Episode 24: Margaret Sanger - The Empathy Engine Against Obscenity

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This week, we dive into the life and explosive legacy of Margaret Sanger—the radical nurse who coined the term "birth control" and took on a federal anti-obscenity law, the Comstock Act of 1873, to educate on and deliver reproductive health. We're calling her an "Empathy Engine" because her fight was born from a deep, human compassion for women suffering from unwanted pregnancies and dangerous, illegal abortions.

Sanger’s revolutionary work fundamentally changed the world for millions, giving women bodily autonomy. But her legacy is undeniably complicated. In her pursuit of a revolutionary public health concept, she embraced and supported the American eugenics movement, aligning herself with the deeply flawed rhetoric of her era.

We are here not to apologize for the messiness of history, but to unpack it—examining a true revolutionary not as a saint or a demon, but as a person whose actions brought both profound progress and at times, harm.

In this episode, you can expect us to discuss sensitive and hard-hitting topics:

• Reproductive rights and the historical weaponization of law.
• The shame surrounding unwanted pregnancy and lack of access to care.
• The thorny, unsettling history of the American eugenics movement.
• How Sanger's radical empathy drove her to fight the establishment.
• The modern-day stakes of information sharing and empathy in public discourse, especially as facts become harder to access and divisive arguments grow louder.

This is a history lesson with real-world, modern stakes. If you need to hit pause, please do, but we encourage you to stay for a discussion that is more relevant now than it has been in decades.

 "Eugenics" is the practice or advocacy of improving the human species by selectively mating people with specific desirable hereditary traits. It aims to reduce human suffering by “breeding out” disease, disabilities and so-called undesirable characteristics from the human population. Early supporters of eugenics believed people inherited mental illness, criminal tendencies and even poverty, and that these conditions could be bred out of the gene pool.  Modern eugenics, more often called human genetic engineering, has come a long way—scientifically and ethically—and offers hope for treating many devastating genetic illnesses. Even so, it remains controversial.

https://www.history.com/articles/eugenics

https://www.britannica.com/science/eugenics-genetics

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm

https://www.biography.com/activists/margaret-sanger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood

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