“The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately….Moreover, when we realize that each feeble-minded person is a potential source of an endless progeny of defect, we prefer the policy of immediate sterilization…”
Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (NY: Brentano’s, 1922), pp. 101-102
Her only objection to sterilization was its limited efficacy:
“While I personally believe in the sterilization of the feeble-minded, the insane and the syphiletic [sic], I have not been able to discover that these measures are more than superficial deterrents when applied to the constantly growing stream of the unfit. They are excellent means of meeting a certain phase of the situation, but I believe in regard to these, as in regard to other eugenic means, that they do not go to the bottom of the matter.”
Margaret Sanger, “Birth Control and Racial Betterment," Birth Control Review, Feb. 1919, p. 12)
In the end, Sanger believed that nothing would replace birth control as the necessary eugenic tool.