(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.
While Planned Parenthood's current apologists try to place some distance
between the eugenics and birth control movements, history definitively
says otherwise. The eugenic theme figured prominently in the Birth
Control Review, which Sanger founded in 1917. She published such
articles as "Some Moral Aspects of Eugenics" (June 1920), "The Eugenic
Conscience" (February 1921), "The purpose of Eugenics" (December 1924),
"Birth Control and Positive Eugenics" (July 1925), "Birth Control: The
True Eugenics" (August 1928), and many others.
These eugenic and racial origins are hardly what most people associate
with the modern Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), which
gave its Margaret Sanger award to the late Dr. Martin Luther King in
1966, and whose current president, Faye Wattleton, is black, a former
nurse, and attractive.
Though once a social pariah group, routinely castigated by religious and
government leaders, the PPFA is now an established, high-profile,
well-funded organization with ample organizational and ideological
support in high places of American society and government. Its
statistics are accepted by major media and public health officials as
"gospel"; its full-page ads appear in major newspapers; its spokespeople
are called upon to give authoritative analyses of what America's family
policies should be and to prescribe official answers that congressmen,
state legislator and Supreme Court justiices all accept as "social
orthodoxy."
Blaming Families
Sanger's obsession with eugenics can be traced back to her own family.
One of 11 children, she wrote in the autobiographical book, My Fight
for Birth Control, that "I associated poverty, toil, unemployment,
drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jails with large
families." Just as important was the impression in her childhood of an
inferior family status, exacerbated by the iconoclastic, "free-thinking"
views of her father, whose "anti-Catholic attitudes did not make for his
popularity" in a predominantly Irish community.
The fact that the wealthy families in her hometown of Corning, N.Y., had
relatively few children, Sanger took as prima facie evidence of
the impoverishing effect of larger families. The personal impact of this
belief was heightened 1899, at the age of 48. Sanger was convinced that
the "ordeals of motherhood" had caused the death of her mother. The
lingering consumption (tuberculosis) that took her mother's life visited
Sanger at the birth of her own first child on Nov. 18, 1905. The
diagnosis forced her to seek refuge in the Adirondacks to strengthen her
for the impending birth. Despite the precautions, the birth of baby
Grant was "agonizing," the mere memory of which Sanger described as
"mental torture" more than 25 years later. She once described the
experience as a factor "to be reckoned with" in her zealous campaign for
birth control.
From the beginning, Sanger advocacy of sex education reflected her
interest in population control and birth prevention among the "unfit."
Her first handbook, published for adolescents in 1915 and entitled,
What Every Boy and Girl Should Know, featured a jarring afterword:
It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds
ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stoop
breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance
cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world
children whose parents cannot provide for them.
To Sanger, the ebbing away of moral and religious codes over sexual
conduct was a natural consequence of the worthlessness of such codes in
the individual's search for self-fulfillment. "Instead of laying down
hard and fast rules of sexual conduct," Sanger wrote in her 1922 book
Pivot of Civilization, "sex can be rendered effective and valuable
only as it meets and satisfies the interests and demands of the pupil
himself." Her attitude is appropriately described as libertinism, but
sex knowledge was not the same as individual liberty, as her writings on
procreation emphasized.
The second edition of Sanger's life story, An Autobiography,
appeared in 1938. There Sanger described her first cross-country lecture
tour in 1916. Her standard speech asserted seven conditions of life that
"mandated" the use of birth control: the third was "when parents, though
normal, had subnormal children"; the fourth, "when husband and wife were
adolescent"; the fifth, "when the earning capacity of the father was
inadequate." No right existed to exercise sex knowledge to advance
procreation. Sanger described the fact that "anyone, no matter how
ignorant, how diseased mentally or physically, how lacking in all
knowledge of children, seemed to consider he or she had the right to
become a parent."
Religious Bigotry
In the 1910's and 1920's, the entire social order–religion, law,
politics, medicine, and the media–was arrayed against the idea and
practice of birth control. This opposition began in 1873 when an
overwhelmingly Protestant Congress passed, and a Protestant president
signed into law, a bill that became known as the Comstock Law, named
after its main proponent, Anthony Comstock. The U.S. Congress classified
obscene writing, along with drugs, and devices and articles that
prevented conception or caused abortion, under the same net of
criminality and forbade their importation or mailing.
Sanger set out to have such legislation abolished or amended. Her
initial efforts were directed at the Congress with the opening of a
Washington, D.C., office of her American Birth Control League in 1926.
