Woman Of Valor: Margaret Sanger And The Birth Control Movement In America

Ellen Chesler’s Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, reveals the story of Margaret Sanger and her battles for birth control and to help women gain control over their bodies. Margaret Sanger believed that contraception is the key to reorganize power to women at home and society. For many years, she struggled with overwhelming opposers, such as the United States Government and the Catholic Church. Sanger’s movement was perplexing and impulsive. Sanger was an advocate for female unification, who at times, liked the association of men. She also was a cherished mother, but did not like taking care of her own children, and thus neglected them. In Chesler’s book, she illustrates Margaret Sanger’s unstable story of her personal life and her admirable work in the birth control movement. According to Daniel Kevles, a Stanley Woodward Professor Emeritus of History, “[Ellen Chesler] approaches her subject with critical sympathy and informed psychological insight. ‘Woman of Valor’ is at once richly detailed and capaciously conceived…” conveys how Ellen Chesler revitalizes the story of Margaret Sanger and the work she has done to …show more content…
In a period when information about sexuality, anatomy, and sexual intercourse was prohibited as immoral, Sanger pursued a lifelong quest to provide women information about the different types of contraceptives. In 1913, when she wrote a column about sexual education, in order to help them make the decision on whether they want to carry children. She did this because during this time, inequality among men and women was a major problem, and many women did not have the choice to get pregnant, and were actually forced to bear children, which caused pain and death. However, due to the Comstock laws established in 1873, that made contraceptives illegal, even to send them through mail, Sanger was put in jail for her