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.
Meaning of the quote
This quote means that a woman is not truly free if she cannot decide what happens to her own body, like whether or not she wants to have a baby. A woman is only truly free when she can choose for herself if she wants to become a mother or not.
About Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. She popularized the term “birth control”, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Sanger’s efforts contributed to legalizing contraception in the US, but she has also been criticized for her support of eugenics.
More quotes from Margaret Sanger
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.
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)
She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)
The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)
Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises.
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)
Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should not have more than two children at most. The average working man can support no more and and the average working woman can take care of no more in decent fashion.
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)
War, famine, poverty and oppression of the workers will continue while woman makes life cheap. They will cease only when she limits her reproductivity and human life is no longer a thing to be wasted.
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)
A free race cannot be born of slave mothers.
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)
A mutual and satisfied sexual act is of great benefit to the average woman, the magnetism of it is health giving. When it is not desired on the part of the woman and she gives no response, it should not take place.
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)
The submission of her body without love or desire is degrading to the woman’s finer sensibility, all the marriage certificates on earth to the contrary notwithstanding.
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)
Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts.
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)
When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race.
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)
Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man’s attitude may be, that problem is hers – and before it can be his, it is hers alone.
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)
Dire poverty drives this mother back again to the factory (no intelligent person will say she goes willingly).
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)
Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.
American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)