The Pivot of Civilization

Arguably her most important and influential book, this controversial work, first published in 1922 by pioneering birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger, attempted to broaden the still-radical idea of birth control beyond its socialist and feminist roots. Moving away from a single-minded focus on women's reproductive rights to the larger issue of the general health and economic prosperity of the whole human race, Sanger argued that birth control was pivotal to a rational approach toward dealing with the threat of overpopulation and its ruinous consequences in poverty and disease. Through this book Sanger hoped to persuade the medical establishment to assume control over contraceptive distribution, and thereby to lessen the religious, legal, and moral opposition that continued to restrict access to contraceptive information.

Margaret Sanger was an early feminist and women's rights activist who coined the term "birth control" and worked towards its legalization. Sanger started her campaign to educate women about sex in 1912 by writing a newspaper column called "What Every Girl Should Know." In 1914, Sanger started a feminist publication called The Woman Rebel, which promoted a woman's right to have birth control. The Comstock Act of 1873 prohibited the trade in and circulation of "obscene and immoral materials. She was very famous for the revolutionary books Woman and the New Race, Family Limitation, The Pivot of Civilization, and What Every Girl Should Know.