The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger
Volume IV: Round the World for Birth Control (1920-1966)
Volume IV will be devoted to the most understudied and
least understood aspect of Sanger's career -- her international work.
Beginning with her visit to post-World War I Germany, it carries Sanger through her groundbreaking tour of Japan and China in 1922, her
1930s trips to the Soviet Union and India, and her several postwar trips to
Japan and India, the volume will document Sanger's active promotion of birth
control clinics throughout the world. Volume IV will cover her travel interwar
travels to Europe and Asia, the historic 1927 World Population Conference in
Geneva, which Sanger organized, along with subsequent international birth
control conferences from 1930 to 1961, as well as the Birth Control
International Information Centre, a clearing-house for the exchange of ideas and
practical information. The volume will address Sanger's post World War II
revival of international support for birth control, documenting the backlash of
post-Holocaust rejection of the eugenics movement and the pro-natalist voices of
those whose populations were decimated by the war. It will also trace the
founding of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and
illustrate the relationships between population controllers and many feminist
and health-oriented birth controllers. The volume will close with Sanger's
efforts to maintain control over the direction of the IPPF even after her
resignation as president, not only by trying to choose her successor but by
attempting to ensure that the new leadership not ignore the primary importance
of a feminist-based commitment to birth control.
Annotation research for Volume IV is underway; the volume will be published by the University of Illinois Press.
1952 Margaret Sanger at International Conference on Planned Parenthood.
Courtesy of Margaret Sanger Papers Project
Jan. 7, 2009