Sanger wanted to amend section 211 of the U.S. criminal code to allow
the interstate shipment and mailing of contraceptives among physicians,
druggists and drug manufacturers.
During
January and February of 1926, Sanger and her co-workers personally
interviewed 40 senators and 14 representatives. None agreed to introduce
a bill to amend the Comstock Act. Fresh from this unanimous rejection,
Sanger issued an update to her followers: Everywhere there is general
acceptance of the idea, except in religious circles. . .The National
Catholic Welfare Council [sic] (NCWC) has a special legislative
committee organized to block and defeat our legislation. They frankly
state that they intend to legislate for non-Catholics according to the
dictates of the church.
There was no such committee. But 20 non-Catholic lay or religious
organizations joined NCWC in opposition to amending the Comstock Act.
This was not the first time, nor was it to be the last, that Sanger
sought to stir up sectarian strife by blaming Catholics for her
legislative failures. Catholic-bashing was a standard tactic (one that
Planned Parenthood still finds useful to this day), although other
Christian groups now also come in for criticism.
Eight years later, in 1934, Sanger went to Congress again. Reporting on
the first day of the hearings, the New York Times noted:
... the almost solidly Catholic opposition to the measure. This is
now, according to Margaret Sanger. . . the only organized opposition to
the proposal.
Sanger wrote a letter to her "Friends, Co-workers, and Endorsers" that
portrayed the opposing testimony as the work of Catholics determined
... not to present facts to the committee but to intimidate them by
showing a Catholic block of voters who (though in the minority in the
United States) want to dictate to the majority of non-Catholics as
directed from the Vatican in social and moral legislation ... American
men and women, are we going to allow this insulting arrogance to bluff
the American people?
For Sanger, the proper attitude toward her religious critics featured
character assassination, personal vilification and old-fashioned
bigotry. Her Birth Control Review printed an article that noted:
"Today by the Roman Catholic clergy and their allies . . . Public
opinion in America, I fear, is too willing to condone in the officials
of the Roman Catholic Church what it condemns in the Ku Klux Klan.
A favorite Catholic-baiter of Sanger's was Norman E. Himes, who
contributed articles to Sanger's journal. Himes claimed there were
genetic differences between Catholics and non-Catholics.
Are Catholic stocks . . . genetically inferior to such non-Catholic
libertarian stocks and Unitarians and Universal . . . Freethinkers?
Inferior to non-Catholics in general? . . . my guess is that the answer
will someday be made in the affirmative. . . and if the supposed
differentials in net productivity are also genuine, the situation is
anti-social, perhaps gravely so.
Sanger sought to isolate Catholics by creating a schism between them and
Protestants, who had held parallel views of birth control and abortion
for centuries. She welcomed a report from a majority of the Committee on
Marriage and the Home of the General Council of Churches (later the
National Council of Churches) advocating birth control. This committee
was composed largely of social elite Protestants, including Mrs. John D.
Rockefeller, Jr. A number of Protestant church bodies publicly
repudiated the committee's endorsement.
The Rev. Worth Tippy, council executive secretary and author of the
report, told Sanger in April 1931 that: ... the statement on Moral
Aspects of Birth Control has aroused more opposition within the
Protestant churches than we expected. Under the circumstances, and since
we plan to carry on a steady work for liberalizing laws and to stimulate
the establishment of clinics, it is necessary that we make good these
losses and also increase our resources.Could you help me quietly by
giving me the names of people of means who are interested in the birth
control movement and might help us if I wrote them.
Sanger immediately wrote Tippy that she would be "glad to select names
of persons from our lists whom I think might be able to subscribe."
Tippy replied to Sanger a week later, offering to give her some names
for fund raising and thanking her for the offer of "names of people who
are able to contribute to generous causes and who are favorable to birth
control." He also related that they had expected some reaction from the
"fundamentalist groups," but nothing like what had happened.
Protestants repeatedly stated their unity with Catholics in opposing
Planned Parenthood's initiatives. During Sanger's attempts to reform New
York state law, another Protestant stood with Catholics. The Rev. John
R. Straton, Pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church of New York City, said:
"This bill is subversive of the human family . . . It is revolting,
monstrous, against God's word and contradicts American traditions."
