Margaret Sanger is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
	This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on May 18, 2025.
Article milestones Date Process Result October 17, 2011 Good article nominee Listed August 21, 2015 Good article reassessment Delisted January 29, 2025 Good article nominee Listed February 23, 2025 Peer review Reviewed March 21, 2025 Featured article candidate Promoted Current status: Featured article

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Jut wondering if a 'See also' section would be useful, with Marie Stopes. Stronach (talk) 08:13, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I had a sentence about Stopes in the article:

[[Marie Stopes]], a British academic whose life would parallel Sanger's life in many ways, met Sanger and began a transatlantic collaboration that would last for several years.{{sfn|Baker|2011|p=91}}{{sfn|Chesler|2007|p=139}}

I removed it during the FA review process to make the text tighter. I have no objection to it going back in. It was right after where she met Havelock Ellis.

Or a See Also section is fine... But I've always subscribed to the theory that See also section should be unneeded because all important articles should already be mentioned in the body and linked there.

I wonder if she's in one of the categories at the bottom of the article, those are a kind of See Also. Noleander (talk) 09:07, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The footnotes feed the myth that there were "non-racist eugenicists" -- the very term meant "racial hygiene." This needs to be a whole section to avoid the entry being turned into a hagiography, which this entry is at this stage. - Special:Contributions/197.230.69.98

If you have specific changes you are suggesting for the article, please post some quotes from reliable sources (WP:RS), so we can discuss. Noleander (talk) 16:41, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether there were non-racist eugenicists. But I wonder where anyone got the idea that the word eugenics means "racial hygeine." The prefix "eu-" seems to mean "good" and "gene" is related to "genesis", meaning origins. It was supposed to be about "good origins." However, I am surprised to see so little about Sanger's racism in this article. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:28, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you have specific changes you are suggesting for the article, please post some quotes from reliable sources (WP:RS), so we can discuss. Noleander (talk) 16:41, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

AGREED. THEY ONLY SHOW PARTS OF HISTORY THEY WANT US TO SEE. PATHETIC 24.192.91.8 (talk) 11:31, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Have you read the detailed and well-sourced section Margaret Sanger#Sanger's approach to eugenics? If Sanger were such a racist, why would Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, who was the most prominent spokesman for Black liberation of his time (and who also generally supported eugenicist ideas) support her work? NightHeron (talk) 14:23, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that having the specific facts in that area is the best thing rather than worrying about (ahistorically) characterizing them using a fluid terminology. North8000 (talk) 14:02, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

An editor is attempting to add misleading details about the legality of abortion into the lead. This article is about a person, not a medical procedure. The legality of abortion is extremely complicated topic that varies over time and place. The only reason abortion is even mentioned in the lead to begin with is the anti-abortion movement continually publishes the false statement that Sanger supported abortion. There's already an entire section devoted to abortion in the article. Adding a word or two into the lead without context will mislead readers. If someone wants to add more information to the lead please discuss here in the talk page, first. Noleander (talk) 11:50, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's misleading to say that abortions were "generally illegal", but it is redundant to the earlier "In the early 1900s, contraceptives, abortion, and even birth control literature were illegal in much of the U.S" Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 11:56, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, there is some redundancy there. Tho the two sentences are a bit distinct, since the "in the early 1900s" is referring to a specific time frame, and painting the legal situation at the time Sanger was starting her activism. This is important in the lead to shed light on her motivations around 1910-1915. Later, some states started to legalize medically necessary abortions.

The problem with adding "generally illegal" is that it is misleading. The lead could just as accurately say "abortion was ....":

1. "generally illegal, but rarely prosecuted"
2. "generally legal when the mothers health was endangered"
3. "extremely common"
4. "desired by a large portion of the visitors to Sanger's clinics".

Each one of those alternatives is valid (although the validity varies over time) but they each convey a different emphasis to the reader. Rather than pick one, better to put all the nuance & details into the existing body section about Abortion.

The primary reason for the "abortions not performed" in the lead section is because the neutral, scholarly sources emphasize it. Why do they emphasize it? because when readers google "Margaret Sanger abortion" the top results are flooded with falsehoods promulgated by the anti-abortion movement that imply Sanger _did_ support abortion. Thus, the lead contains a key fact from scholarly sources that addresses a very common falsehood seen in Google search results.

