Margaret Sanger Quotes

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.

Abortion – Yes! But that is just the beginning…. My uterus is mine and it is up to me to look after it.

If you want to control human reproduction you have to control women’s bodies.

I believe that reproductive rights are human rights, and they are nonnegotiable.

Choice is a uniquely female issue. We don't share the same reproductive systems.

We are always mistress of what we carry in our womb.

…American women… have learned it should be for them to decide when and how often they shall take upon themselves the sacred duties of motherhood, but as law and custom give to the husband absolute control of the wife’s person, she is forced to not only violate physical law, but to outrage the holiest instincts of her being to maintain even a semblance of that freedom which by nature belongs to every human soul.

We ought to respect the right of women to make choices in their lives.

Woman must have her freedom; the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she shall be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers; and before it can be his, it is hers alone.

With the development of the [birth control] pill, “womanhood” would no longer mean the same thing as “motherhood”.

I come from a family of five women. I would never pretend to tell one of my sisters what to do with her body, and don’t want the Federal Government doing that, either.

If a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support... autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice.

Margaret Sanger didn't just introduce the idea of birth control into our culture at large, she freed women from indenture to their bodies.

Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.

Women are allowed more freedoms and we're fighting for more freedoms, we're experiencing more freedoms won.

It's just, for me, the natural standard: a woman should be able to decide over her own body.

It is the patriotic duty of women to bear four children.

If the country wants babies, I feel this conscription of women will be a backward step, for it is taking the best, most formative years from a girl’s life, and giving her a taste of freedom from home drudgery that many crave for. Will they settle later to homes and children?

The freedom that women were supposed to have found … largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion; things to make life easier for men, in fact.

Voting means very little…if I may not keep my body, and its uses, in my absolute right. Not one wife in a thousand can do that now, & so long as she suffers this bondage, all other rights will not help her to her true position.

Reproductive choice is a fundamental human right and we can never take it for granted. On this issue, you're either with us or against us.

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.

There is no way to treat fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses as separate constitutional persons [separate from the mother] without subtracting pregnant women from the community of constitutional persons.

Has knowledge of birth control, so carefully guarded and so secretly practiced by the women of the wealthy class – and so tenaciously withheld from the working women – brought them misery? Rather, has it not promoted greater happiness, greater freedom, greater prosperity and more harmony among them? The women who have this knowledge are the women who have been free to develop, free to enjoy in its best sense, and free to advance the interests of the community.

I think women have to be able to choose... sort of, the right of choice. They are the ones that have to make the decision because they're the ones that are going to decide to bring up that child or not.