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On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.

Margaret Sanger

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Margaret Sanger
Age: 86 †
Born: 1879
Born: September 14
Died: 1966
Died: September 6
Activist
Feminist
Film Director
Nurse
Sex Columnist
Trade Unionist
Corning
New York
Margaret Higgins
Margaret Higgins Sanger
Margaret Hennessy Higgins
Limits
Fertility
Problem
Defective
Today
Discouraging
Urgent
Mentally
Physically
Limit
Discourage
Contrary
Eugenics

More quotes by Margaret Sanger

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It is a noteworthy fact that not one of the women to whom I have spoken so far believes in abortion as a practice but it is principle for which they are standing. They also believe that the complete abolition of the abortion law will shortly do away with abortions, as nothing else will.
Margaret Sanger
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We are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all-that the wealth of individuals and of state is being diverted from the development and the progress of human expression and civilization.
Margaret Sanger
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I resolved that women should have knowledge of contraception. They have every right to know about their own bodies. I would strikeout--I would scream from the housetops. I would tell the world what was going on in the lives of these poor women. I would be heard. No matter what it should cost. I would be heard.
Margaret Sanger
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As a cause becomes more and more successful, the ideas of the people engaged in it are bound to change.
Margaret Sanger
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No one can doubt that there are times when an abortion is justifiable but they will become unnecessary when care is taken to prevent conception. This is the only cure for abortions.
Margaret Sanger
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The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind.
Margaret Sanger
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Birth control is nothing more or less than...weeding out the unfit.
Margaret Sanger
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How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan? We must make this country into a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds.
Margaret Sanger
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We should not minimize the great outstanding service of Eugenics for critical and diagnostic investigations. It demonstrates ... that uncontrolled fertility is universally correlated with disease, poverty, overcrowding and the transmission of hereditable traits.
Margaret Sanger
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The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately. Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive periodwe prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded.
Margaret Sanger
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No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.
Margaret Sanger
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Negroes and Southern Europeans are mentally inferior to native born Americans.
Margaret Sanger
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The most serious charge that can be brought against modern benevolence is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression.
Margaret Sanger
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I wanted each woman to be a rebellious Vashti, not an Esther.
Margaret Sanger
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A woman’s duty: To look the whole world in the face with a go-to-hell look in the eyes… to speak and act in defiance of convention.
Margaret Sanger
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The masses of Negroes...particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disasterously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.
Margaret Sanger
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Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man's equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.
Margaret Sanger
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Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child.
Margaret Sanger
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Very early in my childhood I associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jail with large families.
Margaret Sanger
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Like begets like. We gather perfect fruit from perfect trees... . Abused soil brings forth stunted growths.
Margaret Sanger