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Oppose Planned Parenthood
Date Added: 8/20/2011
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Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America. Are we being targeted? Isn't that genocide? We are the only minority in America that is on the decline in population. If the current trend continues, by 2038 the black vote will be insignificant. Did you know that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a devout racist who created the Negro Project designed to sterilize unknowing black women and others she deemed as undesirables of society? The founder of Planned Parenthood said, "Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated." Is her vision being fulfilled today?

There are some wicked false teachers like Peter S. Ruckman who teaches that this isn't murder than unborn children in the mother are more like animals that a living breathing soul  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnNAIX03XTk

(The following is a reprint of the STOPP's essay "Why We Oppose Planned Parenthood")        Planned Parenthood is not a benevolent organization trying to strengthen women's rights. It is a cold, calculating group intent on spreading the Humanist religion, luring our children into their web of premarital sex and unlimited abortions, reducing the population of minorities in particular and filling its coffers with the profits from sales of birth control devices. PP COMES BETWEEN PARENTS and CHILDREN

Planned Parenthood pushes what it calls “confidential services” for minors, meaning that PP will provide all types of “reproductive services” to young girls, including potentially dangerous prescription medication and invasive surgery, without their parents’ knowledge. In its 1993-1994 Annual Report, PP bragged of its “unswerving commitment to confidentiality.”

In most states, PP assigns teens a “code name” so that PP can call the girls at home and pretend to be a girlfriend. (Recently, the code names in Springfield, IL; Chicago, IL; and Kingston, NY; were Heather, Nancy and Lucy, respectively.)

As long ago as 1979, the Sunday Independent newspaper in Wilkes-Barre, PA, reported that Planned Parenthood was transporting high school girls out of town, during school hours, to get abortions without the parents being notified.

Planned Parenthood will give minor girls Norplant, Depo-Provera shots, and even abortions without their parents’ knowledge.

PP DOES NOT OPPOSE TEENAGE SEX

Planned Parenthood does not view teenage sex as wrong. PP is upset only if sex results in “unwanted” births. Planned Parenthood’s sex education programs are not about telling children how to avoid sex. They are, rather, designed to indoctrinate our children into what PP calls “responsible sexuality.” By this PP means it is okay for kids to have sex as long as they avoid pregnancy; or if they do get pregnant, have an abortion.

Former PP president Faye Wattleton confirmed this in the Los Angeles Times, on October 17, 1986: “[Planned Parenthood is] not going to be an organization promoting celibacy or chastity.”

The current PP president, Pamela Maraldo, in an article in the March/April 1993 issue of Family Planning World, condemned abstinence-only sex ed programs as “unacceptable.” She endorsed, instead, the position of former United States Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, who said, “We’ve taught our children in driver’s education what to do in the front seat, and now we’ve got to teach them what to do in the back seat.”

PP SPREADS RELIGION OF HUMANISM

Planned Parenthood is dedicated to spreading the religious doctrine of Humanism as defined in the Humanist Manifestos (I and II).

PP has consistently refused to give our children a clear message of “right” and “wrong.” It seeks not to educate our children in moral values, but to indoctrinate them into the Humanist philosophy that proclaims there is no objective moral code, and that right and wrong can be decided solely by the individual.

In the Los Angeles Times article quoted above, Faye Wattleton said, “[Planned Parenthood’s] concern is not to convey ‘shoulds’ or ‘should nots.’”

Fearing that moral people on school boards may lead to schools teaching our young children right from wrong, Pamela Maraldo said, in the article referred to above, “...we must bring an immediate halt to the aggressive infiltration of local school boards by the religious right.”

Any school program endorsed by Planned Parenthood will give children complete information on how to have sex. The children will be given no moral guidance in a PP program and will be told they can do it or not do it depending on how they feel. While this concept of no absolute rights or wrongs may be embraced by some people in the world, it is rejected by most. Most people subscribe to religious principles that recognize a supreme authority over life and a set of divinely inspired principles on which our behavior must be conditioned. Parents who support STOPP are among this latter group and, therefore, oppose all PP programs for teens.

PP POSES A DANGER TO WOMEN

Planned Parenthood runs a business providing birth control devices to its customers. Although PP is officially a non-profit organization, IRS regulations allow it to make profits on parts of its operation. PP does make a profit on its sale of birth control devices and seems to operate more to protect that income than its clients.

