Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, saw herself as "The New Woman," one emancipated from traditional religion and morality, empowered to have sex without procreation, and able to compete publicly with men. Yet behind this façade was a soul lost in emptiness and degradation.
An atheist who scorned all hope of an afterlife, Margaret Sanger lived entirely for the here and now. Born in 1879, she married twice and cheated on both spouses. Her first husband, whom she wed in August 1902 and divorced in 1921, was the socialist Bill Sanger. With him she had three much-neglected children. While married to Bill -- and this is proven by letters and journals that survive -- she had many affairs, some lasting for years, with such men as the Editor of American Parade Walter Roberts, the well-known English sexologist Havelock Ellis, the Spanish radical Lorenzo Portet, and the English patrician Hugh de Selincourt, as well as his wife Janet. These are facts, not rumors or suspicions, since her adulteries are well documented in the definitive biography, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America written by Ellen Chesler, who makes use of the archives in Smith College and the Library of Congress. Why did Margaret not destroy these compromising papers? Like a female Dorian Gray, she kept her scabrous self hidden away for her entire life. But perhaps she thought that was long enough and wanted to be "outed" after her death. (more...)
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