A Parents' Problem or Woman's? By Margaret Sanger

Many people who believe in Birth Control as the means of voluntary motherhood say that the propaganda of the movement is directed too much to women and too little to men. They contend that the appeal should be to men quite as much as to women and that a strong effort should be made to arouse the masculine half of humanity to its responsibilities in relation to the evils growing out of the enslavement of the reproductive function.

It is true that the propaganda of the Birth Control movement in America has been addressed almost entirely to women. It has been couched in the terms of woman's experience. Its prime importance to her has been continuously and consistently stressed. The reason for this course is at once fundamental and practical.

The basic freedom of the world is woman's freedom. A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman enchained cannot choose but give a measure of bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

Read More:  Margaret Sanger, "A Parents' Problem or Woman's?," March 1919