Episode 24: Margaret Sanger - The Empathy Engine Against Obscenity

This week, we dive into the life and explosive legacy of Margaret Sanger—the radical nurse who coined the term "birth control" and took on a federal anti-obscenity law, the Comstock Act of 1873, to educate on and deliver reproductive health. We're calling her an "Empathy Engine" because her fight was born from a deep, human compassion for women suffering from unwanted pregnancies and dangerous, illegal abortions.

Sanger’s revolutionary work fundamentally changed the world for millions, giving women bodily autonomy. But her legacy is undeniably complicated. In her pursuit of a revolutionary public health concept, she embraced and supported the American eugenics movement, aligning herself with the deeply flawed rhetoric of her era.

We are here not to apologize for the messiness of history, but to unpack it—examining a true revolutionary not as a saint or a demon, but as a person whose actions brought both profound progress and at times, harm.

In this episode, you can expect us to discuss sensitive and hard-hitting topics:

• Reproductive rights and the historical weaponization of law.
• The shame surrounding unwanted pregnancy and lack of access to care.
• The thorny, unsettling history of the American eugenics movement.
• How Sanger's radical empathy drove her to fight the establishment.
• The modern-day stakes of information sharing and empathy in public discourse, especially as facts become harder to access and divisive arguments grow louder.

This is a history lesson with real-world, modern stakes. If you need to hit pause, please do, but we encourage you to stay for a discussion that is more relevant now than it has been in decades.

 "Eugenics" is the practice or advocacy of improving the human species by selectively mating people with specific desirable hereditary traits. It aims to reduce human suffering by “breeding out” disease, disabilities and so-called undesirable characteristics from the human population. Early supporters of eugenics believed people inherited mental illness, criminal tendencies and even poverty, and that these conditions could be bred out of the gene pool.  Modern eugenics, more often called human genetic engineering, has come a long way—scientifically and ethically—and offers hope for treating many devastating genetic illnesses. Even so, it remains controversial.

https://www.history.com/articles/eugenics

https://www.britannica.com/science/eugenics-genetics

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm

https://www.biography.com/activists/margaret-sanger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood

Transcript

Welcome to HerStance everybody. This is the podcast that looks at the world through the lens of groundbreaking women. Before we dive in, a quick note about today’s subject. Our leading lady is the legendary and highly controversial figure, Margaret Sanger.

In an episode about a woman who spent her life fighting to make a revolutionary public health concept legal, you can expect us to discuss sensitive and hard-hitting topics: Reproductive rights, the historical weaponization of law, the shame surrounding unwanted pregnancy, and the thorny, unsettling history of the American eugenics movement.

Margaret Sanger’s legacy is complicated. She was a radical nurse who pioneered a movement that gave women bodily autonomy, but she also embraced some of the deeply flawed, racist, and classist rhetoric of her era.

We are here not to apologize for the messiness of history, but to unpack it—to examine the actions of a true revolutionary, not as a saint or a demon, but as a person who fundamentally changed the world for millions of women.

This is a history lesson with real-world, modern stakes. If you need to hit pause, please do, but we encourage you to stay for a discussion that is more relevant now than it has been in decades.

As always, I appreciate your support for HerStance and your feedback after you have a listen is always welcome and encouraged!  So, let’s get on with it!

HerStance: Margaret Sanger—The Empathy Engine Against Obscenity

Today, we're considering what happens when the concept of empathy and humanity is taken out of the equation of public discourse, especially when discussing global information sharing, scientific advancement, and the intentions behind those who wield power.

Knowledge is neutral until someone puts a context around it. Data is neutral until someone analyzes it and tells a story with it from a certain point of view.

While in free societies, everyone is entitled to their opinion, philosophers have long considered opinion to be suspicious, existing somewhere between knowledge and ignorance. As Immanuel Kant summarized, opinion is consciously "insufficient judgement, subjectively and objectively." Freedom of opinion is vital, but its limits are tested when it risks damage to an individual or the public.

Today, we are bombarded by AI-generated videos, fake news, and "alternative facts." With free public broadcasting outlets facing defunding, and a lack of transparency in government, factual information is becoming harder to access.

What's missing? The crucial element of empathy. We're not exchanging ideas; we're just hearing louder, more divisive arguments, often modeled by our top leaders. These actions stem from a fundamental lack of consideration and kindness.

Our inspirational leading lady today came to her life's work out of an abundance of empathy.

Let me introduce you to Margaret Sanger: the nurse who coined the term "birth control" and took on the Comstock Act of 1873, a restrictive federal anti-obscenity law, to educate about and deliver on reproductive health.

The Unspeakable Truth: Obscenity, Death, and Desperation

In the early 1900s, simply possessing literature about your own body and contraception options was illegal in much of the U.S. It was deemed "obscene" to publish information about avoiding pregnancy, even in medical materials.

