Muckracker Project Transcript

Kids. They're pretty amazing. Kids bring us a multitude of things like joy, laughter, memories, focus, free labor etc. . When people are ready to shed new light into their life, it can truly be the most magnificent thing to happen to someone. Almost all women have the ability to bear an angel. But. What if you didn't want kids? What if you weren't ready? What if you were forced? What if your family had different views on life? There can be a multitude of reasons that you don't want kids. In 1898, a mother (at age 50) had wasted away and died from the strain of eleven childbirths and seven miscarriages. This was the start Margaret Sangers commitment to birth control. As she stood over her mothers coffin, she turned to her father a lashed out at him, stating that he "caused her death. Mother is dead from having too many children."

   Determined from her personal tragedy, she made her way to being a visiting nurse in the Lower East Side of New York. Only then did she realize how widespread her personal tragedy was to other women. Many women, mostly of poor/immigrant status, had faced an unwanted pregnancy. Because of the women's status, they had resorted to off-the-market, bottom of the barrel aborting tactics. Margaret knew this could go on no longer.

Margaret was born in 1879 in the midst of the Comstock act (1873). This act criminalized the manufacturing and distribution of contraceptives (Birth Control). Margaret knew that the only way she could change this law was to completely dismantle it. So she challenged the federal and state comstock laws by bringing women contraceptive devices, birth control information, etc. All she wanted to do was relieve pain for repeated and unwarranted pregnancies for women everywhere.

 In 1914, she devised the term "birth control" and sent women birth control devices in the mail. Throughout 1915 and 1916, Margaret had been indicted and arrested for opening her own (and the first) birth control clinic. However, not even this deterred her. She ended up creating the American Birth Control League and for the next 3 decades, she would campaign for proper, safe, and effective birth control to be brought into the mainstream life of Americans.

In 1951, she thought of the most efficient way to intake birth control - orally, like a magic pill. From this point on, Margaret had found medical expert Gregory Pincus whose expertise lied in human reproduction.. as well as a sponsor for the research: International Harvester heiress Katharine McCormick. Their collaboration would eventually lead to the first oral contraceptive - Enovid (which got approved by the FDA) which is known today as mestranol/noretynodrel.

Margaret had completed her lifelong goal of creating the best oral contraceptive for women to intake... and in a mere 4 years after her creation, in the 1965 Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut, the court ruled that the private use of contraceptives was a constitutional right.