A primary example of this is their provision of birth control pills. The Pill has long been a major income producer for PP.

At the Third Annual AIDS Conference in Washington in June 1987, Dr. Frank Plummer of the Kenya Medical Institute reported that oral contraceptive users appear to be less resistant to AIDS than non-users. Still PP refused to get teenage girls and others off the Pill.

Then, Family Planning Perspectives (Vol. 25, No. 6, p. 243) reported: “Women who are seropositive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and use the pill are more likely than nonusers to have HIV present in their cervical secretions, and may be more likely to infect their sexual partners.” The AGI story goes on to say: “The presence of HIV in cervical secretions was nearly 12 times as likely among pill users as among non-users.”

Still, PP refused to tell its customers to get off the Pill to reduce the risk of AIDS. If PP were really concerned about women, it would stop selling the Pill. However, this would mean about an $85,000,000 decrease in PP income.

This same disregard for women can also be seen in Planned Parenthood’s handling of the Norplant problem. In 1993 and 1994, numerous lawsuits were filed by Norplant users over the side effects of the implants and the difficulty of removal. Yet PP not only continues to make this device available, it still implants it in minors without parental knowledge.

In his book The Destiny of the Black Race, black author Carlisle John Peterson devotes the greater part of two chapters to the racist nature of PP. He gives many examples, including Sanger’s notorious “Negro Project” of the 1930’s.

Looking at PP’s abortion statistics gives more evidence of its racist nature. PP has an overall clientele spread that is 74% white and 26% minorities. Yet PP’s 1992 Service Report revealed that its abortion customers were 57% white and 43% minorities! It is clear, then, that PP targets minority customers for abortions.

In addition to lowering the minority population through abortions, PP also pushes sterilization among minority groups. In his book Grand Illusions, George Grant wrote:

Lydia Jones, a Title X and Medicaid-eligible welfare mother of four went to the Planned Parenthood clinic near her home and discovered that “free” government programs can be a good news-bad news proposition.“They told me that if I wanted to take advantage of their medical services I would have to undergo sterilization,” she said. “The counselor just kept lecturing me about how I needed to do this, and that I should have done it a long time ago. She told me that my children were a burden to society. Well, let me tell you, I love my children. And they’re a burden to no one. My two oldest are in college, working their way through. My other two are straight-A students and bound for scholarships. I may be poor, and I may be Black, but I’m not going to be bullied by these people into despising the heritage God has given me.” Lydia walked out [of Planned Parenthood]. According to a February 26, 1994, San Diego Union-Tribune story, PP opened a modern medical facility in the poor neighborhood of Tijuana, Mexico, to provide free sterilizations for Mexican women. This facility is contributing to the demise of the native Mexican population.

PP IS LARGEST PROMOTER OF SURGICAL ABORTION

From its beginning, Planned Parenthood has been an organization that championed surgical abortion. In many of its plans and documents, PP talks about the need for abortion as “a necessary back-up for contraceptive failure.”

Planned Parenthood opposes every attempt to put even the slightest restriction on abortion. In 1989 it opposed a Massachusetts bill which would have made sex-selection abortions illegal.

Planned Parenthood “counseling” is geared towards getting pregnant women to abort their babies. Paula Molloy of Philadelphia tells of going to PP when she was pregnant and of the type of counseling she received. Paula said:

I found myself pregnant and went to the only place I knew—Planned Parenthood. There, the counselor began her coercive methods. I did not have any intention of signing myself up for an abortion. The counselor asked me what I was planning to do. I was not sure. The counselor said, “Surely you’re not planning on having this child, you can’t even afford our clinic let alone a baby.” She started to tell me the cost of baby clothes, food and medical expenses. She then said: “Do you want to end up on welfare? You have your whole life ahead of you. You won’t be able to travel or pursue a serious career.” I told her my parents would help. She asked me how old they were and how many children lived at home. After I answered, her comment was “Are you not being selfish to place this burden of responsibility on your parents? They have already raised their children and it was their turn to enjoy each other.” I then asked about adoption and she started to talk about child abuse cases. Then she added that I was on the pill and the fetus would suffer serious medical and physical complications. I made an appointment for the abortion that day.

