Talk:Margaret Sanger

Racism?

The footnotes feed the myth that there were "non-racist eugenicists" -- the very term meant "racial hygiene." This needs to be a whole section to avoid the entry being turned into a hagiography, which this entry is at this stage. - Special:Contributions/197.230.69.98

If you have specific changes you are suggesting for the article, please post some quotes from reliable sources (WP:RS), so we can discuss. Noleander (talk) 16:41, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't know whether there were non-racist eugenicists. But I wonder where anyone got the idea that the word eugenics means "racial hygeine." The prefix "eu-" seems to mean "good" and "gene" is related to "genesis", meaning origins. It was supposed to be about "good origins." However, I am surprised to see so little about Sanger's racism in this article. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:28, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

If you have specific changes you are suggesting for the article, please post some quotes from reliable sources (WP:RS), so we can discuss. Noleander (talk) 16:41, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

AGREED. THEY ONLY SHOW PARTS OF HISTORY THEY WANT US TO SEE. PATHETIC 24.192.91.8 (talk) 11:31, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Have you read the detailed and well-sourced section Margaret Sanger#Sanger's approach to eugenics? If Sanger were such a racist, why would Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, who was the most prominent spokesman for Black liberation of his time (and who also generally supported eugenicist ideas) support her work? NightHeron (talk) 14:23, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

I think that having the specific facts in that area is the best thing rather than worrying about (ahistorically) characterizing them using a fluid terminology. North8000 (talk) 14:02, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Sympathetic Bias towards Eugenics

Wanting to open this as a discussion topic. I just am not experienced enough in wikipedia to understand the scope of what all would need to be edited here, but I think there is a major problem with this page. For me, it comes down to the phrase "unfit people" and "unfit children" used repeatedly in the segment on eugenics. The tone in multiple places reads as overly deferential to eugenicist ideas that are ridiculously bigoted. I don't think just editing the terms to "people deemed unfit" or "children deemed unfit" alone would fix it.

There is no such thing as an unfit child, and the fact that the page is written as if it implicitly accepts the idea that there is one is deeply appalling to me. HelenaBertrand (talk) 16:29, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

The article, correctly, states what the sources say about eugenics. The WP policy is that opinions of editors are not to be considered when writing the material. If you think the wording in the article does not accurately reflect the sources ... that is a valid cause for concern. Are the specific words or phrases in the article that are of specific concern? If so: are there sources you can provide that would support a different wording?

I reverted your change ... mostly because it was changed to say Others presented it as an altruistic desire ... because of the word "it".... which implies that all the proponents of eugenics were all describing or promoting the same concept. Rather, the sources say that there were various approaches to eugenics, and the same word "eugenics" was used to describe a variety of philosophies and goals. The word "it" is misleading to the readers.... especially in that context of that paragraph, where the article is conveying to the reader that the sources say there are several variants of eugenics, and is telling the reader which variant Sanger promoted. Noleander (talk) 16:42, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Good analysis. North8000 (talk) 19:09, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

The article misses the e to use her own word and instead cites apologists 200.68.166.51 (talk) 18:04, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Category: American suffragist

Hi Noleander Sanger was a suffragist which meant she supported women's right to vote. Please see: Margaret Sanger and the Women's Suffrage Movement, Roots of the pill. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:36, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I appreciate your desire to improve the categorization of this article. However, the sources you cite are not RS for this article, because there are many, many solid, scholarly sources on Sanger (see WP:SCHOLARSHIP). So reaching into tertiary or informal sources amounts to WP:CHERRY PICKING. Those two sources you provide don't even have authors, do they?

Here are what some of Sanger's primary biographers say on the matter:

• Baker p 52: "Margaret Sanger soon discovered just how different her struggles were from the battles of those who sought more traditional and acceptable re¬ forms: the progressives who worked for more playgrounds for city children and public toilets for women, the temperance workers from the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union who wanted to end the sale of liquor and in their social purity division raise the marriage age for young girls, and the suffragists from the National American Woman Suffrage Association who lobbied for voting rights for women."
• Baker p 52: "But unlike suffrage, temperance, and urban reform, there was not even a solution, for no efficient means of female-controlled birth control existed in 1912. There would not be any safe, inexpensive, and convenient contraceptive for another fifty years. Sanger’s movement did not even have a name .."
• Baker p 77 "Sanger, unlike Goldman and Eastman and the women of the suffrage and temperance movements, targeted a special audience of working women whose “awakening” she would superintend, ..."
• Baker p 77 "Just as suffrage leaders such as Alice Paul encouraged civil disobedience to obtain votes for women, so Margaret Sanger promised defiance of the Comstock laws."
• Chesler p 59 "The [socialist] party embraced the cause of women's suffrage as an organizing tool, and Margaret was hired to promote the vote for women. Socialist Party letterbooks from 1911 record her compliant distribution of meeting notices and leaflets, but this experience was also short-lived. She quickly came to view the effort as a low priority in the larger struggle of working women for economic and social justice."
• Chesler p 61 "Margaret's disenchantment with suffrage as a tool of empowerment for Socialist women also reflected her dramatically altered personal circumstances."

