"She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it"
About this Quote
A stark moral calculus is being drawn: childbirth is not only sacred or domestic labor but a passage through the vale of death. The phrase echoes Psalm 23 and exposes the peril historically attached to labor and delivery. Before antibiotics, modern anesthesia, and safe blood transfusions, hemorrhage, infection, and eclampsia made every pregnancy a gamble. Naming that danger refuses sentimental gloss and centers the woman as the one who bears the risk, the pain, and the consequences.
From that premise Sanger builds a rights claim. If neither husband nor state can ethically compel an individual to undergo a life-threatening ordeal, then the person who faces the ordeal must hold the power to accept or refuse it. The argument pivots on bodily autonomy and consent, ideas now common in bioethics but radical in the early 20th century. It counters patriarchal and legal paternalism that long treated women as vessels of family or national interest, subject to religious edicts, Comstock laws, and male-dominated medical authority.
The cadence is legal and moral, almost syllogistic: risk confers authority. It reframes reproduction not as a duty owed outward but as an inwardly governed decision. That logic underwrote Sanger’s campaign for access to contraception and information, which the state criminalized in her time. By invoking the solitude of the woman in labor, she also emphasizes that responsibility without control is exploitation. If one must face death alone, one should not be forced there by others.
Sanger’s legacy is complicated by her engagement with eugenic currents of her era, yet this line captures the enduring core of reproductive self-determination. It insists that the legitimacy of state and social claims ends where coerced risk to life begins, and that love, family, and community are strongest when chosen, not compelled. The right to decide whether to endure an ordeal follows from the elemental dignity of owning one’s body.
From that premise Sanger builds a rights claim. If neither husband nor state can ethically compel an individual to undergo a life-threatening ordeal, then the person who faces the ordeal must hold the power to accept or refuse it. The argument pivots on bodily autonomy and consent, ideas now common in bioethics but radical in the early 20th century. It counters patriarchal and legal paternalism that long treated women as vessels of family or national interest, subject to religious edicts, Comstock laws, and male-dominated medical authority.
The cadence is legal and moral, almost syllogistic: risk confers authority. It reframes reproduction not as a duty owed outward but as an inwardly governed decision. That logic underwrote Sanger’s campaign for access to contraception and information, which the state criminalized in her time. By invoking the solitude of the woman in labor, she also emphasizes that responsibility without control is exploitation. If one must face death alone, one should not be forced there by others.
Sanger’s legacy is complicated by her engagement with eugenic currents of her era, yet this line captures the enduring core of reproductive self-determination. It insists that the legitimacy of state and social claims ends where coerced risk to life begins, and that love, family, and community are strongest when chosen, not compelled. The right to decide whether to endure an ordeal follows from the elemental dignity of owning one’s body.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
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