Today, the fight over information isn't theoretical. The very foundation Margaret Sanger chipped away at—the Comstock Act of 1873—is being actively weaponized by the conservative right. It's a "zombie law," long considered dead, that has suddenly been revived.

This law, passed at the urging of anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, categorized contraceptives and abortion-related materials as "obscene and immoral" articles that were illegal to send through the U.S. mail or by common carrier. Violations came with a maximum fine of $5,000 (equivalent to over $130,000 today) and up to 10 years of imprisonment.

Think about that: a 150-year-old law, designed to police morality and ban sex education, now threatens to criminalize the mailing of essential supplies, from medication abortion pills to tools used for miscarriage management, potentially nullifying state laws that protect reproductive rights. This is the ultimate stripping away of transparency and access—a digital-age ban on vital health supplies based on a 19th-century moral code.

It is against this draconian spirit of censorship and lack of empathy that Margaret Sanger fought her entire life.

At the turn of the 20th Century, Sanger worked as a nurse in the slums of New York City, where she witnessed firsthand the desperate measures mothers took to avoid conceiving additional children. She went to the public library to look for literature about contraception, and there wasn’t any.

The hardships women faced were epitomized in a story Sanger often recounted: while treating a mother named "Sadie Sachs" for a severe sepsis infection from a self-induced abortion, the attending doctor only laughed and told Sadie to tell her husband "to sleep on the roof"—to abstain from sex. A few months later, Sanger was called back to Sadie’s apartment and found she had died after attempting another self-induced abortion.

This moment was the origin of Sanger’s commitment. She opposed abortion not on religious grounds, but as a societal ill and a public health danger that, she believed, would disappear if women were able to prevent unwanted pregnancy.

Sanger understood that to be free, a woman needed control over her body. She famously declared: “No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”

The Legal Gauntlet: Challenging Comstock

Margaret Sanger was born the 6th of 11 children. Her mother had several miscarriages, and Sanger believed these successive pregnancies contributed to her mother's death at a young age. This personal context fueled her professional observations of the link between poverty, uncontrolled fertility, and high rates of maternal mortality.

Margaret Sanger came up at a pretty heady time in Greenwich Village. Bohemian, known for its radical politics—She and her husband socialized with the likes of writer Upton Sinclair, and anarchist Emma Goldman. Sanger was a member of the Women’s Committee of the New York Socialist Party and the Liberal Club. She supported the Industrial Workers of the World union and participated in a number of strikes. Good times!

Sanger's passion was fueled by the leftist, anti-capitalist, and free-love atmosphere of the Village. She presented at meetings of the Heterodoxy Club, a radical women's group dedicated to discourse on feminism and suffrage. For Sanger, birth control was never just a medical issue; it was a socialist issue—a crucial lever for ending the cycle of women's poverty and empowering the working class against entrenched power structures. She believed that reproductive control was the very definition of a woman's economic and personal rebellion.

She began her campaign by writing columns for The New York Call socialist magazine, like What Every Girl Should Know (1912–13), which were considered shockingly frank about sexuality.

In 1914, she was indicted for mailing materials advocating birth control through her magazine The Woman Rebel and a pamphlet Family Limitation. Rather than face a 5-year sentence under the Comstock Act, she fled to England.

Upon her return in 1917, after the charges were dropped, she immediately opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, in Brooklyn, New York. That clinic—in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn—was staffed by Sanger, her sister Ethel Byrne, and activist Fania Mindell. On its very first day, over 150 women lined up outside, desperate for the information that the Comstock Act declared "obscene." By the time the police raided the clinic just nine days later, it had served over 450 women. 

They weren't just giving out devices; they were collecting detailed medical records and case histories—pioneering the idea of a clinical research bureau that prioritized data and science over moral judgment. Sanger and her staff were arrested, but their willingness to be martyrs made national news and created a flurry of public support that dramatically accelerated the movement. She deliberately courted arrest to force the issue into the legal system and the public consciousness. She was arrested, charged with maintaining a "public nuisance," and served 30 days in the Queens penitentiary.

This legal harassment did not deter her; it galvanized public opinion. Her subsequent legal appeals prompted federal courts to first grant physicians the right to advise on birth control and, crucially, led to a 1936 reinterpretation of the Comstock Act, which finally permitted physicians to import and prescribe contraceptives. Sanger didn't just advocate; she forced the legal system to evolve.

Legacy Under Attack: The Modern Parallel

In 1921, Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which would eventually become the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). Her mission was based on the principle: "every woman must possess the power and freedom to prevent conception."

She also traveled to Europe to study the issue of birth control there and organized the first World Population Conference in Geneva in 1927.

