Editing Reproduction: Eugenics and Global Reform in Margaret Sanger’s The Birth Control Review

Author: Ava Raguso

Field of Study: English

Program Affiliation: Source Project Research Program

Faculty Mentors: Will Glovinsky

Easel: 19

Timeslot: Afternoon

Abstract: While acknowledged as a pioneer of the birth control movement, Margaret Sanger has also been condemned for the racist and eugenic beliefs that critics say informed her work in family planning. Recent historical scholarship on Sanger and eugenics has increasingly focused on her movement’s international connections. Joining with this work, this study offers close readings of articles and essays published in The Birth Control Review, the journal that Sanger created in 1917. The Review reveals how Sanger's beliefs and advocacy linked up with worldwide discussions of eugenics, gender roles, public health, and population control. In the article “Legal Barriers of State and Nation,” Sanger’s magazine demonstrated how laws across the globe treated birth control as a crime, showing that restrictions on contraception were part of a broader international system of control. Understanding Sanger’s global influence is especially significant, as it helps illuminate how these ideas contributed to some of the most harmful outcomes of the eugenic birth control movement, including coercive sterilization programs in Puerto Rico.