Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger
Planned Parenthood is the oldest, largest, and best-organized provider of
abortion, sex education, and birth control services in the world. It
now operates in 150 nations. But the story of Planned Parenthood could never
have begun without the story of Margaret Sanger. It was her impetus,
her drive, her single-minded obsession that eventually gave birth to the giant
baby-killer. She died in 1966, but Planned Parenthood has grown and
achieved far beyond her greatest dreams. Yes, from 1978 til’ now,
Planned Parenthood has murdered over 7 million babies. What an accomplishment.
(Results prior to 1978 were not kept—typical of the organization’s sloppy
accountability even until today).
Well, which side of Margaret Sanger’s story would you like to
hear? My local library has a book in the Juvenile section, no less,
that is unrelenting in its praise. She was a wonderful, progressive
woman—according to them.
But my library does not have the book that I chose to review: Killer
Angel, by Dr. George Grant. He is the author of over five
dozen books on American history, politics, theology, and social
issues. This book is a “Cliff’s Notes” of his great
work, Grand Illusions, an even
more thoroughly documented biography of her effect on
mankind. She is up there with Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler—and
living in the same time period, no less—if you want to find out who was the
greatest murderer of innocents the world has ever seen. How
could she be lavishly praised in most of our secular literature, while the
other homicidal tyrants are vilified? I maintain that it’s because our culture
has silent agreement with her. That would be another paper.
Her story begins predictably enough. Born in 1879 in Corning, New
York, daughter of Irish Catholic parents, the sixth of eleven children, her
home life was never happy. Her father drank, beat his sons, and
worked sporadically, so they suffered much from hunger and
privation. He was a radical atheist, and mocked the religious
devotion of his neighbors and his wife. Margaret was baptized and
confirmed in secret in by her mother in 1893, and, for a short time, had a
spark of religion; but her mother’s death and father’s cynicism turned her into
hatred of religion by the time she was 17.
Grown up, at first she was a material girl. She was bright and
manipulative, pushing her way up the social ladder. She married into money at
age 29 to William Sanger, an architect. She had three children
soon after. They lived in Manhattan, but she was restless of
housekeeping and kids—so she convinced William to move from their suburban
neighborhood to a chic neighborhood where there was lots of shopping and a real
night life. Once they moved, her husband, a free-thinker,
immediately began attending Anarchist and Communist meetings in Greenwich
Village. Margaret tagged along, unimpressed—she mocked the rag-tag
revolutionaries. But she listened to the well-honed speeches by John
Reed, who learned his trade from Russian Bolsheviks, and she was suddenly tuned
in. She shed her bourgeois habits and plunged headlong into the
maelstrom of rebellion and revolution. She began farming out her
kids to friends and neighbors, and went into hospitality, regularly inviting
Communists and liberals into their home for meals and talk. Outside of those
get-togethers, she had almost no connection with her husband. She
joined the Socialist party—a conglomeration of Mugwumps, Anarchists,
Progressivists, and Communists--and volunteered to be a women’s union organizer. She
then formed a special attachment to the words of Eugene Debs, who raved about
the evils of Capitalism, and who ran several times for president (though one of
his campaigns was run from his penitentiary cell). But on women’s
issues, he was in favor of sexual liberation, feminism, and birth
control--subjects that were right in her wheelhouse. But were brand-new for her
time period.
She tried labor activism for a while, and even midwifery. But she
met Mabel Dodge, a trust socialite, and began rubbing shoulders and talking
with the high-income intellectuals like Eugene O’Neil, who introduced her to
free love. As typical, she jumped in feet first. She had
already suggested to her husband that she would like to sexually experiment
with different partners, but despite his puzzled hurt, she often resorted to
free love to quench her hunger for meaning in life. Her husband
tried to change things by taking her to Paris, but there she spent much time in
learning advanced contraceptive methods. She abandoned her
husband—and her marriage—and returned to New York now looking for
income. She decided to become a writer. Her first issue was
The Woman Rebel; its subheading, “No Gods
and No Masters,” was obviously against patriarchy. This showed the darkness of
her mind. She denounced marriage as a “degenerate institution” and
sexual modesty as “obscene prudery"--you don't usually see those two words
together. Two of her issues even defended political
assassinations. But she mostly wrote about contraception and sexual
liberation. One issue irresponsibly recommended “Lysol douches” and
“heavy doses of laxatives” to stop pregnancy. She was promptly
served with a subpoena indicting her for lewd and lascivious--and unproven--
articles. Five years in the federal pen awaited her. She
fled the country under an assumed name—her Socialist friends forged her a
passport. She had to get a permanent babysitter for the three
inconvenient children.
