Research Assinment

I am certainly not one to condone teenage pregnancy (then again, I don’t think most people

would) but I have seen too many of my friends face the fear of early pregnancies. Maybe

it’s the fact that I attend a single-sex high school that has me praising the feminist actions

of Margaret Sanger, or maybe it’s because I’ve grown up in an era infatuated with sex and

gender equality. Either way, I view Ms. Sanger as a person who was very important in

shaping both our present culture and thought. She fought for what she believed in,

surmounted the odds and made it possible for women to speak out.

I think it is pretty safe to say that birth control has changed the way people, both men and

women, live their lives. It allowed women to be seen as intellectual, capable human beings

rather then merely wombs and sexual objects. I know for certain that it has shaped

society’s views of women – extending, in my generation, from the workplace to the living

room. Now women are able to have both career and family – two goals that I fully intend on

attaining when I am older. In essence, the availability of contraception has empowered

women throughout the world by giving them the ability to play multiple roles in our society,

from mother to marine biologist. So birth control, I salute you.

The United States, seeing many changes after two explosive world wars, was forming its

own identity and separating itself from the rest of the world when Ms. Sanger made her

views known. She saw a country based on freedoms, including sexual freedom. My friends

were neither promiscuous nor unsafe in their actions, so who was the government to decide

what people should do with their bodies? Ms. Sanger was among the first to give these

thoughts a voice.

Speaking out in a time when women had little say in the government, Sanger faced harsh

criticism; however, she persevered and fought for what she thought right. While many

women in Ms. Sanger’s time were...