To put her in the "American suffragists" category requires a couple of her biographers to say something like "She was a suffragist" or "She embraced the suffrage movement" or "she fought for the right of women to vote" ... something more than the glancing references that the biographers give. To the contrary, the biographers (above) contrast her struggle with the parallel struggle of suffragists. I have no doubt that, if asked, Sanger would say that she supported the right of women to vote. And, apparently, she wrote an essay in college on suffrage. But the quotes above indicate that she was aware of the suffrage movement, but essentially ignored it through the entirety the decades of her activism. She had to pick her battles, and suffrage was not one of them. Noleander (talk) 18:33, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

KKK clan member

She was given clan membership after her speech at silver lake. She was a proud member of the KKK from that point on. 2600:1015:A007:8C87:85B1:67F:7AAE:7CD (talk) 15:04, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Question: Do you have verification from a reliable source? Can you provide a citation? Peaceray (talk) 15:21, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Anyone can be given membership in any organization. That’s meaningless. When Martin Luther King, Jr. accepted the first Margaret Sanger prize, he praised Sanger’s work for reproductive rights, highlighting the deep, historic connections between the Civil Rights movement and the family planning movement. That means something. MarkBernstein (talk) 18:32, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

She never withdrew from the KKK and was still a Klan member at the time of her death in 1966. ~2026-37577-95 (talk) 05:34, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Question: Do you have verification from a reliable source? Can you provide a citation? Peaceray (talk) 06:14, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Feminist eugenicists

Does this category fit?Sarah from Queens (talk) 15:34, 2 February 2026 (UTC)Sarah from Queens

No.

First, that category should probably not even exist per WP:NARROWCAT which says that "Categories which intersect two (or more) topics or characteristics can result in very narrow categories with few members. Such categories should only be created when both parent categories are large enough for diffusion to be an option, and when similar intersections can be made for related categories" Are there any academics that discuss "feminist eugenics" as a thing, and - if so - do they mention Sanger?

Second, WP:NONDEFINING says articles should only be in a categorized "by their defining characteristics: Defining characteristics of an article's topic are central to categorizing the article. A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently refer to in describing the topic, such as the nationality of a person or the geographic location of a place." I'm not aware of any reliable sources that describe her as a "feminist eugenicist".

Third, her advocacy of eugenics was not a major part of her work. Scholars have concluded that she was not a sincere believer of eugenics, and merely adopted it as a means to an ends (making birth control available). Thus, it would be misleading to readers (WP:UNDUE) to insert additional emphasis on that facet of her life. She is already in category Category:American eugenicists. And the article has a huge section on her relation to the eugenics movement. Noleander (talk) 15:56, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

If it has a huge section on that topic, the category seems more apt. Sarah from Queens (talk) 15:58, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Can you reply to the points made above? Specifically 1,2,3 and the "UNDUE" issue. Noleander (talk) 16:01, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Inconsistencies in Article about Sanger's "true" beliefs

One seemingly well-sourced sentence in the article ( under Margaret Sanger#Eugenics) says

"Whether she genuinely believed in eugenic principles is a matter of debate; several historians conclude that her belief was not sincere, and suggest that she joined with the eugenics movement simply to lend legitimacy to her birth control efforts."

Regardless of the veracity of this claim, I don't see how it can coexist with the subsequent section, Margaret Sanger#Sanger's approach to eugenics, which basically lists all of the ways she expressed support specifically for eugenics and uses some of the same references as the previous claim (e.g., Carole McCann's Birth control politics in the United States, 1916-1945)

I don't doubt the significant amount of nuance required here to capture her views, but I think there's a mismatch over saying she held eugenicist views (essentially undeniable) and saying she held racist eugenicist views (debatable). I think someone with access to these references could greatly improve this article by reconciling these sections. Bhacha (talk) 18:53, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

@Bhacha - Regarding the topics you are mentioning, the sources make three points (among others):

1. Sanger published a lot of material unambiguously endorsing eugenics (and the article sensibly calls this her "approach to eugenics")
2. It is not clear if her publications that endorsed eugenics reflected a sincere belief, or were a "means to an end". Some historians suspect the latter.
3. Sanger's eugenic policies did not have a racist motivation, and Sanger did not intend to harm Black communities, according to the overwhelming consensus of scholars.

If you want to propose specific wording changes to the article, go ahead and made a specific suggestions here in the Talk page. Please include quotes from reliable sources that support the new material. Thanks. Noleander (talk) 19:06, 9 July 2026 (UTC)