I have read many of Margaret Sanger's (Founder of Planned Parenthood) articles and excerpts from her books. She was an extreme racist and promoted the eradication of inferior races (blacks, jews etc) Eugenics was the heart of her cause. Sanger laid the foundation on which abortion still stands today. My question is why is racism never brought into the abortion issues when they are at the heart of the motivations of the social engineers who have built these hateful population programs during the past 50 years. There are a lot of pro-choice advocates who are innocent to the harsh racism and eugenics that are at the foundation of the philosophy of abortion. Many leaders of the pro-choice movement today still hold to the eugenics philosophy that there are inferior races. *Planned Parenthood's Racism (Information compiled by Lynn K. Murphy, Life Research Institute, June, 1994) Facts about Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood: (Though much quoted herein is old, I will show later that Planned Parenthood today vigorously upholds Sanger's philosophy.) Margaret Sanger said about her 1939 <Negro Project>, "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out the idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." [1] Clarence Gamble, president of the American Eugenics Research Association, said, "There is a great danger that we will fail because the Negroes think it a plan for extermination. Hence lets appear to let the colored run it as we appear to let [the] south do the conference in Atlanta."[2] Under this policy, Planned Parenthood of America hired a full-time "Negro Consultant" in 1944.[3] The entire operation [Sanger's 1939 Negro Project] then was a ruse--a manipulative attempt to get Blacks to cooperate in their own elimination. The project was quite successful. Its genocidal intentions were carefully camouflaged beneath several layers of condescending social-service rhetoric and organizational expertise. . . Soon clinics throughout the South were distributing contraceptives to Blacks and <Margaret's dream of discouraging "the defective and diseased elements of humanity' from their 'reckless and irresponsible swarming and spawning" was at last being fulfilled.>[4]* In a 1926 speech at Vassar, Sanger said the nation needed to follow the "drastic immigration laws" of 1924 with methods "to cut down on the rapid multiplication of the unfit and undesirable at home."[5] In a March, 1939 letter, Margaret Sanger explained to Frank Boudreau, director of the Milbank Memorial Fund: ". . . That is not asking or suggesting a cradle competition between the intelligent and the ignorant, but a drastic curtailment of the birth rate at the source of the unfit, the diseased and the incompetent . . . . The birth control clinics all over the country are doing their utmost to reach the lower strata [the minorities] of our population . . ."[6] To stop this "multiplication," Sanger could be harsh. Her book, <The Pivot of Civilization>, has a chapter called "The Cruelty of Charity." In it she blasts as "insidiously injurious" programs to provide "medical and nursing facilities to slum mothers." In other words, Sanger wanted ethnic cleansing. Instead of helping the poor, she considered them (particularly Blacks, Hispanics, and Jewish immigrants) slum dwellers who would soon overrun the boundaries of their slums and contaminate the better elements of society with their inferior genes. Throughout the 200+ pages of <The Pivot of Civilization> Sanger called for the elimination of human weeds: "for the cessation of charity, for the segregation of morons, misfits, and maladjusted," and for the sterilization of "genetically inferior races."[7] In this same book she argued that organized attempts to help the poor were the "surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding, and is perpetuating . . . defectives, delinquents, and dependents."[8] "Margaret Sanger is responsible, more than anyone else, for keeping alive international racism. She played the attractive hostess for racist thinkers all over the world. Organizing the First World Population Conference in Geneva in 1926, she invited Clarence C. Little, Edward A. East, Henry Pratt Fairchild, and Raymond Pearl--all infamous racists."[9] "In 1932, it [the <Birth Control Review>] outlined *Margaret's 'Plan for Peace,' calling for coercive sterilization, mandatory segregation, and rehabilitative concentration camps for all 'disgenic stocks.'*[10]* In 1933, the <Birth Control Review> published 'Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need' by Ernst Rudin, who was Hitler's director of genetic sterilization and a founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene.[11] And later that same year, it published an article by Leon Whitney entitled, 'Selective Sterilization,' which adamantly praised and defended the Third Reich's racial programs."