Woman of valor
Subtitle: Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement in America
By: Ellen Chesler.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1992
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 639
Subjects: Sanger, Margaret, 1879-1966; Birth control -- United States -- Biography; Women social reformers -- United States -- Biography
Description: Margaret Sanger went to jail in 1917 for distributing contraceptives to immigrant women in a makeshift clinic in Brooklyn. She died a half-century later, just after the Supreme Court guaranteed constitutional protection for the use of contraceptives. Now, Ellen Chesler provides the first authoritative biography of this great emancipator, whose lifelong struggle helped women gain control over their own bodies. An idealist who mastered practical politics, Sanger seized on contraception as the key to redistributing power to women in the bedroom, the home, and the community. For fifty years, she battled formidable opponents ranging from the U.S. Government to the Catholic Church. Her crusade was both passionate and paradoxical. She was an advocate of female solidarity who often preferred the company of men; an adoring mother who abandoned her children; a socialist who became a registered Republican; a sexual adventurer who remained an incurable romantic. Her comrades-in-arms included Emma Goldman and John Reed; her lovers, Havelock Ellis and H.G. Wells. Drawing on new information from archives and interviews, Chesler illuminates Sanger's turbulent personal story as well as the history of the birth control movement. An intimate biography of a visionary rebel, this is also an epic story that extends from the radical movements of pre-World War I to the family planning initiatives of the Great Society. At a time when women's reproductive and sexual autonomy is once again under attack, Woman of Valor is indispensable reading for the generations in debt to Sanger for the freedoms they take for granted.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 589-607) and index.
Table of contents: title: The woman rebel. Ghosts -- Love and work -- Seeds of rebellion -- The personal is political -- Bohemia and beyond -- A European education -- The frenzy of renown -- The company she kept -- The lady reformer. New woman, new world -- The conditions of reform -- Organizing for birth control -- Happiness in marriage -- Doctors and birth control -- A community of women -- Grande Dame, Grandmere. Lobbying for birth control -- Same old deal -- Foreign diplomacy -- From birth control to family planning -- Intermezzo -- Last act -- Woman of the century.