Margaret Sanger, "University of Chicago Liberal Club Speech Notes," 30 Jan 1925.

Source: "Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection Margaret Sanger Microfilm, Sophia Smith Collection S70:1058."

Sanger used these notes for a speech at the University of Chicago Liberal Club; she also likely also gave the speech at Columbia University on December 3, 1925.

There are few subjects which have so large a practical significance & at the same time cut so deeply into the foundation of social evolution as B.C.

There have been few other questions of Equal importance left so long in equal obscurity, & none perhaps which can show so unequaled a leap in our Social vista as B.C. has done in so brief a period of time.

Ten years ago the words were a crime. Today Yale Divinity School, Bryn Mawr, Harvard, Columbia

The youth of today will must recover the blunders of prejudice & ignorance & keep us to face the facts of life.

B.C. has become the mark of a superior source of moral responsibility.

What is B.C.?

Conscious control of birth rate, measure prevents contraception of human life.

Why prevent ↑control population↓ birth rate.

Because civilization is confronted with two problems-that of pressure of population on food supply, that of reconciling humanitarianism with race improvement.

The conscious control of the birth rate is the key to both.

Population can be controlled by increasing death or decreasing birth rate.

History supports the fact that death rate controlled populations. Values method, disease, famine, pestilence then operated to settle the question.

Barbarianism, savages, Early civilization-infanticide, abandonment, foeticide

Plato, Aristotle, Seneca-(infanticide-foeticide)

Middle Western Europe Middle Ages to End of 18th Century infanticide prevalent

B.C. will wipe out practice of foeticide & infanticide as [,infanticide?] .

Values methods cannot operate.

Consequently civilization is [Measured?] by here increasing hordes of diseased unfit.

ProfMeyers [Statement?] 105-85

Two groups-large family + small

Kallikak &Jukes

8 billion in 4 Drs.

Inf. mort. 200,000

Maternal mort. 20,000

Subject Terms:

• birth control, access to
• birth control, American opinion on
• birth control, civilization and
• birth control, definitions of
• birth control, population and
• birth rate
• birth rate, consequences on
• birth rate, decline in
• birth rate, efforts to increase
• birth rate, efforts to reduce
• birth rate, increase in
• birth rate, population growth and
• England, birth control in

Copyright, Margaret Sanger Project