[12] Margaret Sanger and former Planned Parenthood President Alan Guttmacher were both listed in 1956 as members of the American Eugenics Society, Inc. Today, Planned Parenthood vigorously supports Margaret Sanger's philosophies: In 1992, Planned Parenthood's immediate past president, Faye Wattleton, won Planned Parenthood's coveted Margaret Sanger Award. The following is quoted from Planned Parenthood Federation of America's 1992 Annual Report, page 13: "THE PPFA MARGARET SANGER AWARD, *<Planned Parenthood's highest honor*>,* was presented in 1992 to former PPFA President Faye Wattleton. Planned Parenthood's national leader from 1978 until March 1992, Ms. Wattleton exemplified the courage *<and ideals>* of Margaret Sanger,*PPFA's founder." Planned Parenthood also has a Margaret Sanger Clinic. The Racism of Planned Parenthood today: "A racial analysis of abortion statistics is quite revealing. According to a Health and Human Services Administration report, as many as forty-three percent of all abortions are performed on Blacks and another ten percent on Hispanics.[13] This, despite the fact that Blacks only make up eleven percent of the total U.S. population and Hispanics only about eight percent.[14] A National Academy of Sciences investigation released more conservative--but no less telling-figures: thirty-two percent of all abortions are performed on minority mothers."[15] "During the 1980s when Planned Parenthood shifted its focus from community-based clinics, it again targeted inner-city minority neighborhoods.[16] Of the more than one hundred school-based clinics that have opened nationwide in the last decade, <none> have been at substantially all-White schools.[17] <None> have been at suburban middle-class schools. <*All have been at Black, minority, or ethnic schools.>*"[17]* Planned Parenthood itself reports[18] that of the 132,314 abortions it did in 1991, 23.2% were on African Americans, 12.5% were on Hispanics, and 7% were on other minorities. Thus, the total abortions on minorities is 42.7%. But minorities comprise only 19.7% of the U.S. population.[19] Therefore, relative to population *Planned Parenthood preferred to abort minorities three times[20] as much as whites.* "'There is no way you can escape the implications,' argues Black financial analyst William L. Davis. 'When an organization has a history of racism, when its literature is openly racist, when its goals are self-consciously racial, and when its programs invariably revolve around race, it doesn't take an expert to realize that the organization is indeed <racist>. *<Really now, how can anyone believe anything about Planned Parenthood except that it is a hive of elitist bigotry, prejudice, and bias?*>* Just because the organization has a smattering of minority staffers in key positions does nothing to dispel the plain facts.'"[21] Endnotes: 1. Linda Gordon, <Woman's Body, Woman's Right> (New York: Grossman, 1974, 1976) 332-333. Gordon is a feminist and a strong abortion supporter. 2. Ibid, 333. 3. Ibid, 353. 4. Margaret Sanger, <The Pivot of Civilization> (New York: Brentano's, 1922) 108. 5. Margaret Sanger, "The Function of Sterilization," speech delivered at Vassar College, August 5, 1926. Described in Chase, Allan, <The Legacy of Malthus,> (New York: 1977), 658. 6. Gordon, 359. 7. Margaret Sanger, <The Pivot of Civilization,> 264. 8. Elasah Drogin, <Margaret Sanger, Father of Modern Society> (New Hope KY: CUL Publications, 1980) 45. 9. Drogin, 109. 10. <Birth Control Review,> April, 1932, 107; See Elasah Drogin, <Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society> (1986), 11-38. 11. <Birth Control Review,> April, 1933, 102. 12. <Birth Control Review,> 17:4, 1933, 85. 13. Allan Chase, <The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism> (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977) 411. 14. A.L. Thornton, "U.S. Statistical Survey: A Reanalysis of the 1980 Census Figures for Population Distribution and Composi tion," < Demographics Today,> March, 1983, 62. 15. Allan Chase, 411. 16. Although Planned Parenthood is a primary instigator in the School-Based Clinic movement, only rarely does an affiliate become institutionally involved in their day to day operation. 17. Carl R. de Vries, Benjamin Goldstein, and Linda Evankirov, <Teen Pregnancy: Crisis, Solution, and Opposition> (Boston: Educational Software Information Group, 1987), 14; and Roberta Weiner, <Teen Pregnancy: Impact on the Schools > (Alexandria, VA: Capitol Publications, 1987). 18. <1992 Service Report,> 1992. 19. <Statistical Abstract of the United States,> 1992, 17. 20. [42.7/(100-42.6)]/[19.7/(100-19.7)] = 3 21. George Grant, <Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood> (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1984) 98.
I think liberal icons tend to get a political free pass on the race issues. I think you're going to get flamed badly for even bringing this up.. Almost as bad as suggesting that Yao should shoot more.. I liked the post personally - very informative..
I brought this up before. There was an interesting article in Christianity Today about this some time ago.
