The front cover of the “Birth Control Review” where Sanger published her article https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924007352325;view=1up;seq=73
Excerpt from Margaret Sanger’s “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control and Propaganda” https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924007352325;view=1up;seq=73
As the Introduction to the museum discusses, Margaret Sanger was an activist and leader in the Birth Control Movement (Burgin 2018). In the early 1900s when a large portion of the population was beginning to fear the decrease in the Anglo-Saxon race, the Eugenics movement skyrocketed. Sanger’s article about the connection of eugenics and the Birth Control Movement speaks to whom she, and the larger population, see as the fit and qualified population to be reproducing. Sanger refers to the “unfit” in society as those who are poor, uneducated, and the feeble-minded (Sanger 1921). Her intention with this is to promote those who are not physically or mentally fit, who aren’t educated and wealthy enough, are those who are defined as the people who should not be giving birth. This way there will be a decrease in “unfit” babies and it will “discourage the over fertility” of the “defective” (Sanger 1921). Sanger’s and many other people’s in the 20th century mentality and generalized stereotype of individuals with disabilities not being fit to parent continues to be a concern and widespread stereotype in the 21st century.