Margaret Sanger

Brown and white photograph of a woman in front of a bookshelf and wearing white.

Margaret Sanger was a feminist and women’s rights activist. She is known for coining the term, “birth control.” In 1910, she started a publication promoting a woman’s right to birth control but laws forced her to flee the country in 1915. This didn’t stop her in pursuing women’s rights to birth control, and in 1916 she opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. It was in 1919, that Sanger published the article, “A Parents’ Problem or Woman’s?” where she wrote, “No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body.” Later in 1921, she established the American Birth Control League, which would lead to today’s Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She died in 1966, fighting her entire life for women’s rights.