History is replete with people who have done good despite having ugly intentions. While Sanger's efforts regarding birth control may have been inspired by her racism, the end result morphed into something else (an increased availability for contraceptives, which prevent unwanted pregnancies and STDs) Somewhere, the divine forces are laughing at their own cleverness. Furthermore, I think you'd find that abortion occurs disproportionately among poor women. Since minorities are still today disproportionately poor compared to whites, you would naturally see more of them having abortions.
So the racist views of a particular pro-choice advocate should influence people to stop being pro-choice? I can't find a rolleyes big enough
I like the word choice here. The sentence structure and use of "performed on" makes the people who decide to get abortions passive and the abortion active. That is cool. Of course, Sanger didn't invent abortion and most of those "racism today" examples are weak...but nevertheless, it is fun reading up on Maggie's racism. She was certainly alone in her racism during the early 20th century...I mean, we haven't had presidents from around the same time that were blatantly racist...right?
If you do further research, you will discover that many of Margaret Sanger's early supporters were Republicans, including Prescott Bush, Republican Senator from Connecticut, #41s father, and #43s grandfather.
I think you're missing the key term here, CHOICE Abortion or contraception isn't some government mandated program, outside of the PRC, but about giving people the choice (there's that word again) to decide when and if they want to have kids. So how do you reconcile that many whites who aren't poor also have abortions and use contraception? But I'll make you a deal. If the pro-lifers are willing to advocate for universal health care, free day care and guarenteed income for any woman while pregnant and through the first 10 years of their child's lives and other such programs that would reduce the impetus for having an abortion, particulary among the poor and minority, then I will agree that abortion is a racist practice.
The ideal was to trick minorities in to 'eliminating' themselves with propaganda and various other nefarious means Those programs you mention would serve as a counter to the end goal the elimination of minorities. so must would never go for it . . . Rocket River
Can we acknowledge that Margaret Sanger was a racist and that Planned Parenthood was founded on less than humanitarian intentions? I don't think if someone does so - that they are compromising their pro-choice positions. I don't think the racist attitudes of one person (albeit an important person in the movement) accurately reflects the attitudes of most.
Seeing as how there are two sides to every story, I thought that maybe somebody should post the other side here. Open-minded people, of course, will want to read both before making up their own minds. Margaret Sanger gained worldwide renown, respect, and admiration for founding the American birth control movement and, later, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, as well as for developing and encouraging family planning efforts throughout the international community. Among her many visionary accomplishments as a social reformer, Sanger * established the principles that a woman's right to control her body is the foundation of her human rights; that every person should be able to decide when or whether to have a child; that every child should be wanted and loved; and that women are entitled to sexual pleasure and fulfillment just as men are * brought about the reversal of federal and state "Comstock laws" that prohibited publication and distribution of information about sex, sexuality, contraception, and human reproduction * helped establish the contemporary American model for the protection of civil rights through nonviolent civil disobedience — a model that later propelled the civil rights, anti-war, women's rights, and AIDS-action movements * created access to birth control for low-income, minority, and immigrant women * expanded the American concept of volunteerism and grassroots organizing by setting up a network of volunteer-driven family planning centers across the U.S. Sanger also entertained some popular ideas of her own time that are out of keeping with our thinking today. This fact sheet is designed to separate fact from fiction and to further explain Sanger's views and the background against which they must be judged. Sanger's Outreach to the African-American Community In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning clinic in Harlem that sought to enlist support for contraceptive use and to bring the benefits of family planning to women who were denied access to their city's health and social services. Staffed by a black physician and black social worker, the clinic was endorsed by The Amsterdam News (the powerful local newspaper), the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Urban League, and the black community's elder statesman, W.E.B. DuBois. Beginning in 1939, DuBois also served on the advisory council for Sanger's "Negro Project," which was a "unique experiment in race-building and humanitarian service to a race subjected to discrimination, hardship, and segregation" (Chesler, 1992). The Negro Project served African-Americans in the rural South. Other leaders of the African-American community who were involved in the project included Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. The Negro Project was also endorsed by prominent white Americans who were involved in social justice efforts at this time, including Eleanor Roosevelt, the most visible and compassionate supporter of racial equality in her era; and the medical philanthropists, Albert and Mary Lasker, whose financial support made the project possible A passionate opponent of racism, Sanger predicted in 1942 that the "Negro question" would be foremost on the country's domestic agenda after World War II. Her accomplishments on behalf of the African-American community were unchallengeable during her lifetime and remain so today. In 1966, the year Sanger died, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts. . . . Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her. Sanger and Eugenics Eugenics is the study of improving hereditary qualities by socially controlling human reproduction. Margaret Sanger was not a racist, an anti-Semite, or a eugenicist. Eugenicists, like the Nazis, were opposed to the use of abortion and contraception by healthy and "fit" women (Grossmann, 1995). In fact, Sanger's books were among the very first burned by the Nazis in their campaign against family planning ("Sanger on Exhibit," 1999/2000). Sanger actually helped several Jewish women and men and others escape the Nazi regime in Germany ("Margaret Sanger and the 'Refugee Department'," 1993). Sanger's disagreement with the eugenicists of her day is clear from her remarks in The Birth Control Review of February 1919: Eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother (1919a). Margaret Sanger clearly identified with the issues of health and fitness that concerned the early 20th-century eugenics movement, which was enormously popular and well-respected during the 1920s and '30s, when treatments for many hereditary and disabling conditions were unknown. However, Sanger always believed that reproductive decisions should be made on an individual and not a social or cultural basis, and she consistently repudiated any racial application of eugenics principles. For example, Sanger vocally opposed the racial stereotyping that effected passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, on the grounds that intelligence and other inherited traits vary by individual and not by group. In 1927, the eugenics movement reached the height of its popularity when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell, held that it was constitutional to involuntarily sterilize the developmentally disabled, the insane, or the uncontrollably epileptic. Oliver Wendell Holmes, supported by Louis Brandeis and six other justices, wrote the opinion. Although Sanger uniformly repudiated the racist exploitation of eugenics principles, she agreed with the "progressives" of her day who favored * incentives for the voluntary hospitalization and/or sterilization of people with untreatable, disabling, hereditary conditions * the adoption and enforcement of stringent regulations to prevent the immigration of the diseased and "feebleminded" into the U.S. * placing so-called illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, and dope-fiends on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct Planned Parenthood Federation of America finds these views objectionable and outmoded. Published Statements That Distort or Misquote Margaret Sanger Through the years, a number of alleged Sanger quotations, or allegations about her, have surfaced with regularity in anti-family planning publications: "More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief issue in birth control." A quotation falsely attributed to Margaret Sanger, this statement was made by the editors of American Medicine in a review of an article by Sanger. The editorial from which this appeared, as well as Sanger's article, "Why Not Birth Control Clinics in America?" (1919b), were reprinted side-by-side in the May 1919 Birth Control Review . "The mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, so that the increase among Negroes, even more than the increase among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear their children properly." Another quotation falsely attributed to Margaret Sanger, this was actually written for the June 1932 issue of The Birth Control Review by W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Taken out of the context of his discussion about the effects of birth control on the balance between quality-of-life considerations and race-survival issues for African-Americans, Dubois' language seems insensitive by today's standards. "Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a menace to the race." This fabricated quotation, falsely attributed to Sanger, was concocted in the late 1980s. The alleged source is the April 1933 Birth Control Review (Sanger ceased editing the Review in 1929). That issue contains no article or letter by Sanger. "To create a race of thoroughbreds. . ." This remark, again attributed originally to Sanger, was made by Dr. Edward A. Kempf and has been cited out of context and with distorted meaning. Dr. Kempf, a progressive physician, was actually arguing for state endowment of maternal and infant care clinics. In her book The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger quoted Dr. Kempf's argument about how environment may improve human excellence: Society must make life worth the living and the refining for the individual by conditioning him to love and to seek the love-object in a manner that reflects a constructive effect upon his fellow-men and by giving him suitable opportunities. The virility of the automatic apparatus is destroyed by excessive gormandizing or hunger, by excessive wealth or poverty, by excessive work or idleness, by sexual abuse or intolerant prudishness. The noblest and most difficult art of all is the raising of human thoroughbreds (1969). It was in this spirit that Sanger used the phrase, "Birth Control: To Create a Race of Thoroughbreds," as a banner on the November 1921 issue of the Birth Control Review . (Differing slogans on the theme of voluntary family planning sometimes appeared under the title of The Review, e.g., "Dedicated to the Cause of Voluntary Motherhood," January 1928.) "The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." This statement is taken out of context from Margaret Sanger's Woman and the New Race (1920). Sanger was making an ironic comment — not a prescriptive one — about the horrifying rate of infant mortality