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Margaret Higgins Sanger was born on September 14, 1879 in Corning, New York. She was an American birth control activist and founded the American Birth Control League (eventually called Planned Parenthood). 

She enrolled in a nursing program in White Plains, NY and soon entered into her second marriage after a failed first marriage at the age of 18. In this new marriage she engaged in extra-marital affairs and encouraged her husband to do the same claiming that the marriage bed was “the most degenerating influence in the social order”.  She soon began writing a weekly column called “What every girl should know”, and in doing this, and distributing a pamphlet to impoverished women she routinely defied the Comstock Law of 1873 which outlawed the “dissemination of contraceptive information and devices” and labeled it as obscene.

In 1914 she launched a newspaper advocating birth control called The Woman Rebel.  Two years later she opened a family planning and birth control center.   Soon after she founded the ABCL and served as President for seven years.  She was a strong advocate of the birth control pill when it was introduced in the 1960’s.

While her legacy is controversial there is no doubting that she was the leader of the modern birth control movement and she was instrumental in its providing its universal access.

She died in 1966 at the age of 87.

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