Margaret Sanger: Did Birth Control Rewire Feminism and Spark the Sexual Revolution? with Dr. Angela Franks

Did birth control give women freedom or did it fundamentally change feminism itself?

Before the 1960s sexual revolution, before the Pill became mainstream, Margaret Sanger was already advancing a radical idea: that women could not be free unless their fertility was controlled. She didn’t just promote contraception, she reframed it as essential to freedom, autonomy, and progress.

But what if that idea didn’t actually expand freedom…what if it redefined womanhood?

In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I sit down with Dr. Angela Franks, theologian, author of Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy: The Control of Female Fertility, to uncover the deeper story behind the birth control movement.

We explore:

• How early feminism shifted from supporting women as mothers, to controlling fertility
• Why Sanger saw fertility as the root of social problems
• The overlooked connection between the birth control and the eugenics movement
• How contraception reshaped sex, relationships, and commitment
• Why separating sex from procreation didn’t just change behavior, it changed the meaning of sex itself
• How the Pill made the sexual revolution possible and why it brought unintended consequences
• The ethical questions behind early contraceptive trials on vulnerable women
• Whether modern feminism has lost something essential
• And what it would take to reclaim an authentic vision of feminism today

This isn’t just about history. It’s about the ideas that shaped our culture and whether they delivered the freedom we were promised.

Because if fertility becomes something to control, what do we lose in the process?

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Bioethics Babe

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