This type of “counseling” occurs frequently at PP. A study made public by the U.S. Government’s General Accounting Office in 1989 reported that 35.2% of pregnant patients who go to PP centers have abortions, as compared with just 5.7% of patients who go to all family planning clinics. In addition, the GAO found one PP clinic where 86.4% of pregnant women had abortions!

In 1993, PP ran more than 100 abortion facilities in the United States and performed 134,277 abortions. This represents almost 9% of all the abortions in the country!

PP IS POPULATION-CONTROL GROUP

Despite all its rhetoric about being a “women’s health agency” or an “advocate for poor women,” PP is first and foremost a population-control organization. According to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Federation Declaration of Principles, 1980, p. 12, one of the five general goals of PP is “to combat the world population crisis by helping to bring about a population of stable size in an optimum environment in the United States.”

The PPFA 1993-94 Annual Report also bragged: “In February 1994, PPFA launched a new initiative to ensure Planned Parenthood’s continuing leadership in global population issues.” It is called the Global Vision Project. PP’s activities in sterilization and abortion can rightly be traced to its intense desire to reduce population growth.

PP USES OUR MONEY TO PROMOTE ITS AGENDA

Planned Parenthood receives large amounts of government monies to spread its philosophies. PPFA receives $150 million from American taxpayers. Thus, we are being forced to pay for its outrageous programs and its attacks on our youth.

To defeat Planned Parenthood, we need your help. We invite you to join us in this task. Please pray for our work. To keep informed about PP send $25 for a one-year subscription to The Ryan Report.

© 1995 STOPP International


 

'Choice on Earth' back for 3rd straight year
Planned Parenthood unveils controversial 2004 greeting card
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com For the third straight year, Planned Parenthood, the nation's No. 1 abortion provider, is selling greeting cards with the holiday message "Choice on Earth."


The 2004 'Choice on Earth' card by Planned Parenthood
This year's offering, which includes bright pink snow flakes and the now-infamous phrase, is available at the organization's online store. Two years ago, outcry about the cards in the media, Planned Parenthood claimed, actually spiked sales of the items, as well as "Choice on Earth" T-shirts. "'Tis the season to share with family, friends, colleagues and loved ones the message of 'choice on earth.' Place your orders now for the 2004 Holiday Card," states the card's page on the group's online store. Jim Sedlak, executive director of American Life League's STOPP International, slammed Planned Parenthood for once again offering the greeting cards.

The 2002 'Choice on Earth' card by Planned Parenthood
"In its continual attempt to 'normalize' abortion, Planned Parenthood has once again chosen to offend the Christian community by releasing the latest edition of its 'Choice on Earth' holiday cards," said Sedlak in a statement. "Contrary to the open-minded image the abortion organization aims to present for itself, Planned Parenthood has zero tolerance for anyone – or any religious group – that recognizes abortion as an evil act that kills a pre-born baby." The controversial theme is derived from a passage in the Gospel of Luke, where an angel announces to shepherds the birth of their savior in Bethlehem. The King James version of the Bible states: "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.'" "By replacing 'peace' with 'choice,' or more accurately, 'killing the innocent on earth,' Planned Parenthood is essentially saying 'abortion on earth,'" Sedlak said. "This blatant mockery of Christian values – and of Christ Himself – truly demonstrates the bigoted, anti-religion, anti-God nature of Planned Parenthood."

The Truth About Margaret Sanger!

(This article first appeared in the January 20, 1992 edition of Citizen magazine)

Mass murderer Margaret Sanger

"No Gods - No Masters" -Margaret Sanger
 

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 justices 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 afterward:

It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance.  There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop 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 charge as 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 Parenthood World 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 parenthood World 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 stories 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 today the 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 upbringing which Sanger said contributed to her agitation and bitterness later in life to 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 inferior races' were in fact human weeds' and a menace to civilization.' . . . [S]he was a true believer, not simply someone who assimilated the jargon of the times as 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 exposed 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 woman considered a heroine by many who began an organization that is responsible for the deaths of millions of unborn children.

Grant states that, "Margaret Sanger and 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.

(WOMEN'S NEWS)--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.


