10 Facts About Ethel Byrne

Ethel Higgins Byrne was an American Progressive Era radical feminist.

Ethel Byrne's was the younger sister of birth control activist Margaret Sanger, and assisted her in this work.

In 1906, Ethel Byrne left her children in the care of their paternal grandparents to protect them from their abusive father; Ethel Byrne only visited her daughter once in sixteen years.

Olive grew up to become an important muse to the creator of Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston, and more details of Ethel Byrne's life came to light when Jill Lepore wrote about the superheroine character in 2014.

Ethel Byrne's was a trained nurse who assisted immigrant women in need of medical care in the Brownsville area of Brooklyn, New York in 1916.

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The arrest of Ethel Byrne compelled a group of politically active New York women to ask for a meeting with President Woodrow Wilson to request that he contribute to overturning laws criminalizing distribution of birth control.

Sanger was concerned her sister would lose her life as a result of this hunger strike and Ethel Byrne was force fed while serving her sentence after 185 hours without food or water.

Mrs Ethel Byrne was prepared to starve herself to death in support of her cause.

Ethel Byrne is not even mentioned by name and unlike her older sister is not a household name.

Ethel Byrne's did not live to see the legalization of the birth control pill, as she died five years before it received FDA approval.