Sanger's attack on Catholics appeared to be an attempt to divert
attention from the class politics of Planned Parenthood. The Rev. John
A. Ryan wrote: ... their main objective is to increase the practice
of birth-prevention among the poor . . . It is said that the present
birth-prevention movement is to some extent financed by wealthy, albeit
philanthropic persons. As far as I am aware , none of these is
conspicuous in the movement for economic justice. None of them is crying
out for a scale of wages which would enable workers to take care of a
normal number of children.
Sanger's sexual license was another motivation for her Anti-Catholic
sniping. A Sanger biographer, David M. Kennedy, said her primary goal
was to "increase the quantity and quality of sexual relationships." The
birth control movement, she said, freed the mind from "sexual prejudice
and taboo, by demanding the frankest and most unflinching re-examination
of sex in its relation to human nature and the basis of human society.
Sannger's Gamble
It was in 1939 that Sanger's larger vision for dealing with the
reproductive practices of black Americans emerged. After the January
1939 merger of her Clinical Research Bureau and the ABCL to form the
Birth Control Federation of America, Dr. Clarence J. Gamble was selected
to become the BCFA regional director for the South. Dr. Gamble, of the
soap-manufacturing Procter and Gamble company, was no newcomer to
Sanger's organization. He had previously served as director at large to
the predecessor ABCL.
Gamble lost no time and drew up a memorandum in November 1939 entitled
"Suggestion for Negro Project." Acknowledging that black leaders might
regard birth control as an extermination plot, he suggested that black
leaders be place in positions where it would appear that they were in
chargeÑas it was at an Atlanta conference.
It is evident from the rest of the memo that Gamble conceived the
project almost as a traveling road show. A charismatic black minister
was to start a revival, with "contributions" to come from other local
cooperating ministers. A "colored nurse" would follow, supported by a
subsidized "colored doctor." Gamble even suggested that music might be a
useful lure to bring the prospects to a meeting.
Sanger answered Gamble on Dec. 10. 1939, agreeing with the assessment.
She wrote: "We do not want the word to go out that we want to
exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can
straighten that idea out if it ever occurs to any of their more
rebellious members." In 1940, money for two "Negro Project"
demonstration programs in southern states was donated by advertising
magnate Albert D. Lasker and his wife, Mary.
Birth
control was presented both as an economic betterment vehicle and as a
health measure that could lower the incidence of infant mortality. At
the 1942 BCFA annual meeting, BCFA Negro Council board member Dr.
Dorothy B. Ferebee–a cum laude graduate of Tufts and also president of
Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation's largest black sorority–addressed the
delegates regarding Planned Parenthood's minority outreach efforts :
With the Negro group some of the most difficult obstacles . . . to
overcome are: (1) the concept that when birth control is proposed to
them, it is motivated by a clever bit of machination to persuade them to
commit race suicide; (2) the so-called "husband rejection" . . . (3) the
fact that birth control is confused with abortion, and (4) the belief
that is inherently immoral. However, as formidable as these objections
may seem, when thrown against the total picture of the awareness on the
part of the Negro leaders of the improved condition under Planned
Parenthood, or the genuine interest and eagerness of the families
themselves to secure the services which will give them a fair chance for
health and happiness, the obstacles to the program are greatly
outweighed.
Birth control as an economic improvement measure had some appeal to
those lowest on the income ladder. In the black Chicago Defender for
Jan. 10, 1942, a long three-column women's interest article discussed
the endorsement of the Sanger program by prominent black women. There
were at lease six express references, such as the following example, to
birth control as a remedy for economic woes:" . . . it raises the
standard of living by enabling parents to adjust the family size to the
family income." Readers were also told that birth control" . . . is no
operation. It is no abortion. Abortion kills life after it has begun. .
. Birth Control is neither harmful nor immoral."
But the moral stumbling block could only be surmounted by Afro-American
religious leaders, so black ministers were solicited. Florence Rose,
long-time Sanger secretary, prepared an activities report during March
1942 detailing the progress of the "Negro Project." She recounted a
recent meeting with a Planned Parenthood Negro Division board member,
Bishop David H. Sims (African Methodist Episcopal Church), who
appreciated Planned Parenthood's recognition of the extent of black
opposition to birth control and its efforts to build up support among
black leaders. He offered whatever assistance he could give.
Bishop Sims offered to begin the "softening process" among the
representatives of different Negro denominations attending the monthly
meetings of the Federal Council of Churches and its Division of Race
Relations.
These and other efforts paid off handsomely after World War II. By 1949,
virtually the entire black leadership network of religious, social,
professional, and academic organizations had endorsed Planned
Parenthood's program.
