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SANGER'S NURSING CAREER
Sanger attended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute where she studied nursing. In 1902 she completed the nursing program at White Plains Hospital. After this she moved to Hastings, New York where she worked as a obstetrical nurse in the lower east side. Here she witnessed the horrors correlating to poverty of botched abortions, unwanted pregnancies, miscarriages, and maternal fatalities. -
THE WOMAN REBEL
After seeing atrocities in her nursing career, Sanger decided she needed to make a change. She quit her job and pursued a political career focusing on birth control, which is a term she coined. In 1914 she wrote a magazine called The Woman Rebel. In this magazine she and many other women advocated for birth control education in younger generations. She was charged for violating the Federal Comstock Act that prohibits circulation of topics deemed obscene -
OPENING OF THE FIRST BIRTH CONTROL CLINIC.
Since being charged, Sanger fled to England until her charges were dropped. After returning to the United States she opened the first ever birth control clinic in Brooklyn. She was arrested for this, although while in penitentiary she published The Birth Control Review. -
AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE
Sanger held the first conference for birth control in New York. She created this league in order to focus on distributing birth control information to doctors. She also wanted to focus on creating accessible clinics for women, hopefully nationwide. -
NATIONAL COMMITTEE ON FEDERAL LEGISLATION FOR BIRTH CONTROL
Sanger created this lobbying organization in Chicago collaborating with the Illinois Birth Control League. She structured this into four congressional districts. She used this organization to do tours and spread her message of birth control education to the masses. The organization lobbied a campaign using public opinion to ratify sections of the Federal Penal Code that deemed birth control education obscene -
UNITED STATES V. ONE PACKAGE
Proof of Sanger's work shows in this 1936 case involving birth control. Upon hearing of this case Sanger immediately got involved. This case can be cited as the decision that essentially legalized birth control in the United States because it allowed physicians to distribute birth control. -
Research into a pill
In 1948 the clinic of Planned Parenthood, created by Sanger, gave a grant to biologist to develop research into a birth control pill. -
Human Trial of the first hormonal pill
In 1956 Planned Parenthood conducted the first human trial of the estrogen pill in Puerto Rico. It is worth noting that this trial was done unethically and without consent of the Puerto Rican women. The pill they were given had nearly 20x the amount of estrogen of pills today. -
FDA Approved Pill
After years of different trials and tribulations of estrogen pills, finally, in 1960, a hormonal pill was approved by FDA for sale on the market for women. -
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Revolution of the pill.
The introduction of the pill in 1960 did not immediately cause mass acceptance but rather limited what women could do with their bodies. Unmarried women could not easily get access to “the pill” due to societal beliefs that unmarried women should not partake in sexual activities. The sexual revolution caused a gradual change in the ideologies on the usage of the pill. Because of this it was not until the twenty-first century that teenage girls could access the pill without insurance.