Margaret Higgins Sanger

Woman and the New Race Margaret Higgins Sanger

Publisher Marketing: Written in the early 20th Century, this was a time when women were just starting to have some rights, such as voting, education, etc. Sanger saw the right of a woman to have control of her own body as the next goal. She discusses birth control, large families and the impact they have on women, abortion and the right of women not to have children if she so wishes. An emotive book which raises issues that are still (unfortunately) part of debates even in todays modern world. Excerpt: "THE most far-reaching social development of modern times is the revolt of woman against sex servitude. The most important force in the remaking of the world is a free motherhood. Beside this force, the elaborate international programmes of modern statesmen are weak and superficial. Diplomats may formulate leagues of nations and nations may pledge their utmost strength to maintain them, statesmen may dream of reconstructing the world out of alliances, hegemonies and spheres of influence, but woman, continuing to produce explosive populations, will convert these pledges into the proverbial scraps of paper; or she may, by controlling birth, lift motherhood to the plane of a voluntary, intelligent function, and remake the world. When the world is thus remade, it will exceed the dream of statesman, reformer and revolutionist."