MARGARET SANGER: Rebel With A Cause

by Virginia Coigney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 19, 1969

This book could not have been published a few years ago"" (Dr. Mary Calderone); now you can choose between two (see Lader, below) or better, annex both. Despite a tendency to deal in the pat, pointless terms of ""greatness,"" this is the stronger personal portrait, fuller and more searching about Mrs. Sanger's early life and the factors in her environment that structured her thought (particularly her Irish immigrant father's political and religious radicalism), more open about her relationships with others (the husband she separated from, the children she sent to boarding school, the sister whose martyrdom she resented). ""How does a pretty suburban housewife, mother of three lovely children, become a single-minded crusader, a criminal and a fugitive?""--the approach is offensive but the steps are all here, from Sadie Sachs' death bearing the child she shouldn't have had through the incendiary pamphlet and flight; demonstrations and organization; the first clinic, imprisonment and the decision legalizing birth control advice in New York; the shift from agitation to education, from birth control to population control (with a now-timely endorsement from W. E. B. DuBois). Organizational ""accountability"" was not her style, stirring up people was--and this sympathetic account succeeds because it sees her whole.

Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION