Terrible Virtue

"The process was slow and frustrating. What little information existed was veiled in in euphemisms and hidden in puritanical ellipses."

Ellen Feldman

A Terrible Virtue

Margaret Sanger was an amazing woman. She was one who I had never heard much about, but what she did has made my life so much better. She lived from 1879 to 1966, coined the term 'birth control,' was a sex educator, and started the organizations that would eventually lead to Planned Parenthood. My life would be unbelievably different if she had not existed.

Ellen Feldman tells her story in A Terrible Virtue, and fictionalized, first person account of Sangers life. Sanger was one of thirteen children, and she saw that poor women's inability to choose the amount of children they would have and when they would have them was dangerous to the women, and a means for keeping those who were poor poor (its hard to save money with another mouth to feed). Birth control was available, but only for men and only for the rich. She did enormous amounts of research into birth control, provided information on women reproductive health (much of the information was restricted, as were the procedures and medicine that would improve women's livelihoods), and worked to provide these services to all women who needed them.

I didn't much like the book. The writing was contrived, there was no nuance or subtlety, the narration didn't sound like a person, and the letters from others to Sanger were randomly dropped in seemed contrived and didn't add to the story. While it attempted to show the complexities of the woman herself, it didn't add much context to many of her complexities and the controversies surrounding her.

The story of Sanger, however, is fascinating and important. Her struggle shouldn't be forgotten, nor her goal to provide women with health care and the ability to control their lives and bodies by choosing if and when to have children. Her fight for women's rights should not be forgotten, and it should not be believed to be over.