Margaret Sanger Birth Control Clinic Raid Analysis
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The 1920s was a time for social activism for women in the United States which evolved into the legal and social equality of all women in America today. Following the fight for women’s national suffrage—gained in 1920 with the addition of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution—came the main struggle to gain adequate access to birth control by women of all classes. During the fight for suffrage, women fought for access and knowledge of birth control, but the issue was propelled to the forefront in the 1920s with the help of activist Margaret Sanger. Despite the controversies surrounding her motives in her promotion of the distribution of birth control and run-ins with the law, she helped bring radical changes politically and…show more content… This time, however, was looked upon in a more positive light by Sanger: "I think that we have public opinion back of us…We feel that the raid has brought attention of the right kind toward us. Many persons who otherwise would never have heard the name have now become our friends. And many medical men have also united their protests against the police to ours". In spite of the issues that were being created through the raids, Sanger saw the attention that the movement was gaining through this public humiliation. Along with the raid, it was a positive move for when physicians began to join to movement as having physicians was the “first step…so that our laws may be changed, so that motherhood may be the function of dignity and choice, rather than one of ignorance and chance…Conscious control of offspring is now becoming the ideal and the custom in all civilized…show more content… Eugenics is, briefly, “a science that tried to improve the human race by controlling which people became parents.” When the American Eugenics Society was founded in 1923 to broaden eugenic principles, the society attempted to pull in the American public as much as possible. At state fairs, the society would have “fitter family” contests and would hold sermon contests in churches and synagogues. By the time the 1924 Immigration Act passed in the U.S., the eugenics craze was focused upon immigrants, and framed issued that eugenics could solve on property, privilege, and race. The anti-immigrant sentiment favored white, northern Europeans. Moreover, many thought that one nationality could be distinguished from one another based on hereditary characteristics. Eugenics focused on creating a favorable immigrant from northern Europe that was white. Although Margaret Sanger supported Eugenics in order to make a healthier pubic, she objected to the stereotyping of races, stating that intelligence and other inherited traits are varied when it comes to each