Margaret Higgins Sanger (September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist.
Sanger 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.
Sangers' efforts contributed to several judicial cases that helped legalize contraception in the United States.
Sanger has also been criticized for supporting eugenics, but remains an iconic figure in the American reproductive rights movement.
As part of her efforts to promote birth control, Sanger found common cause with proponents of eugenics, believing that they both sought to "assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit."
Sanger was a proponent of negative eugenics, which aims to improve human hereditary traits through social intervention by reducing reproduction by those considered unfit.
Sangers' eugenic policies included an exclusionary immigration policy and compulsory segregation or sterilization for the profoundly retarded.
In her book The Pivot of Civilization, she advocated coercion to prevent the "feeble-minded" from procreating. She wrote "we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population".
Sanger was opposed to abortions, both because they were dangerous for the mother in the early 20th century and because she believed that life should not be terminated after conception. In her book Woman and the New Race, she wrote, "while there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger