Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Birth control is described as moral because it leads to higher individuality and a cleaner race.
In plain terms
Birth control is good because it helps people improve themselves and the race.
What can you take from it?
Reproductive choice is linked to moral improvement and racial betterment.

Where it applies

  • ethical debates on reproduction
  • eugenic history
  • moral philosophy

Putting it to work

  • study moral arguments in health
  • analyze eugenic claims
  • discuss reproductive ethics

Questions to consider

  • What makes a practice moral?
  • How do we judge reproductive rights ethically?

Another view

The term cleaner race reflects harmful eugenic thinking.

More from Margaret Sanger

  1. All of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class, and if morality is to mean anything at all to us, we must regard all the changes wh…

    Permalink to quote #20
  2. It is a noteworthy fact that not one of the women to whom I have spoken so far believes in abortion as a practice; but it is principle for which they are stand…

    Permalink to quote #22
  3. Has knowledge of birth control, so carefully guarded and so secretly practiced by the women of the wealthy class - and so tenaciously withheld from the working…

    Permalink to quote #19

Related quotes

  1. On a very rough-and-ready basis we might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, ins…

    Louis KronenbergerLouis Kronenberger quote #1
  2. Thee might observe incidentally that if the state paid for child-bearing it might and ought to require a medical certificate that the parents were such as to g…

    Bertrand RussellBertrand Russell quote #4
  3. Woman must have her freedom; the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she shall be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what m…

    Margaret SangerMargaret Sanger quote #5