Time to honor Margaret Sanger

I think that Margaret Sanger should be on the penny, Abraham Lincoln has been on the penny close to a decade and I think it’s only fair to give someone else a chance to let people know what their contribution to the world was. If we look back to the numerous faces on dollar bills and coins we would recognize that they are all important people who have contributed to our society in some way, shape, or form. Well I think that Margaret Sanger should have her moment to shine because she is important too. To those who do not know why she is important, this may be the way for them to find out and ask questions.
Margaret Sanger is known for her crusade to legalize birth control which later spurred the movement for women’s liberalization. As a young girl Margaret witnessed her mother’s slow death worn out after 18 pregnancies and 11 live births. Later while working as a nurse and midwife in the poorest neighborhoods of New York city before World War I she saw women deprived of their health, sexuality and ability to care for children already born. She was appalled at the death from self-induced abortions
Contraceptive information was suppressed by clergy-influenced, physician accepted laws. It was this injustice that inspired Sanger to defy the church and the state. In 1914 she launched a feminist monthly The Woman Rebel which advocated birth control. In 1916 she opened the US’s first family planning clinic in Brooklyn and was arrested for creating public nuisance. She later escaped to Europe to avoid severe criminal penalties after being indicted for inciting violence and promoting obscenity. Her case was dismissed after her return to the States but she continued to push legal and social boundaries by initiating sex counseling and organizing the first international population conference. Her struggle with law dramatized her cause and won doctors the right to dispense birth-control information to their patients.
In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League which became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She spread her wings to as far as Japan and India where organizations she helped start still flourish. Sanger was past 80 when she saw the first marketing of a contraceptive pill, which she helped develop. Sanger’s brave and joyous life included fulfilling work, three children, two husbands and an international network of friends and colleagues. She was charismatic and never abandoned her focus on women’s freedom. She lived as if she and everyone else had the right to control her or his own life. By word and deed, she pioneered the most radical and humane political movements of the century. She died on Sept 6, 1996 in Tuscan, Arizona. For all her trials and tribulations I believe she should be able to have her face put on the U.S Penny.