National Scandal
More than a decade later, Planned Parenthood continued targeting
minority communities, but without much success.
In 1940, nonwhite women aged 18 to 19 experienced 61 births per 1,000
unmarried women. In 1968, the corresponding figure was 112 per 1,000, a
100 percent jump. What other factor could account for the increased rate
of sexual activity than wider access to birth control, with its promise
of sex without tears and consequences?
Alan
Guttmacher, then president of Planned Parenthood, was desperate to show
policy-makers that birth control would produce a situation whereby
"minority groups who constantly outbreed the majority will no longer
persist in doing so. . . "
Despite claims that racial or ethnic groups were not being "targeted,"
American blacks, among whose ranks a greater proportion of the poor were
numbered, received a high priority in Planned Parenthood's nationwide
efforts. Donald B. Strauss, chairman of Planned ParenthoodÑWorld
Population, urged the 1964 Democratic national Convention to liberalize
the party's stated policies on birth control, and to adopt domestic and
foreign policy platform resolutions to conform with long-sought San
gerite goals: [While almost one-fourth of nonwhite parents have four
or more children under 18 living with them, only 8% of the white couples
have that many children living at home. For the Negro parent in
particular, the denial of access to family planning professional
guidance forecloses one more avenue to family advancement and
well-being..
Unwanted children would not get the job training and educational
skills they needed to compete in a shrinking labor market; moreover,
unwanted children are a product and a cause of poverty.
Surveying the "successes" of tax-subsidized birth control programs,
Guttmacher noted in 1970 that "[Birth control services are proliferating
in areas adjacent to concentrations of black population." (In the
1980's, targeting the inner-city black communities for school based sex
clinics became more sensitive than expected.)
Guttmacher thought that as long as the birth rate continued to fall or
remained at a low level, Planned Parenthood should certainly be
introduced before family size by coercion is attempted."
Reaching this goal, he thought, would best be accomplished by having
groups other than the PPFA preach the doctrine of a normative 2.1-child
family, as doing this would offend Planned Parenthood's minority
clients. He suggested that family size would decrease if abortion were
liberalized nationwide and received government support. In this
prediction he was right on target.
But Guttmacher did not completely reject forced population control:
Predicting 20 critical years ahead in the struggle to control the
population explosion, Dr. Alan Guttmacher, president of Planned
parenthoodÑWorld Population, continues to urge the use of all voluntary
means to hold down on the world birthrate. But he foresees the
possibility that eventual coercion may become necessary, particularly in
areas where the pressure is greatest, possibly India and China. "Each
country," he says, "will have to decide its own form of coercion, and
determine when and how it should be employed. At Present, the means are
compulsory sterilization and compulsory abortion. Perhaps some day a way
of enforcing compulsory birth control will be feasible.
Coerced abortion is already practiced in China, with the International
Planned Parenthood Federation's approval.
Extreme Irony
Despite its past, Planned Parenthood has managed to present the image of
toleration and minority participation through the vehicle of its
divorced, telegenic, African American president, Ms. Faye Wattleton,
appointed titular head of the PPFA in 1978, a post she still holds.
Though paid in the six-figure range, she has impeccable minority
credentials that would have fit the public relations criteria for both
Margaret Sanger and Dr. Clarence Gamble.
Wattleton's
PPFA biography touts her as a friend of the "Poor and the young"; a
nurse at Harlem Hospital; and the recipient of the 1989 Congressional
Black Caucus Foundation Humanitarian Award and the World Institute of
Black Communicators' 1986 Excellence in Black Communications Award. It
further states she was featured in a national photography exhibit, "I
Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America";
interviewed in Ebony; and was the cover story in Black
Enterprise magazine. (Time published a profile of Wattleton
in 1990 entitled "Nothing Less Than Perfect.")
Her ideological orientation has received certification in the form of
the Better World Society's 1989 Population Model, the 1986 American
Humanist Award, and others. But surely, the spectacle of the
Congressional Black Caucus awarding its humanitarian award to the black
woman who presides over the organization that has hastened and justified
the death of almost eight million black children since 1973 and
facilitates the demise of the black family is ironic in the extreme.
Killer Angel
In his book, Killer Angel, George Grant says: "Myths, according
to theologian J. l. packer, are Ôstories made up to sanctify social
patterns.' They are lies, carefully designed to reinforce a particular
philosophy or morality within a culture. They are instruments of
manipulation and control.
