Margaret Sanger, born in 1879 as Margaret Higgins, was an early feminist, women's rights activist, and writer. Sanger popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in 1916, and established organizations that would later evolve into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (“Margaret Sanger”).
Early on in life, Sanger worked as a nurse. While working as a nurse, she was exposed to realistic examples of women who underwent botched “back alley” abortions due to the lack of information on how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. It is important to note that at this time access to contraceptive information was prohibited on grounds of obscenity by the 1873 federal Comstock law (“Margaret Sanger”). It was these events that marked the time when Sanger began to devote her life to help women…show more content… Sanger used her writings and speeches primarily to promote change. Her efforts contributed to several judicial cases that helped legalize contraception in the United States. For example, one legal battle was overcome in a 1936 court decision which allowed “birth control devices and related materials” to be a normal medical service (“Margaret Sanger”). Nevertheless, Sanger was upset with the limited birth control options and she also had a vision of a contraceptive pill that could provide women with an easy, cheap, safe, and effective alternative. Therefore, she set out on a mission to fulfill that vision and in 1951 she met Gregory Pincus, a human reproduction expert who agreed to the project of inventing such a pill. Soon after, Sanger found the necessary financial support for the project from Katharine McCormick, the International Harvester heiress. This research project gave way as the first oral contraceptive, known as Enovid, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960 (“People &