Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger is getting her own biopic

By Esther Zuckerman | December 14, 2016 | 9:30pm

Aux Features Film

Just in time for Donald Trump to defund Planned Parenthood, the organization’s founder will be the subject of a new film. Deadline reports that producer Justine Ciarrocchi and Black Bicycle Entertainment are getting the rights to Terrible Virtue, a novel by Ellen Feldman based on the life of Margaret Sanger, who opened the United States’ first birth control clinic and advocated for contraception. Feldman’s text is described by publisher Harper Collins as a “richly imagined portrait of a larger-than-life woman” that “is at once sympathetic to her suffering and unsparing of her faults.”

Black Bicycle’s Erika Olde said in a statement per Deadline: “Margaret’s story as an advocate who led the battle for birth control and eventually founding Planned Parenthood is so relevant given our recent election and today’s climate as we are once again forced to deal with basic human rights.” Indeed, Sanger remains an incredibly relevant and complicated figure. Back in 2011, Herman Cain attempted to pillory Planned Parenthood by misreading a quote from Sanger and arguing that her intention was to “kill black babies.” The Washington Post determined that Cain’s claim was “historical fiction.”