She opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, founded Planned Parenthood , and collaborated in the development of the first birth control pill. Sanger is regarded as a founder and leader of the birth control movement. Sanger worked as a nurse in the slums of New York City, where she often treated mothers desperate to avoid conceiving additional children, some of whom were suffering the effects of unsanitary back-alley abortions.
Out of these encounters arose a determination to give women the power to choose when to have children. Her drive to promote birth control was influenced by Malthusian concerns about the detrimental effects of overpopulation. She was also an adherent of the eugenic movement , and believed that birth control would reduce the number of "unfit" people, and improve the overall health of the human race. To promote birth control, she gave speeches, wrote books, and published periodicals.
Sanger frequently provoked arrest by distributing birth control literature in contravention of obscenity laws. She was arrested several times, and each time she hoped to get a favorable legal ruling that would overturn laws that impeded birth control. She was responsible for several major legal victories, including one that enabled physicians to dispense contraceptives ; and another β Griswold v Connecticut β which legalized contraception, without a prescription, for couples nationwide.
She established a network of dozens of birth control clinics across the country, which provided reproductive health services to hundreds of thousands of patients. Sanger discouraged abortion, and her clinics never offered abortion services during her lifetime.
She co-founded several organizations dedicated to family planning, including Planned Parenthood and International Planned Parenthood Federation. In the early s, Sanger persuaded philanthropists to provide funding for biologist Gregory Pincus to develop the first birth control pill. She died in Arizona in Michael immigrated to the United States at the age of 14, and joined the Union army in the Civil War as a drummer at Upon leaving the army, he studied medicine and phrenology but ultimately became a stonecutter.