While she was a fugitive in England, she was fascinated by lectures on
Thomas Malthus (the man is still considered an economic guru, by
many). He maintained that population would always grow faster than
production of food, and land available. This would cyclically lead
to a crisis shortage of food, resulting in massive deaths—either by war or by
famine, so as to reduce the population, so there would be enough food for fewer
people. Unfortunately, Malthus decided that the only
responsible social policy was to managerially limit the growth in population. This
idea is still very much alive in “woke” Europe. But he was totally wrong on his
growth in food assumption--productivity innovation has
been vastly successful in providing enough food. God has made a way, solving
the growth of population. But wartime and genocide have still resulted in
famine—if a nation chooses to so treat its “lesser” people. Listen to his
mind-blowing suggestions to Malthus "solve" the food
problem: “All children born beyond what would be required must necessarily
perish…we should facilitate…this mortality…by encouraging their
destruction. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we
should encourage contrary habits…we should crowd more people together, and
court (encourage) the return of the plague…and build their villages near
stagnant pools. But above all, we should reprobate (disapprove of)
remedies for diseases, and restrain those…much mistaken men who use charity,
relief, and missionary outreaches.” Note that most of these
monstrous suggestions would kill the poor--and, by the way, he figured the
well-to-do would thrive.
This unbelievable idea (the opposite of Christ, who protected the poor and
sick) was destined for unpopularity in a moral culture, but…Neo-Malthusianism
that arose later, developed palatable arguments that saved the day for
Malthusians--i.e., they developed "better excuses” to cover up their
death-theology. The thesis was, again: the physically
unfit, the poor, and the incompetent were the ones “chosen” for suppression and
isolation. The “Neos” felt the best way to gradually eliminate them was
through teaching them three
things: contraception, sterilization and abortion. Well,
Margaret agreed with this doctrine (prejudiced against the poorer blacks, by
the way), and began preparations to lecture and educate the world herself. In
order to take the moral “high ground,” she reasoned that she should preach on
how these three unholy solutions would lessen the threat of poverty, sickness,
racial tension--all of those are "due to"
over-population. “As has been scientifically proven,” she
added. A lie. Plunging wicked literature for scientific
"proof," she read up on all the quack science of the
day: Phrenology (the idea that the shape and size of the skull
proves mental ability and character), craniometricism (we can determine race
and gender by the shape of the skull), Oneidianism (free love), lambrosianism
(the idea that criminals have low foreheads, close-set eyes, and small pointed
ears), hereditarianism (the idea that heredity plays a significant role in
determining character and human nature). They also believed in the
power of genetics to solve many human social problems, and in Freudianism
(which they translated as free sex).
But her favorite offshoot of Malthusianism was Eugenics, the idea that while
we want to control breeding, we also want to increase desirable heritable
characteristics. Let others talk about restricting immigration or
cutting off welfare; let some of our others experiment with sterilization that
produced nothing but sad stories that blew apart families; let others suggest
an “extra-child tax,” or elimination of medical subsidies to “oversize”
families, or eliminating paid maternity leave; but her thing was to help
eliminate “bad racial stocks” and to “engineer the evolutionary ascent of
man.” Very noble! In fact, many universities loved the
Eugenics idea (this was in the 1920s) so much that they set up groups that were
endowed with departments that taught eugenics—we’re talking Harvard, Princeton,
Columbia, and Stanford in particular. (Where had the Ivy League schools
gone?!) Funding was provided by the Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie
Foundations. Regardless of the big names, this was immoral; it was
malevolent voodoo science; it was genocide, it was White Supremacy, because
they zeroed in on the poor and the minority races to eliminate, as we shall
see.
Hitler picked this eugenics idea up himself and interpreted it as "kill
the Jews, and you have improved the Aryan race." What is less known
is that he forced sterilization, encouraged free sex among the virgin girls
that looked Aryan, and also killed the mentally ill and
disabled. Genocide became the wave of the future at the time (in the
early 1920s)—I’m sure Stalin wanted to achieve the same noble goals when he
killed fifteen million Russian and Ukrainian kulaks (rebellious peasants who
resisted forced collectivization). Mussolini killed four million Ethiopians,
two million Eritreans (Russia massacred them too), and a million Serbs, Croats,
and Albanians. And I should say that Hitler didn’t stop with
Jews; he killed two million Slavs and a million Poles—both “pollutants” to the
Aryan race.
At this time Mrs. Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which
would in 1942 become Planned Parenthood (they went international in the late
1940s).
