Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood

[jmichna]

Another thread piqued my curiosity regarding Margaret Sanger... some things I found in short order:

Margaret Sanger's Eugenics
January/February, 1998 Volume XII Number 10

In the past few years there has been a frantic effort on the part of Planned Parenthood ideologues to revise their own history. Much of the effort has been waged in an attempt to distance the organization and it's founder, Margaret Sanger, from charges of radical racial bigotry. Mike Richmond draws from a selection of authors to demonstrate that Sanger and Planned Parenthood are rooted in eugenics, and have earned a despised place in history along with Adolph Hitler and the German Third Reich were.
Margaret Sanger's eugenics
by Mike Richmond

In The Science and Politics of Racial Research (pp. 126-127), Rutger's psychology professor William H. Tucker informs us that, American eugenicists [such as Margaret Sanger] even made their own modest contribution to the plight of Jews in the Reich....

...Did Margaret Sanger oppose the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act? Proctor writes,

In a word, No. Margaret Sanger strongly supported these acts. In her own words: "c. to keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others [!!!] in this class barred by immigration laws of 1924." ("A Plan for Peace," Birth Control Review, April 1932)....

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The truth about Margaret Sanger
(This article first appeared in the January 20, 1992 edition of Citizen magazine)

How Planned Parenthood Duped America

At a March 1925 international birth control gathering in New York City, a speaker warned of the menace posed by the "black" and "yellow" peril. The man was not a Nazi or Klansman; he was Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a member of Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League (ABCL), which along with other groups eventually became known as Planned Parenthood.

Sanger's other colleagues included avowed and sophisticated racists. One, Lothrop Stoddard, was a Harvard graduate and the author of The Rising Tide of Color against White Supremacy. Stoddard was something of a Nazi enthusiast who described the eugenic practices of the Third Reich as "scientific" and "humanitarian." And Dr. Harry Laughlin, another Sanger associate and board member for her group, spoke of purifying America's human "breeding stock" and purging America's "bad strains." These "strains" included the "shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of antisocial whites of the South."

Not to be outdone by her followers, Margaret Sanger spoke of sterilizing those she designated as "unfit," a plan she said would be the "salvation of American civilization.: And she also spike of those who were "irresponsible and reckless," among whom she included those " whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers." She further contended that "there is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped." That many Americans of African origin constituted a segment of Sanger considered "unfit" cannot be easily refuted.

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The Negro Project
Margaret Sanger's Eugenic Plan for Black Americans
By Tanya L. Green
May 10, 2001

“'Civil rights' doesn't mean anything without a right to life!” declared Hunter. He and the other marchers were protesting the disproportionately high number of abortions in the black community. The high number is no accident. Many Americans—black and white—are unaware of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger's Negro Project. Sanger created this program in 1939, after the organization changed its name from the American Birth Control League (ABCL) to the Birth Control Federation of America (BCFA).1

The aim of the program was to restrict—many believe exterminate—the black population. Under the pretense of “better health” and “family planning,” Sanger cleverly implemented her plan. What's more shocking is Sanger's beguilement of black America's crème de la crème—those prominent, well educated and well-to-do—into executing her scheme. Some within the black elite saw birth control as a means to attain economic empowerment, elevate the race and garner the respect of whites.

The Negro Project has had lasting repercussions in the black community: “We have become victims of genocide by our own hands,” cried Hunter at the “Say So” march.

Malthusian Eugenics
Margaret Sanger aligned herself with the eugenicists whose ideology prevailed in the early 20th century. Eugenicists strongly espoused racial supremacy and “purity,” particularly of the “Aryan” race. Eugenicists hoped to purify the bloodlines and improve the race by encouraging the “fit” to reproduce and the “unfit” to restrict their reproduction. They sought to contain the “inferior” races through segregation, sterilization, birth control and abortion.

Sanger embraced Malthusian eugenics....

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Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood:
The Eugenics Connection
By Angela Franks

...Margaret Sanger and Eugenics
Planned Parenthood dates its founding from 1916. To understand Planned Parenthood, one must understand the ideology of Margaret Sanger.

While Planned Parenthood adamantly insists otherwise, it is clear that Sanger (1879-1966) was a eugenicist. She believed that birth control served a great eugenic purpose by stopping those she described as the genetically "unfit" from reproducing.

In her 1920 book, Woman and the New Race, Sanger explicitly called her work "nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or those who will become defectives." As she wrote in The Birth Control Review, "the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the overfertility of the mentally and physically defective."

Sanger did not rule out coercion if the "wrong" people had children. She wrote, "Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupidly cruel sentimentalism." "Choice," indeed.

Planned Parenthood's History of Eugenics
Sanger was not the only eugenicist involved with Planned Parenthood. Alan Guttmacher, president of Planned Parenthood from 1962-1974, once told a Planned Parenthood gathering, "The mentally retarded and the mentally defective . . . insidiously are replacing the people of normal mentality."

Guttmacher, Sanger, and others in Planned Parenthood actively courted the involvement of eugenicists. In the 1920s, the "National Council" of her American Birth Control League had at least 23 persons involved at a prominent level in eugenics-nearly one-half the entire council!

The American Eugenic Society (AES) officially endorsed her group in 1932, and Sanger was a dues-paying member of the AES through the 1960s. Among those on her council was Lothrop Stoddard, a prominent racist who wrote The Rising Tide of Color Against White Supremacy and who also published eugenic articles in Sanger's magazine.

Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?
So, was Sanger also a racist, like Lothrop Stoddard? Sometimes pro-lifers quote editions of the magazine she founded, The Birth Control Review, in which officials from Nazi Germany were published. Others point to ominous-sounding quotes from her letters, including a letter written to Clarence J. Gamble, M.D., in which she wrote that "we don't want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. . . ."

...Implicit Eugenics
Of course, few if any current members of Planned Parenthood are likely to know the history just described or would agree with such bald eugenic claims. Nevertheless, the organization in fact advances the eugenic agenda, even if often unconsciously.

For example, Planned Parenthood has never ceased to target the poor and disabled, Sanger's favorite examples of the so-called "unfit." In the year 2000, almost 75% of PPFA clients had incomes at or below 150% of the poverty line. In 1997, PPFA's Plan of Action asserted that its "core clients" are "young women, low-income women, and women of color." Accordingly, although African-American women tend to be more pro-life than white women, they nonetheless have abortions at triple the rate of white women.

Similarly, those with disabilities feel the old eugenic bias of Planned Parenthood. A former employee of PPFA, who herself had disabilities, complained that her colleagues believed in the "need" to abort fetuses diagnosed with disabilities. "There was a feeling that they were bad babies," she told the New York Times. "There was a strong eugenics mentality that exhibited disdain, discomfort, and ignorance toward disabled babies."

That mentality is what drives the acceptance by PPFA of "search and destroy" abortions, in which amniocentesis is used to target unborn children who have disabilities. If you are an unborn baby near a Planned Parenthood clinic, any disability could be life-threatening.

That brings us back to where we began, to abortion. In 2002, PPFA performed 227,385 abortions, an increase of about 7% over 2001, during a time in which the total number of abortions in America decreased steadily. Planned Parenthood is the most successful abortion franchise in the country. A conservative estimate of the amount of revenue generated by these abortions would total over $79 million.....

[AZXD]

Can you summarize this ???

[jmichna]

Originally Posted by AZXD

Can you summarize this ???

Not yet.

[AZXD]

Originally Posted by jmichna

Not yet.

OK!

[DanTheEldest]

I've read this before...very revealing. Thanks for posting, as I'd forgotten about this stuff.

[FrankRizzoXD40]

Very interesting. Thanks for the info.

Frank