Killer Angel tells the real story behind one of the biggest myths
that controls our culture todayÑthe life and legacy of Margaret Sanger,
founder of Planned Parenthood. Grant exposes "the Big Lie" perpetuated
by Sanger's followers and the organization she started.
Through detailed research and concise writing, Grant unveils Sanger's
true character and ideology, which included blatant racism,
revolutionary socialism, sexual perversion and insatiable avarice. Grant
includes direct quotes from sources such as Sanger's Birth Control
Review to support his findings. His biography spans Sanger's
disturbed and unhappy upbringingÑwhich Sanger said contributed to her
agitation and bitterness later in lifeÑto her eventual fixation with
drugs, alcohol and the occult.
Particularly shocking was Sanger's involvement in the Eugenics movement.
Grant says: "[Sanger] was thoroughly convinced that the Ôinferior races'
were in fact Ôhuman weeds' and a Ômenace to civilization.' . . . [S]he
was a true believer, not simply someone who assimilated the jargon of
the timesÑas Planned Parenthood officials would have us believe."
Sanger died September 6, 1966, a week before her eighty-seventh
birthday. Grant says: "[She] had nearly fulfilled her early boast that
she would spend every last penny of Slee's [her second husband] fortune.
In the process, though, she had lost everything else: love, happiness,
satisfaction, fulfillment, family, and friends. In the end, her struggle
was her naught."
The truth uncovered in grant's book has proven to be a threat to those
who follow the cult of :Planned Parenthood. In fact, Killer Angel was
recently banned from a public library in Toledo, Ohio. A library manager
stated in a letter that, "The author's political and social agenda,
which is strongly expoused throughout the book, is not appropriate even
in a critical biography of its subject."
In response, Grant pointed out that "The question at hand is whether
librarians should be making subjective judgments about my political
beliefs and the beliefs of other authors."
By censoring Killer Angel, the library appears to be violating
its own policies, which state that, "the Library collection shall
include representative materials of all races and nationalities, and all
political, religious, economic and social views." Except Christian
views, apparently.
While the Toledo public library may not be interested in the information
put forth in Grant's book, pro-lifers will find this biography useful
and enlightening. It serves as a powerful tool in dispelling the myths
surrounding a womanÑconsidered a heroine by manyÑwho began an
organization that is responsible for the deaths of millions of unborn
children.
Grant states that, "Margaret SangerÑand her heirs at Planned Parenthood
. . . have thus far been able to parlay the deception into a substantial
empire. But now the truth must be told. The illusion must be exposed."
Killer Angel does an outstanding job in doing that.
Sanger's Legacy is Reproductive Freedom and Racism
Despite Margaret Sanger's contributions to birth control and hence
women's freedom and empowerment, her legacy is diminished by her
sympathies with eugenics. This writer says that, like many modern
feminists, Sanger ignored class and race.
(WOMENSENEWS)--Margaret Sanger opened the nation's first birth control
clinic in 1916. For the rest of her life she worked to establish a
woman's right to control her body and to decide when or whether to have
a child. In 1921, she founded the American Birth Control league, the
forerunner of Planned Parenthood.
Her impact on contemporary society is tremendous. Enabling women to
control their fertility and giving them access to contraception, as
advocated by Sanger, makes it possible for women to have a broader set
of life options, especially in the areas of education and employment,
than if their lives are dominated by unrelieved childbearing.
A recent reminder of Sanger's impact on our society came when the Equal
employment Opportunity Commission found that it is illegal sex
discrimination to exclude prescription contraceptives from an otherwise
comprehensive health benefits plan. Sanger's efforts to provide access
to contraception are at the foundation of decisions to provide equal
access to prescription contraceptives and other prescriptions.
Still, especially with the Bush administration, activists will have to
fight to maintain access to contraception and to abortion. In April, the
House of Representatives passed legislation that would establish
criminal penalties for harming a fetus during the commission of a crime.
While proponents of the bill say it does not include abortion, some see
fetal protection legislation as an attempt to undermine abortion rights.
The passage of this legislation is a reminder that the rights Margaret
Sanger worked so hard to establish are tenuous rights that many would
challenge.