She also wrote a book, The Pivot of Civilization,
a disgusting 284 pages of turgid, hateful words. The book, like
Malthus, hates charitable organizations—“they help spread misery and
destitution…dangers which have today produced their full harvest of human
waste.” She unashamedly called for the elimination of “human
weeds,” calls for the “cessation of charity,” for the segregation of “morons,
misfits, and the maladjusted,” and for the sterilization of “genetically
inferior races.” (This was before abortion was
legal). Lest you question who she had in mind, she later writes that
the “dysgenic races” included “Blacks, Hispanics, Amerinds” (Native Americans),
and, would you believe, “Fundamentalists and Catholics.” (Such a book, if
written today, it would be labeled racist and hate speech--I
hope.) But the book drew rave reviews. If you were
non-Aryan, if you were Red, Yellow, Black, or certain Whites, all were noxious
in her sight—hey, a song. (She had some of Hitler’s cronies over for dinner
from time to time—it was obvious she agreed with their genocidal
plans.) Later, she planned to have Planned Parenthood deliberately
place the abortion clinics in particular neighborhoods with these
minorities. Or, as she called them, “these feeble-minded,
syphilitic, irresponsible, and defective” people. All are real quotes she
said—word for word. Abortionists! This is your polluted source!
These statements, only slightly subdued, made her a star among the
influential intelligentsia in England. With the help of Havelock
Ellis, whom she adored for his radical ideas and his unusual bedroom behavior
(though he was impotent, he staged orgies, established a network for homosexual
liaisons, and helped provide mescaline and other psychotropic and psychedelic
drugs). The two of them plotted what would be politically expedient to broaden
her popularity base. It was decided she would have to tone down her
rabid pro-abortion and socialistic stance (remember, this is still only in the
1920s), and she needed to take charge of her children once again, to show that
she had family values. But she could keep pounding on Eugenics in
her lectures, since it was popular. Thus prepared, she came back to
America to launch a brilliant public relations campaign. The
authorities were intimidated to drop all previous charges; then she went on a
3-month speaking tour here. She garnered controversial press
coverage everywhere she went—but the upper income crust in America loved her,
as did England. This was right after the Great War, and people were
doing everything they could to remove the scars of war—they were drinking,
dancing, and forgetting. Predictions for the future of America were
bright. Racial hatred was still active (this was only 40 years after
Reconstruction.) Many theologians chimed in that we were entering in
the Biblical Millennium. But her enthusiasm and popularity led her
to be too bold—and she made a mistake. She set up an illegal birth
control clinic in the Brownsville section of New York—populated, of course, by
immigrant Slavs, Latins, Italians, and Jews. But within two weeks,
the clinic was shut down as illegal—but she was only sentenced to 30 days in
the workhouse. No problem. As soon as she was released, she
founded a new organization, the Birth Control League, and began to publish a
new magazine, the Birth Control Review.
Despite criticism from evangelist Billy Sunday, she still garnered praise
from people like Theodore Roosevelt, and got her intellectual friends—H.G.
Wells, Pearl Buck, Julian Huxley, and Havelock Ellis--to write articles for
her. It became a popular magazine. By 1922, her
fame was secure, and she went on a round-the-world lecture tour. She
took a less-radical stance. She could no longer publicly talk about
the “choking human undergrowth of morons and imbeciles should be segregated and
sterilized” —but that statement WAS recorded in the Review
and in private discussions. But, think how all you needed to know
about the mindset of Hitler was to read Mein Kampf (it
was quickly translated into English), so all you needed know about the real
mind of Margaret was to read the Birth Control Review. It
had articles of Fascist diatribe, of limiting immigration—by race; and Margaret
herself wrote about favoring concentration camps for all “dysgenic stocks”—I
guess people were all cattle. By her estimation, as much as 70% of the
population fell into her undesirables. Margaret and her cohorts
really had their work cut out for them in their goal to limit these people.
But they were more than up to the task. Later, in 1939, she designed a
“Negro Project,” as she called it, in response to requests from Southern
states’ public health officials—which she called, “men not generally known for
their racial equanimity”—yet she was willing to work with them. As
she put it, “the mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed
carelessly and disastrously…the increase among Negroes, even more than among
Whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and
fit.” Her group wanted to hire three or four “Colored Ministers…with
engaging personalities…to propagandize for birth control.” She
wrote, “The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a
religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we
want to exterminate the Negro population, and the Minister is
the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more
rebellious members.” (This is the testimony of a friend and
feminist, Linda Gordon, in her book, Woman’s Body, Woman’s
Right, 1974, page 229ff.) Further, she said, “Let’s
appear to let the colored run it.” Another compatriot said, “I
wonder if Southern Darkies can ever be trusted with…a clinic …except under
white supervision.” (This reminds me of a quote by G.K. Chesterton,
a theologian and philosopher, the only intellectual voice at the time opposed
to her ravings: “Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they
cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each
other’s”). Thus, this was a ruse concocted to get blacks to
cooperate in their own elimination. Sadly that project was quite
successful. Margaret’s dream of discouraging “the defective…from
their reckless and irresponsible swarming and spawning” was beginning to be
fulfilled.
