Sanger, Margaret Louise (1883-1966)

US health reformer and crusader for birth control. In 1914 she founded the National Birth Control League. She founded and presided over the American Birth Control League 1921-28, the organization that later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1952.

Sanger was born in Corning, New York; she received nursing degrees from White Plains Hospital and the Manhattan Eye and Ear Clinic. As a nurse, she saw the deaths and deformity caused by self-induced abortions and became committed to providing health and birth-control education to the poor. In 1917 she was briefly sent to prison for opening a public birth-control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916.

Her Autobiography appeared in 1938.