Margaret Sanger is No Hero to Black AmericaBy Mike Green
A New Visions Commentary paper published January 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 777 N. Capitol St. NE #803, Washington, DC 20002, 202/371-1400, Fax 202-408-7773, E-Mail: Project21@nationalcenter.org, Web: http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited.

"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population." — Margaret Sanger
       NBC's Today show recently brought tears to my eyes. In disbelief, I watched our nation's mainstream media honor Margaret Sanger, the woman who single-handedly gave birth to Planned Parenthood and the abortion movement. The movement that is responsible for literally millions of terminated souls, including more than 1,200 abortions of African-American children each day! As Katie Couric heralded this bigoted, racist woman as a heroine for the millennium, my jaw hit the floor. Sanger was described as vivacious, warm, healing and powerfully driven. Ellen Chesler, a Sanger biographer, said Sanger wanted simply to liberate "women to experience their sexuality free of consequence." While noting Sanger wrote for a socialist weekly and published her own newsletter called The Women Rebel, No Gods, No Masters, NBC failed to mention that she proposed in some writings that Negroes like my parents and grandparents be given the choice of segregation or sterilization. NBC told of Sanger's battles with the Catholic Church, her arrests and self-imposed exile to escape further imprisonment. It was further revealed that she abandoned her husband and three small children "for the cause." Sanger's grandson said she was so devoted to her "cause" that she was seldom home to care for her own children. One daughter died of pneumonia at the age of four. The report claimed Sanger never recovered from the loss even though they already said "her children were neglected" and "her marriage fell apart" and "she remarried and went on." Is this the behavior of an American hero? NBC said some of Sanger's supporters objected to her more controversial beliefs regarding population control. But that's all they said. After it was over, I saw blood red through a veil of tears and uncontrollable emotion. "The Negro Project," which Sanger established to ensure that the African-American population did not outgrow the white population, was never mentioned. To add insult to injury, the segment implied that Sanger should have been honored by this country but never was. NBC mentioned Sanger's founding of Planned Parenthood and her legacy in the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion as well as her role in the development of the birth control pill. But they failed to mention her writings concerning the creation of, in her words, "government-run farms and homesteads" for "illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends, morons, mental defectives and epileptics." Witness the misery and anguish massed in the communities we now call ghettos and government housing - where a Planned Parenthood office is readily accessible to encourage abortion and sexual freedom. Compare those communities to non-minority suburbs and tell me that Sanger's undermining of the minority family structure has not been achieved. Why was this not covered? According to NBC, Sanger "improved the lives of billions of people." I suspect they weren't referring to all the dead and neglected babies. But, then again, babies were dispensable to Sanger - even her own. Nancy Stevenson, Sanger's great-granddaughter, claimed Sanger made it so that "women today can have it all." I wonder if she is referring to the cold callousness by which women and young girls choose to terminate life in their wombs? Or perhaps that have it all by tossing away their virtue, dignity and innocence on the altar of sexual freedom? Maybe it is because they can now leave their kids with strangers to challenge men to a duel on the battlefield of money, sex and power? Whatever Stevenson means, there is no question Sanger's efforts changed our society. She succeeded in keeping the population of the Negro down. And she succeeded in influencing both white and black leaders and their followers to adopt philosophies that directly oppose their own religious beliefs. Sanger also succeeded in corralling the human misery she wanted to isolate. She succeeded in persuading the government to assist her Planned Parenthood clinics in the murder of millions by legalizing and sanctioning a woman's "choice" to determine the fate of her unborn baby. Sanger achieved success by convincing society that being both a career woman and mother was a noble cause, despite her inability to do so. She successfully divided our nation over the issues of birth control, abortion, religion and family. America's mainstream media has crowned Margaret Sanger a hero to women. I am asking you to make your own stand. Will you ignore the facts and pretend you don't know the truth? Or will you act? Will you use your own influence and stature and power to combat the evil that has been held up and honored by others. As we observe the 27th anniversary of legal abortion this January 22, will you stand with me and others as we speak out fervently and frequently regarding the humiliation and shame brought upon this country by Margaret Sanger? Will you stand up for what you believe or deny having the knowledge?

*** (Mike Green is an associate of Project 21 and the president of the Committee to Restore America Foundation in San Diego, California. He can be reached at mgreen1170@aol.com.)


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