If someone has reliable sources that emphasize another aspect of Sanger's views on abortion (not on abortion itself ... this article is about Sanger, not abortion) please provide quotes from the sources here in the Talk page so we can evaluate and discuss. Noleander (talk) 12:15, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wanting to open this as a discussion topic. I just am not experienced enough in wikipedia to understand the scope of what all would need to be edited here, but I think there is a major problem with this page. For me, it comes down to the phrase "unfit people" and "unfit children" used repeatedly in the segment on eugenics. The tone in multiple places reads as overly deferential to eugenicist ideas that are ridiculously bigoted. I don't think just editing the terms to "people deemed unfit" or "children deemed unfit" alone would fix it.

There is no such thing as an unfit child, and the fact that the page is written as if it implicitly accepts the idea that there is one is deeply appalling to me. HelenaBertrand (talk) 16:29, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article, correctly, states what the sources say about eugenics. The WP policy is that opinions of editors are not to be considered when writing the material. If you think the wording in the article does not accurately reflect the sources ... that is a valid cause for concern. Are the specific words or phrases in the article that are of specific concern? If so: are there sources you can provide that would support a different wording?

I reverted your change ... mostly because it was changed to say Others presented it as an altruistic desire ... because of the word "it".... which implies that all the proponents of eugenics were all describing or promoting the same concept. Rather, the sources say that there were various approaches to eugenics, and the same word "eugenics" was used to describe a variety of philosophies and goals. The word "it" is misleading to the readers.... especially in that context of that paragraph, where the article is conveying to the reader that the sources say there are several variants of eugenics, and is telling the reader which variant Sanger promoted. Noleander (talk) 16:42, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good analysis. North8000 (talk) 19:09, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article misses the e to use her own word and instead cites apologists 200.68.166.51 (talk) 18:04, 4 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Noleander Sanger was a suffragist which meant she supported women's right to vote. Please see: Margaret Sanger and the Women's Suffrage Movement, Roots of the pill. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:36, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your desire to improve the categorization of this article. However, the sources you cite are not RS for this article, because there are many, many solid, scholarly sources on Sanger (see WP:SCHOLARSHIP). So reaching into tertiary or informal sources amounts to WP:CHERRY PICKING. Those two sources you provide don't even have authors, do they?

Here are what some of Sanger's primary biographers say on the matter:

• Baker p 52: "Margaret Sanger soon discovered just how different her struggles were from the battles of those who sought more traditional and acceptable re¬ forms: the progressives who worked for more playgrounds for city children and public toilets for women, the temperance workers from the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union who wanted to end the sale of liquor and in their social purity division raise the marriage age for young girls, and the suffragists from the National American Woman Suffrage Association who lobbied for voting rights for women."
• Baker p 52: "But unlike suffrage, temperance, and urban reform, there was not even a solution, for no efficient means of female-controlled birth control existed in 1912. There would not be any safe, inexpensive, and convenient contraceptive for another fifty years. Sanger’s movement did not even have a name .."
• Baker p 77 "Sanger, unlike Goldman and Eastman and the women of the suffrage and temperance movements, targeted a special audience of working women whose “awakening” she would superintend, ..."
• Baker p 77 "Just as suffrage leaders such as Alice Paul encouraged civil disobedience to obtain votes for women, so Margaret Sanger promised defiance of the Comstock laws."
• Chesler p 59 "The [socialist] party embraced the cause of women's suffrage as an organizing tool, and Margaret was hired to promote the vote for women. Socialist Party letterbooks from 1911 record her compliant distribution of meeting notices and leaflets, but this experience was also short-lived. She quickly came to view the effort as a low priority in the larger struggle of working women for economic and social justice."
• Chesler p 61 "Margaret's disenchantment with suffrage as a tool of empowerment for Socialist women also reflected her dramatically altered personal circumstances."

To put her in the "American suffragists" category requires a couple of her biographers to say something like "She was a suffragist" or "She embraced the suffrage movement" or "she fought for the right of women to vote" ... something more than the glancing references that the biographers give. To the contrary, the biographers (above) contrast her struggle with the parallel struggle of suffragists. I have no doubt that, if asked, Sanger would say that she supported the right of women to vote. And, apparently, she wrote an essay in college on suffrage. But the quotes above indicate that she was aware of the suffrage movement, but essentially ignored it through the entirety the decades of her activism. She had to pick her battles, and suffrage was not one of them. Noleander (talk) 18:33, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

She was given clan membership after her speech at silver lake. She was a proud member of the KKK from that point on. 2600:1015:A007:8C87:85B1:67F:7AAE:7CD (talk) 15:04, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Question: Do you have verification from a reliable source? Can you provide a citation? Peaceray (talk) 15:21, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]