In 1925 she hosted an international birth control conference, in which the
attendees for the first time were together in claiming a high goal of
unrestricted abortion in every country as soon as possible. One of
their themes was captured succinctly n the following group
statement: “The dullard, the gawk, the numbskull, the
simpleton, the scatterbrain are amongst us in overshadowing
numbers—intermarrying, breeding, inordinately prolific, threatening to
overwhelm the world with their useless and terrifying gel.”
Despite her stunning success, Margaret was miserable. During one
of her many long absences, her daughter caught cold—and died of
pneumonia. Her reaction was to forget by having more sex—and she
began indulging in the occult. She attended séances, and applied
into a Rosicrucian gathering (they claimed occult powers and
knowledge). She also dabbled with Theosophy (they believed in karma
and reincarnation). And she married again—in 1922—into big money;
this time, to a Mr. J. Noah Slee. But first she made him sign a
prenuptial agreement that she would have her own apartment, feel free to come
and go as she pleased, have friends in behind closed doors—and he would have to
phone her from the other end of the apartment or seek her secretary to ask her
for a dinner date. I don’t know how he could have missed her intent
here, but the milquetoast signed. Slee never saw too much of her
after that.
She may have been terribly unhappy, but she was terribly rich now
too. As befits her obsession and work ethic, she spent most of his
money on her cause—traveling and getting in front of every microphone she
could—day or night. She was a tenacious organizer. She applied for every
grant, appealed to every foundation, and pleaded for funds from many
corporations and—from charity organizations, no less. Planned
Parenthood got its name and began reaching out for affiliates in
1942. Her greatest coup was when her organization got a tax-exempt
status from the IRS. So she got treated as a charity. How
ironic, considering how she felt about them.
In 1938, Sweden became the first free nation to revert to abortions (Stalin
and Hitler did it coercively). The forebear of Planned Parenthood
jumped into their countries with clinics. They also persuaded Sweden
to accept their sex-education programs for schools. Knowing Mrs.
Sanger’s sexual perversions, we can imagine what that might
include. More European nations allowed abortions over the next 18
years.
When Adolf Hitler’s holocaust was laid open in 1945, she backpedaled and
covered up her many ties to Hitler’s cronies. She spent strongly on
a massive propaganda blitz aimed at the U.S. middle class; she emphasized
patriotism, personal choice, and family values (imagine that from her). She won
additional endorsements from Eleanor Roosevelt and
Katherine Hepburn. And from Albert Einstein, Nehru, John
Rockefeller, Emperor Hirohito, and Henry Ford (a notorious
anti-Semite). But none of these encomiums gave her any
joy. By 1949 she became addicted to both drugs and
alcohol. She was quietly removed from the Board several times, but
they found that they couldn’t survive without her. She forced their
hand by dying in 1966, at age 86.
But Planned Parenthood lived on, and carried her legacy with the same
driving spirit as hers. In the 1960’s, even the middle class
loosened up its morals in the U.S. In 1967, the American
Medical Association began calling for the decriminalization of
abortion. So much for the Hippocratic Oath. About the
only powerful opposition voice in this time came from Pope Paul VI, in 1968,
whose encyclical Humanae Vitae reaffirmed the sanctity of life. But
pretty much everyone ignored traditions--it was the late '60s,
right? Several states loosened restrictions on fetus-killing
procedures (such as, “abortion is OK to preserve her mental health" etc.)—Colorado,
California, and North Carolina for starters agreed legally to this huge
loophole. By the end of 1971, half a million legal abortions were
being performed in the U.S. each year. The rate today is higher, but
we lack data. Estimates have been calculated. Worldwide, the numbers are
astronomical. Worldometer (useful in tracking the effects of Covid) has
this to say:
The data on abortions displayed on the Worldometer's counter is
based on the latest estimates on worldwide abortions published by various
sources, including the World Health Organization (WHO). According to WHO, every
year in the world there are around 73 million induced abortions.
This corresponds to approximately 200,000 abortions per day.
