"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. 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. ― Margaret Sanger, "Woman and the New Race" Over 100 years ago Margaret Sanger opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States. An advocate for women’s reproductive rights who was also a vocal eugenics supporter, Margaret Sanger has left a complicated legacy — and one that conservative christians have leveraged into sweeping attacks on the organization she helped found: Planned Parenthood. So why would I want to include Margaret Sanger in my blog series about saints? The self-evident reasons are simple: the incredible freedom Sanger offered so many women by teaching us that we do have a choice and that reproductive rights belong to us, not the state or the church. If you want to know about my views on abortion please read my blog, Abortion is Normal, posted on 4/18/2020. Or view the list I created about the ten things you don’t have to believe to be a Christian. There is also a less straightforward reason why I have decided to celebrate Margaret Sanger’s story in this blog series: she had the courage to speak a very uncomfortable truth from her own story. Although her views on eugenics are much more complicated than often presented, I still do not agree with them. Does this disagreement or even dislike mean there is nothing to learn from the radical work of one individual who, against all odds, shifted our world view? Like all the Saints I admire, Margaret Sanger’s very human story shaped her. She grew up as the 6th of 11 children. Her mother conceived 18 times and died at the young age of 49. Sanger was also a nurse who threw herself into difficult and complicated work, tending to the poorest of the poor in New York City. These two factors alone deeply shaped her world view. It is easy to have a distaste for abortion if you have never cared for a mother tending too many children with too little food. It is easy to think God should plan our families when you have access to fresh air and green space and enough work. It is also easy to think that all children are planned by God, even those born with horrid birth defects, when you are not the one listening to them wail in pain with yet another medical procedure. Margaret Sanger witnessed all of this and more. In America, too many of our leaders refuse to speak the truth of their experience. But we have this to learn from Margaret Sanger: speak the unpopular truth of your story. Margaret Sanger knew that if women had access to birth control, then their lives and the lives of their children would radically improve. Today, that truth remains difficult to hear. It is not easy to be faced with the reality that some women lack the material resources to care for their children. It is not easy to face the reality that not all women, maybe even women you know, do not have the emotional bandwidth to be a mother or care for multiple children. Yet this is the truth of many women’s lives and we cannot silence it just because it makes us uncomfortable. Margaret Sanger taught us that speaking our own story’s unpopular truth might free others. She gave women the freedom to choose--to choose their own destiny, to choose their own identity, to choose their own path. Her loving work of liberation makes her a saint, not just for women, but for men as well, and for God.
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