among large families of early 20th-century urban America. The statement, as grim as the conditions that prompted Sanger to make it, accompanied this chart, illustrating the infant death rate in 1920: Deaths During First Year 1st born children 23% 2nd born children 20% 3rd born children 21% 4th born children 23% 5th born children 26% 6th born children 29% 7th born children 31% 8th born children 33% 9th born children 35% 10th born children 41% 11th born children 51% 12th born children 60% "We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population." Sanger was aware of African-American concerns, passionately argued by Marcus Garvey in the 1920s, that birth control was a threat to the survival of the black race. This statement, which acknowledges those fears, is taken from a letter to Clarence J. Gamble, M.D., a champion of the birth control movement. In that letter, Sanger describes her strategy to allay such apprehensions. A larger portion of the letter makes Sanger's meaning clear: It seems to me from my experience . . . in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas, that while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors, they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table. . . . They do not do this with the white people, and if we can train the Negro doctor at the clinic, he can go among them with enthusiasm and with knowledge, which, I believe, will have far-reaching results. . . . His work, in my opinion, should be entirely with the Negro profession and the nurses, hospital, social workers, as well as the County's white doctors. His success will depend upon his personality and his training by us. The minister's work is also important, and also he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation, as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs (1939). "As early as 1914 Margaret Sanger was promoting abortion, not for white middle-class women, but against 'inferior races' — black people, poor people, Slavs, Latins, and Hebrews were 'human weeds'." This allegation about Margaret Sanger appears in an anonymous flyer, "Facts About Planned Parenthood," that is circulated by anti-family planning activists. Margaret Sanger, who passionately believed in a woman's right to control her body, never "promoted" abortion because it was illegal and dangerous throughout her lifetime. She urged women to use contraceptives so that they would not be at risk for the dangers of illegal, back-alley abortion. Sanger never described any ethnic community as an 'inferior race' or as 'human weeds.' In her lifetime, Sanger won the respect of international figures of all races, including the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Mahatma Gandhi; Shidzue Kato, the foremost family planning advocate in Japan; and Lady Dhanvanthi Rama Rau of India — all of whom were sensitive to issues of race. "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy" This is the title of a book falsely attributed to Sanger. It was written by Lothrop Stoddard and reviewed by Havelock Ellis in the October 1920 issue of The Birth Control Review . Its general topic, the international politics of race relations in the first decades of the century, is one in which Sanger was not involved. Her interest, insofar as she allowed a review of Stoddard's book to be published in The Birth Control Review, was in the overall health and quality of life of all races and not in tensions between them. Ellis's review was critical of the Stoddard book and of distinctions based on race or ethnicity alone. For Further Reading Chesler, Ellen. (1992). Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America. New York: Simon & Schuster The Margaret Sanger Papers Project http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/index.html Valenza, Charles. (1985) "Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?" Family Planning Perspectives, 17(1) (January/February), 44-46. References Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927) Chesler, Ellen. (1992). Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America. New York: Simon & Schuster DuBois, W.E.B. (1932). "Black Folk and Birth Control." The Birth Control Review, 16(6), p. 166. Reprint: The Birth Control Review Vol. VIII, Vols. 16-17, 1932-July 1933. (1970). New York: Da Capo Press. Ellis, Havelock. (1920). "The World's Racial Problem." The Birth Control Review, 4(10), 14-16. Reprint: The Birth Control Review Vol II, Vols. 4-5, 1920-1921. (1970). New York: Da Capo Press. Grossmann, Atina. (1995). Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control & Abortion Reform 1920-1950. New York: Oxford University Press. "Intelligent or Unintelligent Birth Control?: An Editorial from American Medicine." (10.919). The Birth Control Review, 3(5), 12-13. Reprint: The Birth Control Review Vol. I, Vols. 1-3, 1917-1919. (1970). New York: Da Capo Press. King, Martin Luther Jr. (1966, May 5). "Family Planning — A Special and Urgent Concern." Acceptance speech upon receiving the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Margaret Sanger Award. "Margaret Sanger and the 'Refugee Department'." (1993). Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter, 5 (Spring), 1-2. "Sanger on Exhibit." (1999/2000). Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter, 23 (Winter), p. 5. Sanger, Margaret. (1919a). "Birth Control and Racial Betterment." The Birth Control Review, 3(2), 11-12. Reprint: The Birth Control Review Vol. I, Vols. 1-3, 1917-1919 . (1970). New York: Da Capo Press. ___(1919b). "Why Not Birth Control Clinics in America?" The Birth Control Review, 3(5), 10-11. Reprint: The Birth Control Review Vol. I, Vols. 1-3, 1917-1919 . (1970). New York: Da Capo Press. ___(1920). Woman and the New Race . New York: Brentano's, 62-63. ___(1939, Dec. 10). Personal communication to Clarence J. Gamble, M.D. ___(1942, July 9). Personal communication to A.D. Lasker. ___(1969). The Pivot of Civilization. Elmsford, NY: Maxwell Reprint Company, 144-145.