In the USA, where nearly 30% of pregnancies are unintended and
40% of these are terminated by abortion, there still are between 1,500
to 2,500 abortions per day.
That's over 700,000 per year. The US peaked at just
over 1.5 million in 1980, right after Planned Parenthood began keeping
records (they were forced to do so). We cannot celebrate this being cut
in half. States are continuing to defy God’s will on protecting the
innocent; nine states allow abortions up to the date of birth, even for “mental
health” of the “mother.” Those states are: Alaska, Colorado, Maryland,
Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and D.C. Four
states--
California, New York,
Illinois, or Washington—are more restrictive, but allow third-trimester
abortions.
The main problem we have to contend with, as real
Christians, is the fact that the majority of the US public favors
abortions. 60% of
U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. (Pew). The
"pro-choice" percentage remains higher than in the decade
before the 2022 Dobbs decision. (The Dobbs decision in 2022 eliminated the federal
constitutional right to abortion, and left it up to the states.) This clearly
shows that the public supports abortion in even greater numbers, despite the
decision.
The rare exceptions to abortion do not consider that even a zygote has the
sacred image of God in them, and are KNOWN by medicine as having a Separate DNA
from the mother, and is thus a separate human being.
Planned Parenthood also exercised Sanger's moral legacy (an oxymoron)--in
1970. Here’s how the PP did things in the Philippines, where abortion
was illegal. Planned Parenthood offered “menstrual
extractions” to women—which amounted to vacuuming the uterus—and their
crassness was seen in that they hired people who were not medically
qualified. It was still an abortion, but a tricky play on words
enabled them to still kill the baby and avoid the legalities. The authorities (more
racial elitists) let them get away with this simple deception. They
were more brazen in Brazil, where they knew there was a lack of legal
enforcement. Despite sterilization being illegal, they performed it
anyway—on 20 million every year at that time. An internal directive
from their office in London (this fact was uncovered in 1981), gave them the OK
on deceptions like this. It said “…action outside the law, and even
in violation of it, is part of the process of stimulating change.” Bolshevik
talk.
But still they have this great image to the public. The organization is
coated with Teflon, I guess. In a 2015 video entrapment in
California, he uncovered that they violated three laws-- (1) selling dead
baby’s body parts, (2) through partial birth abortion, many beyond state
limits; (3) without the “mother’s” consent to the act of manipulating the
abortion procedure. They got off scot-free—despite admitting to
these things on tape; then the Attorney General (who is now Michigan’s governor,
which state has abortion up to birth) had the audacity to sue the video
investigator. The U.S. House found Planned Parenthood did nothing
wrong, and a federal judge laid down a $2 million verdict against the
videographer! This verdict was upheld and finalized in 2023. This horror
happened because the federal judge who gave the verdict had, in
the past, helped open and run a Planned Parenthood clinic. My
question is: Why the silence? Where were the Christian churches? If
we cared, giant protests should have happened. And: Who
determined that this federal judge would decide the case? Of course,
the public knows nothing and cares nothing about this case.
Our tax money actually pays Planned Parenthood over $554 million a year to
run their grisly service. They like to keep hidden how much of our tax money
goes for abortions. Despite their arguments about a range of services
they provide, abortion consumes 94% of their expenses. Let no one
kid you—they are about profit. Smaller clinics are staying in business by
adding chemical abortions with RU486 to their offerings, often via non-nurse
presence. I'm speaking of web-cam hookup with an abortionist at one of
the larger mega-clinics. This is a cost-saver, since they don’t need local
expertise. But none of this makes abortion safer–in fact, it
increases the danger to the “mother”–but it does make more centers profitable.
Why are we paying half a billion of our tax money a year to allow Planned Parenthood to kill babies? Well, ask the 60% above. (Is it true that the majority of people claim that they are Christians?) Do we have a moral anchor anymore?! This is America now. Why is Planned Parenthood the only organization with a tax-exempt status that is allowed to spend $12 million every two years to elect Democrats—when political bribery by charities is a violation of the law? Nobody cares. The unborn need a bigger voice on their behalf—like God. Since we have not defended the innocent, since we had no mercy on them, God will have no mercy on the babies' murderers—“mothers” and doctors. We have judged the babies that they are not worth living. So God will judge us.
PS: There is one organization that is
ready to sue abortionist “mothers” in Criminal court for her killing.
This is “over the top” for some, but it is the only way that will stop
the murdering of babies in the womb cold. These “mothers” are beyond evangelism
now, if that is your suggestion. I’ll bet most of these anti-mothers call
themselves “Christians” already.
