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 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 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 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 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.
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 of The Woman Rebel (its subheading: “No Gods and No Masters”) showed the darkness
of her mind. She denounced marriage as a
“degenerate institution” and sexual modesty as “obscene prudery.” 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 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 there would be enough food for less people. Unfortunately, Malthus decided that the only responsible social policy was to managerially limit
the growth in population. (But he was totally wrong on his growth in food assumption--productivity innovation has been vastly successful in providing enough food). Listen to his mind-blowing suggestions to "solve" the food problem: “All children born beyond what would be
required must necessarily perish…we should facilitate…this mortality…by
encouraging destruction. Instead of
recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits…we
should crowd more people together, and court 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 by, 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 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 (prejudicial) doctrine
and began preparations to lecture and educate the world. 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 "due to" over-population. “As
has been scientifically proven,” she added.
A lie. Plunging headlong 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 believe in the power of genetics to solve many human social
problems), and Freudianism (sex, of course).
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 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 so much that her groups were endowed with departments that
taught eugenics—we’re talking Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Stanford in
particular. (Where have 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 extrapolated it--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.) 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. (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.
These statements 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, 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 favoring concentration
camps for all “dysgenic stocks.” (The truth is, nobody important commented on either). 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—as she called them, “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, he 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 applied into 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
child-killing procedures (such as, “abortion is OK to preserve her mental
health, “etc)—Colorado, California, and North Carolina for starters. By the end of 1971, half a million legal
abortions were being performed in the U.S. each year. That’s half the rate today, yet it was two
years before Roe v. Wade fully opened the doors.
Planned Parenthood also used Sanger's moral legacy (an oxymoron)--in 1970. Here’s
how they did things in the Philippines, where abortion was illegal. Planned
Parenthood offered “menstrual extractions”—vacuuming
the uterus—and the procedure was done by those 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 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.” But
still they have this great image to the public. The organization is coated with Teflon, I
guess. In a recent video entrapment,
they violated three laws, where they were caught (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
they had the audacity to sue the video investigator. He had to pay $200,000. This horror happened because their federal judge had, in the past, helped open
and run a Planned Parenthood clinic. My
question is: Where were the Christian churches? And: Who determined that this
federal judge would decide the case? Of
course, the public knows nothing and cares nothing about this case. Fifty-two
percent of Americans now favor Planned Parenthood.
Our tax money actually pays Planned Parenthood over $570
million a year to run their grisly service.
They kill over 320,000 babies annually. ( A big part of the near-million murders here). 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, non-human 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? Shockingly,
62% of Americans are against defunding Planned Parenthood. We conclude that
they like their tax money used this way. 70% of Americans now favor the way Roe
v. Wade went. So we conclude that
Americans don’t have much to say against abortion. No moral anchor! This is America now. This despite the fact that
science is crystal clear on the baby having a separate life from the mother; and
you are killing a separate human when you abort. 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—like God.
Since we have not defended the innocent, since we had no mercy on them, God
will have no mercy on us--or the babies' murderers--mothers and doctors. We have judged
the babies that they are not worth living.
So God will judge us.
