Category: Reproductive Politics

• Birth Control as Genetic Cleansing

  Birth Control as Genetic Cleansing was the theory that Margaret Sanger and the broader birth-control movement were not primarily concerned with women’s autonomy or family limitation, but were acting within a transnational eugenic program aimed at reducing the reproduction of the poor, the disabled, the colonized, and other groups judged “unfit.” In its strongest form, the theory claimed that Sanger was effectively working for a global eugenics council, whether formal or informal, and that birth control clinics were instruments of population engineering rather than personal liberty. The theory drew power from a documented historical overlap: Sanger did engage with eugenic ideas, and the early twentieth century saw active international eugenics networks. The conspiracy version treated that overlap not as context, but as command structure.