For all her positive influence, I see Sanger as a tarnished heroine
whose embrace of the eugenics movement showed racial insensitivity, at
best. From her associates, as well as from some of the articles that
were published in Sanger's magazine, the Birth Control review, it is
possible to conclude that "racially insensitive" is too mild a
description. Indeed, some of her statements, taken in or out of context,
are simply racist. And she never rebuked eugenicists who believed in
improving the hereditary qualities of a race or breed by controlling
mating in order to eliminate "undesirable" characteristics and promote
"desirable" traits.
Sanger: We Must Limit the Over-Fertility of Mentally, Physically
Defective
"Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying . .
. demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism," she wrote
in the recently republished "The Pivot of Civilization." This book,
written in 1922, was published at a time when scientific racism had been
used to assert black inferiority. Who determines who is a moron? How
would these morons be segregated? The ramifications of such statements
are bone chilling.
In a 1921
article in the Birth Control Review, Sanger wrote, "The most urgent
problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the
mentally and physically defective." Reviewers of one of her 1919
articles interpreted her objectives as "More children from the fit, less
from the unfit." Again, the question of who decides fitness is
important, and it was an issue that Sanger only partly addressed. "The
undeniably feebleminded should indeed, not only be discouraged but
prevented from propagating their kind," she wrote.
Sanger advocated the mandatory sterilization of the insane and
feebleminded." Although this does not diminish her legacy as the key
force in the birth control movement, it raises questions much like those
now being raised about our nation's slaveholding founders. How do we
judge historical figures? How are their contributions placed in context?
It is easy to see why there is some antipathy toward Sanger among people
of color, considering that, given our nation's history, we are the
people most frequently described as "unfit" and "feebleminded."
Many African American women have been subject to nonconsensual forced
sterilization. Some did not even know that they were sterilized until
they tried, unsuccessfully, to have children. In 1973, Essence Magazine
published an expose of forced sterilization practices in the rural
South, where racist physicians felt they were performing a service by
sterilizing black women without telling them. While one cannot blame
Margaret Sanger for the actions of these physician, one can certainly
see why Sanger's words are especially repugnant in a racial context.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America has been protective of
Margaret Sanger's reputation and defensive of allegations that she was a
racist. They correctly point out that many of the attacks on Sanger come
from anti-choice activists who have an interest in distorting both
Sanger's work and that of Planned Parenthood. While it is understandable
that Planned Parenthood would be protective of their founder's
reputation, it cannot ignore the fact that Sanger edited the Birth
Control review from its inception until 1929. Under her leadership, the
magazine featured articles that embraced the eugenicist position. If
Sanger were as anti-eugenics as Planned Parenthood says she was, she
would not have printed as many articles sympathetic to eugenics as she
did.
Like Many Modern Feminists, Sanger Ignored Race and Class
Would the NAACP's house organ, Crisis Magazine, print articles by
members of the Ku Klux Klan? Would Planned Parenthood publish articles
penned by fetal protectionist South Carolina republican Lindsey Graham?
The articled published in the Birth Control Review showed Sanger's
empathy with some eugenicist views. Margaret Sanger worked closely with
W. E. B. DuBois on her "Negro Project," an effort to expose Southern
black women to birth control. Mary McLeod Bethune and Adam Clayton
Powell, Jr. were also involved in the effort. Much later, Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. accepted an award from Planned Parenthood and
complimented the organization's efforts. It is entirely possible that
Sanger Ôs views evolved over time. Certainly, by the late 1940s, she
spoke about ways to solve the "Negro problem" in the United States. This
evolution, however commendable, does not eradicate the impact of her
earlier statements.
What, then, is Sanger's legacy?
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America has grown to an
organization with 129 affiliates. It operates 875 health centers and
serves about 5 million women each year. Planned Parenthood has been a
leader in the fight for women's right to choose and in providing access
to affordable reproductive health care for a cross-section of women.
Planned Parenthood has not supported forced sterilization or restricted
immigration and has gently rejected the most extreme of Sanger's views.
In many ways, Sanger is no different from contemporary feminists who,
after making the customary acknowledgement of issues dealing with race
and class, return to analysis that focuses exclusively on gender. These
are the feminists who feel that women should come together around
"women's issues" and battle out our differences later. In failing to
acknowledge differences and the differential impact of a set of
policies, these feminists make it difficult for women to come together.
Sanger published the Birth Control Review at the same time that black
men, returning from World War I, were lynched in uniform. That she did
not see the harm in embracing exclusionary jargon about sterilization
and immigration suggests that she was, at best, socially myopic.
That's reason enough to suggest that her leadership was flawed and her
legacy crippled by her insensitivity. |
