Episode 36 – Margaret Sanger and Eugenics

A Eugenics Society poster (1930s) from the Wellcome Library Eugenics Society Archive.

Margaret Sanger founded the organization that later became Planned Pioneer. She has been widely lauded as a staunch advocate of women’s reproductive rights, but there’s more to the story. Join us this week as we delve into Sanger’s story as well as the simultaneous rise of eugenics. The United States in general and California pioneered the field of eugenics, and that is not necessarily a good thing! From forced sterilizations to medical experiments without the patient’s consent, many of the ideas and methods emerging within the eugenics movement later found expression in the gruesome experiments and ideologies of Germany in the 1930s.

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