Rhetorical Devices in Margaret Sanger\'s Speech \"The

Rhetorical Devices in Margaret Sanger's Speech "The Morality of Birth Control"

Margaret Sanger was a passionate crusader for women's right to use contraceptives, and her speech "The Morality of Birth Control" conveys this strong sense of passion. She used a number of rhetorical devices to help her emphasize her topic. These rhetorical devices included: bias, fallacies, tapinosis, and counterarguments. Together, these rhetorical devices allowed her to create a compelling speech promoting the idea that women should have access to birth control.

Sanger speaks out against the bias that has kept women from having access to reliable birth control, but invokes her own bias and fallacies. She is biased against women who would not elect to use birth control, and she believes that she knows their motivations. She suggests that women who do not use birth control only fail to do so because they are ignorant. However, not all women who elect not to use birth control are ignorant or lack access to it. Therefore, she injected her own bias, with its inherent fallacies, into her argument, which simultaneously strengthens and weakens her argument. For the woman who supports access to but does not use birth control, the fallacy would not be compelling, but for those who do not understand why some women would not elect to use birth control, the use of this bias would probably bolster her argument.

Sanger uses tapinosis, the use of language to debase or dismiss a group of people, to dismiss those who disagree with her view point. When Sanger refers to those who oppose birth control as "diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent entirely upon the normal and fit members of society for their support," she is dismissing them with her ugly language (Sanger, 1921). The use of such language suggests that one need not address the merit of the arguments of the opposition because their personal characteristics require dismissing their arguments. Therefore, her vivid imagery evokes not only emotion, but the need for aggressive action against those people.

Sanger employs counterarguments to address some of the arguments made by her opposition. Sanger does an excellent job of pointing out that these same people have no objection to women meeting with members of the opposite sex to attend church. Sanger demonstrates that there is a double standard involved in allowing women freedom and that if women are able to successfully handle other important decisions; they most certainly are able to handle the decision of birth control without becoming immoral.