CRJ #7

CRJ #7
When I read Margaret Sanger’s experience with Mrs. Sacks it really made me realize how hard it was back before women had many rights or contraceptive rights. Sanger was a nurse and one night was called in to take care of a patient at a house. The patient was Mrs. Sacks. She had tried to give herself an abortion and was found on the floor almost dead. After weeks of recovery, she finally became better. When she was able to talk to the doctor and Sanger when she was well she asked them what she could do to keep from getting pregnant again. The doctor, being a male, just laughed at her and told her all she could do was, “… Tell Jake to sleep on the roof!” This made her so upset and made Sanger realize how unfair not having the opportunity to choose to take contraceptives or not was. Months went by and Sanger received another phone call from the same family. She immediately went to their house only to find the same thing had happened, except this time, Mrs. Sacks had died. From that point on, Sanger vowed to stop being a nurse and stop curing “superficial things.” Instead, she was going to get the word out about women’s choices about contraceptives. She was going to get the information out there and make sure everyone women would one day have a choice in this matter. She wanted to make sure that incidents like what happened to Mrs. Sacks did not happen to anymore women and that no children were neglected due to overcrowded families. Sanger ended up being very successful in “being heard.” Today she is seen as one of the major feminists in the feminists movement. Today, I believe she would think that we have made great strides in contraceptive use and that women have much more say in how they chose to live sexually. Though I’m sure there are many more things to come, our society has virtually accepted the thought of contraceptive use and women’s rights.