A biopic of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger is in the works after Jennifer Lawrence’s production partner Justine Ciarrocchi acquired the rights to Terrible Virtue, the 2016 novel about Sanger’s life by Ellen Feldman.
Sanger, who died in 1966, remains a celebrated figure in the reproductive-rights movement after she became a pioneer of contraception distribution and opened the US’s first birth control clinic in 1916. After being convicted on charges of “distributing obscene materials”, Sanger co-founded the American Birth Control League in 1921; the organisation, by then a national concern, changed its name in 1942 to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Ciarrocchi is one of the producers on Zelda, Lawrence’s forthcoming vehicle about Zelda Fitzgerald, to be directed by Ron Howard. Lawrence is not currently involved in the Sanger project, but was outspoken in support of Planned Parenthood in the wake of the November 2015 shooting at a clinic in Colorado that left three people dead. In an interview with Glamour magazine, Lawrence explained how important the organisation was to her as a teenager. “My mom was really religious with me when I was young … I wouldn’t have been able to get birth control if it weren’t for Planned P. I wouldn’t have been able to get condoms and birth control and all these things I needed as a normal teenager who was growing up in a Jesus house.”
