Margaret Sanger: The Racist Founder of Planned Parenthood

   

Margaret Sanger was the founder of the American Birth Control League in 1921, which is today known as Planned Parenthood.  Today many Progressives hail her as a hero, but was Margaret Sanger really a friend of the minorities?  Progressives today want to say yes, but history reveals a much different story.  The Library of Congress reveals many letters and writings by Margaret Sanger.  In her writing “A Plan for Peace,” Sanger outlined her plan for population control, to restrict immigration from specific nations that breed the unfit, to apply a rigid sterilization program, specifically for the “feeble-minded parents” and give them the choice of sterilization or segregation (preferably to work farms administrated by government).  These are her words.   Her book Women of the New Race, makes her intentions very clear.  

    Margaret Sanger's book had an outline to rid the world of "Inferior People.”  Her writings state that couples would need to have a “right to parenthood license,” overpopulation must be prevented so each permit would only be good for one child.  The “criminal,” “feeble-minded,” and “biologically unfit” must be sterilized to prevent breeding.  For Margaret Sanger, more children from the fit, less from the unfit-that is the chief issue of birth control.”  The archival documents reveal she wanted to restrict the birth rates of the “unfit,” and that the African-American population was a particular target of her aspirations and that and she used “Negro” doctors & ministers to accomplish this.  It was an act of deception, which Sanger revealed in her famous letter to Dr. Gamble in December of 1939 stated that “We don’t want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”  Some of her defenders may try and say that she simply wanted to limit the growing birthrate and that these words were taken out of context.  Nevertheless, it's clearly that while Sanger may have thought she was helping the black community, many racist progressives both then and now felt they were as well.  Sanger may not have been the stereotypical lynch mob racist that was endorsed for decades by the KKK, but she was certainly not a saint.  

Many are unaware of this fact, but it was was Progressive Eugenicists like Margaret Sanger who’s views and policies inspired the Nazi Eugenicists.  Clarence Gamble funded Sanger's projects and  Lothrop Stoddard, the author of The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy published Sanger's magazines and sat on the Board of the American Birth Control League (the predecessor of Planned Parenthood).  Stoddard also went to Nazi Germany and met with Top Nazi Eugenicists and officials (including Hitler, Himmler & Ribbentrop).  Sanger’s magazine in April of 1933, Sanger’s magazine Birth Control Review, published an article “Eugenic Sterilization, an Urgent Need” was authored by Ernst Rubin, the chief architect of the Nazi sterilization program, and the mentor of Joseph Mengele.  In 1938, Sanger urged American to do what the Nazis were doing.  She said “In animal industry, poor stock is not allowed to breed.  In gardens, weeds are kept down.”  America should therefore learn from Germany and do the laws of nature by getting rid of “human weeds.”

    
When the horrors of the Nazi "Final Solution" became revealed to the world, many in the West began to see the eugenics movement in a much more negative light.  The abortion organizations like Planned Parenthood had to redefine their origins, so they now operate under the “Pro-choice” banner.  Planned Parenthood now champions Margaret Sanger as the “champion of choice.”  Yet it’s clear that Margaret Sanger wanted rich, educated, “fit” populations to have more children and the poor, uneducated, “unfit,” populations to have less children.  She, like other eugenicists, believed this movement's purpose was to serve the interest of “society.”  Even today, the majority of abortions are performed on poor and minorities.  The African-American community today undergoes nearly 40% of the abortions and approximately 80% of abortion clinics are located in predominantly minority communities.  In truth, she was not motivated by “pro-choice,” but by the very same eugenics mentality that was embraced by the Nazis.  

      Sources:

Goldberg, Jonah.  Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Change.  New York: Broadway Books, 2009.

D'Souza, Dinesh.  The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left.  Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2017.

Sanger, Margaret.  "America Needs a Code for Babies."  American Weekly.  Mar. 27th, 1934.  Accessed from https://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/webedition/app/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=101807.xml.
      
Sanger, Margaret.  "Letter to Dr. C.J. Gamble."  Dec. 10, 1939.  Accessed from  https://libex.smith.edu/omeka/files/original/d6358bc3053c93183295bf2df1c0c931.pdf.

Sanger, Margaret.  "My Way to Peace."  Jan. 17, 1932.  Accessed from 

https://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/webedition/app/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=129037.xml

Scanlong, Kate.  "Thirteen Thinkgs You Probably Didn't Know About Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger."  The Daily Signal.  July 22, 2015.  Accessed from https://www.dailysignal.com/2015/07/22/13-things-you-probably-dont-know-about-planned-parenthood-founder-margaret-sanger/

Weaver, C. Mason.  It's OK to Leave the Plantation.  Fallbrook, CA: Reeder Publishing, 2000.