Multimedia Collection
Margaret Sanger
DVD
87 min
2005
HQ764 .S3 M37 2005 DVD
Birth control advocate, self-styled libertarian, and ardent proponent of women's rights - Margaret Sanger was all of these, as this balanced, probing documentary attests. Using rare archival footage, diary excerpts, and commentary from historians, critics, and relatives, the program traces Sanger's extraordinary life and exhaustive work in the promotion and legalization of contraception. The documentary examines Sanger's legal battles, her work to distribute scientific birth control information, and her best-known achievement: the establishment of Planned Parenthood. Grandson Alexander Sanger - himself a birth control activist - offers insight into her Bohemian life as well as the fierce opposition she faced from conservative religioius and social groups. Margaret Sanger is seen in both triumph and failure. At the start of her career, she opened the first birth control clinic in the United States. She finished her work a half-century later after launching the research that led to the birth control pill. But her darker side - her use of the racist and elitist arguments of eugenics - haunts her memory to this day.
Narrated by Blair Brown.
Distributed by Films for the Humanities & Sciences.
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