Her trips to Europe were strategic. She studied clinics in the Netherlands and found that, due to an emphasis on child spacing and open access to contraceptive information, the country had one of the lowest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world. This evidence allowed her to pivot her argument: birth control wasn't just a matter of freedom, it was a measurable public health triumph. This international focus eventually culminated in her founding of the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1953, showing her vision was never confined to American borders.

Today, more than 50 years later, that legacy is under attack, and the parallels to Sanger's fight against the obscenity laws are stark.

In the early 20th century, the state restricted access to health information under the guise of morality. Today, we are seeing the conservative right take similar actions that threaten women’s health and access to social support with a similar lack of empathy for the less fortunate.

Consider the current crisis in reproductive rights:

• The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 immediately eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, mirroring the days when women had no legal choice regarding their reproductive future.
• We're seeing an increase in state-level efforts to restrict information and services, not only for abortion but also for contraception access, sex education, and even gender-affirming care. This is a deliberate stripping away of transparency in health information, reminiscent of the Comstock Act's prohibition on "obscene" literature.
• Planned Parenthood, the organization Sanger pioneered, operates over 600 health clinics in the U.S., providing services far beyond abortion, including clinical breast exams, cervical cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and birth control. Research shows that closures of Planned Parenthood clinics lead to increases in maternal mortality rates. The sustained political and financial attacks on PPFA directly threaten the health of millions of women, particularly those in low-income and rural communities.

Sanger’s efforts to establish clinics in the African American community, including the Harlem Clinic in 1930, demonstrated her focus on ensuring equitable access to health care. While she faced later controversy regarding her association with the debunked eugenics movement, her fundamental drive was to allow all communities the choice to control the size and spacing of their families.

I’ll put a link in the show notes if you’re interested in learning more about what the Eugenics “science” was all about.

In the 1950s, Sanger recruited the scientists who would develop the first oral contraceptive, Enovid, approved by the FDA in 1960. She lived to see another reproductive rights milestone in 1965, when Griswold v. Connecticut made birth control legal for married couples. She literally moved mountains to make information and methods available.

Sanger worked from the place of empathy in all she did. To quote a former politician, "Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge... The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world."

My hope in bringing Margaret Sanger’s story to HerStance today is to illustrate that when all the information is available to us, and when we lead from a place of profound purpose larger than the self, our world is fundamentally more just, balanced, and humane. The fight for access and information that Sanger led is not over; it is a battle we are actively fighting today.

You’ve reached the HerStance Challenge

We started this episode by recognizing that Margaret Sanger's life work began with a single, profound act of empathy for a dying woman named Sadie Sachs, and that her fight was fundamentally a battle for the transparent sharing of vital information against restrictive laws.

Today, we face a resurgence of those same restrictive forces, packaged in a modern lack of empathy for those who are most vulnerable.

So, for this week’s HerStance Challenge, we call it The Empathy Audit. We have two parts: one focused on information and one focused on action.

Challenge Part I: The Information Firewall

Just as the Comstock Act tried to create a firewall around health knowledge, powerful voices today are trying to restrict transparency and access.

Your challenge is to contact your local library or school board and ask a simple, direct question about their collection and content policies regarding women’s and reproductive health. Specifically:

1. Ask if they currently provide comprehensive, medically accurate sex education resources (or have access to them through community partnerships).
2. Ask what their policy is regarding challenges to books or materials that discuss historical figures like Margaret Sanger, or topics like contraception, abortion, or gender identity.

The goal is not to start a fight, but simply to exercise transparency by demanding clarity. You are auditing the integrity of the information firewall in your own community.

Challenge Part II: The Act of Modern Empathy

Sanger's work was about ensuring that every woman, regardless of income, had access to care. Today, local clinics are often the only lifeline for those who have lost access to care due to state-level restrictions.

Your challenge is to take one small, tangible action to support a local clinic or social service organization.

1. Donate: If you can, make a small financial donation to your local Planned Parenthood affiliate or an independent women’s health clinic.
2. Supply: Contact a local women's shelter, diaper bank, or community assistance program and ask specifically what they are running low on (diapers, period products, over-the-counter contraceptives, etc.). Buy those items and deliver them.
3. Share: Use your own platform—social media, a community group, or simply a conversation with a friend—to share factual information about where to get safe and legal reproductive health care and resources, without judgment or rhetoric.

Margaret Sanger spent her life fighting to ensure that knowledge and care were delivered with profound purpose and kindness. This week, let us honor her legacy by conducting our own Empathy Audit, and making sure that transparency and compassion are the bedrock of our communities.

That’s your HerStance Challenge. Now go make some noise.

You’ve been enjoying HerStance podcast, written, produced and hosted by me, Sandra Koelle.

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