A dry, detailed but engaging tale of a fascinating woman whose passion, drive and determination almost single-handedly led to the liberation of women from the burdens, disease, death and poverty of endless childbirth and large families. Born in Corning, New York, the sixth of eleven children to Irish immigrants, she early demonstrated her independence and drive in seeking education and trained as a nurse. Marrying a crypto-Jew, William Sanger, at 21, she bore three children and was a strict Socialist before finding her life and work at the age of 30. Influenced by Mabel Dodge and Emma Goldman in Greenwich Village but interrupted by a decade of child rearing in Hastings-on-Hudson, she returned to New York City to begin decades of trying to provide women with control over their own bodies as well as address overpopulation. She endured arrest and harassment for her clinics and education efforts due to the Comstock Law and traveled extensively abroad for international conferences, lectures, and fund-raising. Her efforts eventually resulted in two major accomplishments—the oral contraceptive and Griswold vs. Connecticut giving married women the right to privacy in 1965. A feisty, egotistic non-collaborative woman, she was the necessary impetus in these critical events. Married twice, she lived in Tucson until her death in 1966 at 86 years of age. Planned Parenthood is the organization that she founded in 1942 and continues her work today.

Similarities to today’s battles over gay marriage and abortion—inappropriate role of the Catholic Church; change accomplished via the courts, not legislatures.  People: Pearl Buck, Clarence Gamble, HMS, Juliet Rablee—Cornish, New Hampshire.