A visiting nurse in New York City's Lower East Side, Margaret Sanger cared for many of the poor women whose health suffered from frequent childbirth, miscarriage and abortion. She worked to give working-class women access to accurate and effective birth control.

At the time, "Comstock Laws" on the federal and state level banned the distribution of birth control information. Ms. Sanger wrote in magazines and newsletters supporting a woman's right to birth control. Her articles were banned several times and led to her arrest for violating postal obscenity laws. After studying birth control methods in England and the Netherlands, she returned to America in 1916, and opened the nation's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York. After only nine days, the clinic was raided and the staff arrested.

In 1936, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that doctors were exempt from the Comstock Laws, making it legal for them give women information on contraception. Ms. Sanger continued lobbying for birth control legislation and shifted the movement's message towards more mainstream values. Ms. Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which in 1942, changed its name to Planned Parenthood Federation of America.