Biography, Politics, Women's History

Margaret Sanger – Fighting for Reproductive Rights

Margaret Sanger treated many women who had illegal and dangerous abortion procedures. She fought for birth control information and contraception to be made available, and found it essential to women’s health for this information to be legal … It was very dangerous for Sanger to provide her services and information and she often risked jail time in order to help women.

In 1914, Sanger started The Woman Rebel, a feminist publication. She wanted to provide women with information about contraception. Sanger openly challenged the state and federal Comstock Act, which criminalized contraceptives (“American Experience: Margaret Sanger”). In 1916, Sanger was arrested for opening the first birth control clinic in the country. She worked toward better forms of contraception other than the diaphragm, which was expensive. Sanger helped with the creation of Enovid, the first oral contraceptive …

Biography, Politics, Women's History

Marie Curie – Celebrating an Inspirational Woman

… a fabricated scandal was brewing over personal letters published by a right-wing news source that were exchanged between Marie and Paul Langevin, a brilliant former pupil of Pierre’s seated in an unhappy marriage. Marie Curie’s fellow scientist Albert Einstein felt deep outrage on her behalf over this ordeal, and wrote her a letter proclaiming his support:

“I am impelled to tell you how much I have come to admire your intellect, your drive, and your honesty, and that I consider myself lucky to have made your personal acquaintance in Brussels … If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated” (Einstein 6).