Sanger- a great nursing leader. It includes the struggles against leadership she endured and the overwhelming dedication by this leader to bring contraceptive information to the poor, underprivileged, and ignorant masses of not only the United States, but also the world. Her leadership style is discussed, along with the benefits and hindrances of such a leadership style. The question of how Margaret Sanger became the woman she ultimately did is also explored in a brief synopsis of her childhood and family life.

Informing the Masses
Contraceptives have been taken for granted, I feel, in both mine and my parents’ generations. I have never stopped to think about the difficulties one may have had to overcome in times past in order to grant the future with such a necessity as this. Margaret Sanger is a nursing leader who lived in a time when women needed to fight for their rights to bear the amount of children their income and personal happiness could logically afford. She knew the hardships of women who had too many children. Working as a visiting nurse in New York’s cold water tenements, she attended to many emergency calls for women with too many children who had seriously injured themselves in an attempt to self- induce abortion. (Archer, J., 1991) After watching a Russian immigrant die from a self- induced abortion, Sanger vowed to dedicate her life to breaking “society’s taboo against investigating and distributing effective birth control information to women who needed practical knowledge to prevent unwanted pregnancies.”(Archer, J., 1991) At that time, condoms were very expensive and not readily available, douching was considered to be taboo, and husbands did not want to practice incomplete intercourse. (Archer, J., 1991) Along with these obstacles, the Catholic Church very...