The Pivot of Civilization   By: Margaret Sanger (1883-1966)

By Margaret Sanger

To Alice Drysdale Vickery

Whose prophetic vision of liberated womanhood has been an inspiration

"I dream of a world in which the spirits of women are flames stronger than fire, a world in which modesty has become courage and yet remains modesty, a world in which women are as unlike men as ever they were in the world I sought to destroy, a world in which women shine with a loveliness of self revelation as enchanting as ever the old legends told, and yet a world which would immeasurably transcend the old world in the self sacrificing passion of human service. I have dreamed of that world ever since I began to dream at all."

Havelock Ellis

CONTENTS

Introduction By H. G. Wells

Chapter I A New Truth Emerges II Conscripted Motherhood III "Children Troop Down from Heaven" IV The Fertility of the Feeble Minded V The Cruelty of Charity VI Neglected Factors of the World Problem VII Is Revolution the Remedy? VIII Dangers of Cradle Competition IX A Moral Necessity X Science the Ally XI Education and Expression XII Woman and the Future

Appendix: Principles and Aims of the American Birth Control League

INTRODUCTION

Birth Control, Mrs. Sanger claims, and claims rightly, to be a question of fundamental importance at the present time. I do not know how far one is justified in calling it the pivot or the corner stone of a progressive civilization. These terms involve a criticism of metaphors that may take us far away from the question in hand. Birth Control is no new thing in human experience, and it has been practised in societies of the most various types and fortunes. But there can be little doubt that at the present time it is a test issue between two widely different interpretations of the word civilization, and of what is good in life and conduct. The way in which men and women range themselves in this controversy is more simply and directly indicative of their general intellectual quality than any other single indication. I do not wish to imply by this that the people who oppose are more or less intellectual than the people who advocate Birth Control, but only that they have fundamentally contrasted general ideas, that, mentally, they are DIFFERENT. Very simple, very complex, very dull and very brilliant persons may be found in either camp, but all those in either camp have certain attitudes in common which they share with one another, and do not share with those in the other camp.