名人轶事:Margaret Sanger

（单词翻译）

By Doreen Baingana

Broadcast: December 19, 2004

(THEME)

VOICE ONE:

I’m Shirley Griffith.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Sarah Long with the VOA Special English Program, People in America.

Today, we tell about one of the leaders of the birth control movement,

Margaret Sanger.

(THEME)

VOICE ONE:

Many women today have the freedom to decide when they will have children, if

they want them. Until about fifty years ago, women spent most of their adult

lives having children, year after year. This changed because of efforts by

activists¹ like Margaret Sanger. She believed that a safe and sure method of

preventing pregnancy² was a necessary condition for women’s freedom. She also

believed birth control was necessary for human progress.

VOICE TWO:

The woman who changed other women’s lives was born in Eighteen-Eighty-Three

in the eastern state of New York. Her parents were Michael and Anne Higgins.

Margaret wrote several books about her life. She wrote that her father taught

her to question everything. She said he taught her to be an independent

thinker.

Margaret said that watching her mother suffer from having too many children

made her feel strongly about birth control. Her mother died at forty-eight

years of age after eighteen pregnancies³. She was always tired and sick.

Margaret had to care for her mother and her ten surviving brothers and

sisters. This experience led her to become a nurse.

Margaret Higgins worked in the poor areas of New York City. Most people there

had recently arrived in the United States from Europe. Margaret saw the

suffering of hundreds of women who tried to end their pregnancies in illegal

and harmful ways. She realized that this was not just a health problem. These

women suffered because of their low position in society.

Margaret saw that not having control over one’s body led to problems that

were passed on from mother to daughter and through the family for years. She

said she became tired of cures that did not solve the real problem. Instead,

she wanted to change the whole life of a mother.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

In Nineteen-Oh-Two, Margaret married William Sanger. They had three children.

Margaret compared her own middle-class life to that of the poor people she

worked among. This increased her desire to deal with economic and social

issues. At this time, Margaret Sanger became involved in the liberal

political culture of an area of New York City known as Greenwich Village.

Sanger became a labor⁴ union organizer. She learned methods of protest and

propaganda⁵, which she used in her birth control activism.

Sanger traveled to Paris, France, in Nineteen-Thirteen, to research European

methods of birth control. She also met with members of Socialist⁶ political

groups who influenced her birth control policies. She returned to the United

States prepared to change women’s lives.

VOICE TWO:

At first, Margaret Sanger sought the support of leaders of the women’s

movement, members of the Socialist party, and the medical profession. But,

she wrote that they told her to wait until women were permitted to vote. She

decided⁷ to continue working alone.

One of Margaret Sanger’s first important political acts was to publish a

monthly newspaper called The Woman Rebel. She designed it. She wrote for it.

And she paid for it. The newspaper called for women to reject the traditional

woman’s position. The first copy was published in March, Nineteen-Fourteen.

The Woman Rebel was an angry paper that discussed disputed and sometimes

illegal subjects. These included labor problems, marriage, the sex business,

and revolution.

Sanger had an immediate⁸ goal. She wanted to change laws that prevented birth

control education and sending birth control devices through the mail.

VOICE ONE:

The Woman Rebel became well-known in New York and elsewhere. Laws at that

time banned the mailing of materials considered morally bad. This included

any form of birth control information. The law was known as the Comstock Act.

Officials ordered Sanger to stop sending out her newspaper.

Sanger instead wrote another birth control document called Family Limitation. #p#副标题#e#

The document included detailed⁹ descriptions of birth control methods. In

August, Nineteen-Fourteen, Margaret Sanger was charged with violating¹⁰ the

Comstock Act.

Margaret faced a prison sentence of as many as forty-five years if found

guilty. She fled to Europe to escape the trial. She asked friends to release

thousands of copies of Family Limitation. The document quickly spread among

women across the United States. It started a public debate about birth

control. The charges against Sanger also increased public interest in her and

in women’s issues.
VOICE TWO:

Once again, Margaret Sanger used her time in Europe to research birth control

methods. After about a year, she decided to return to the United States to

face trial. She wanted to use the trial to speak out about the need for

reproductive freedom for women.

While Sanger was preparing for her trial, her five-year-old daughter, Peggy,

died of pneumonia¹¹. The death made Sanger feel very weak and guilty. However,

the death greatly increased public support for Sanger and the issue of birth

control. The many reports in the media caused the United States government to

dismiss charges against her.

VOICE ONE:

Margaret Sanger continued to oppose the Comstock Act by opening the first

birth control center in the United States. It opened in Brownsville, New York

in Nineteen-Sixteen. Sanger’s sister, Ethel Byrne, and a language expert

helped her. One-hundred women came to the birth control center on the first

day. After about a week, police arrested the three women, but later released

them. Sanger immediately re-opened the health center, and was arrested again.

The women were tried the next year. Sanger was sentenced to thirty days in

jail.

With some support from women’s groups, Sanger started a new magazine, the

Birth Control Review. In Nineteen-Twenty-One, she organized the first

American birth control conference. The conference led to the creation¹² of the

American Birth Control League. It was established to provide education, legal

reform and research for better birth control. The group opened a birth

control center in the United States in Nineteen-Twenty-Three. Many centers

that opened later across the country copied this one.

Sanger was president of the American Birth Control League until Nineteen-

Twenty-Eight. In the Nineteen-Thirties she helped win a judicial¹³ decision

that permitted American doctors to give out information about birth control.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Historians¹⁴ say Margaret Sanger changed her methods of political action during

and after the Nineteen-Twenties. She stopped using direct opposition¹⁵ and

illegal acts. She even sought support from her former opponents.

Later, Sanger joined supporters of eugenics. This is the study of human

improvement by genetic¹⁶ control. Extremists among that group believe that

disabled, weak or “undesirable” human beings should not be born. Historians

say Sanger supported eugenicists only as a way to gain her birth control

goals. She later said she was wrong in supporting eugenics. But she still is

criticized for these statements.

VOICE ONE:

Even though Margaret Sanger changed her methods, she continued her efforts

for birth control. In the Nineteen-Forty-Two, she helped form the Planned

Parenthood Federation¹⁷ of America. It became a major national health

organization after World War Two.


Margaret Sanger moved into areas of international activism. Her efforts led

to the creation of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. It was

formed in Nineteen-Fifty-Two after an international conference in Bombay,

India. Sanger was one of its first presidents.


The organization was aimed at increasing the acceptance of family planning

around the world. Almost every country in the world is now a member of the

international group.


VOICE TWO:

Margaret Sanger lived to see the end of the Comstock Act and the invention of

birth control medicine. She died in Nineteen-Sixty-Six in Tucson, Arizona.

She was an important part of what has been called one of the most life-

changing political movements of the Twentieth Century.

(THEME)

VOICE ONE:

This Special English program was written by Doreen Baingana and produced by

Caty Weaver¹⁸. I’m Shirley Griffith.


VOICE TWO:

And I’m Sarah Long. Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICA

program on the Voice of America.