As a nurse on New York's crowded and poor Lower East Side, Margaret Sanger saw firsthand how constant childbearing contributed to the cycle of poverty. In 1912, determined to correct the situation, she gave up nursing to devote herself to the promotion of birth control. Faced with laws forbidding dissemination of contraceptive information, Sanger's crusade had stiff opposition, and some of her efforts landed her in prison. But gradually the cause won acceptance. By 1921, when Sanger founded the Birth Control League, her movement had begun to win adherents in respectable quarters. There were still many years left of battling before birth control would become part of mainstream social thinking, but Sanger was indomitable. Physically, noted one observer, she was a "fragile little woman," but she had the "courage of a wounded tiger."

Sanger's portraitist, Joy Buba, was trained in Germany. In addition to being a sculptor, she was a book illustrator.