"Why do people choose the substitute over God himself? Probably the most important reason is that it obviates accountability to God. We can meet idols on our own terms because they are our own creations. They are safe, predictable, and controllable; they are, in Jeremiah's colorful language, the 'scarecrows in a cornfield' (10:5). They are portable and completely under the user's control. They offer nothing like the threat of a God who thunders from Sinai and whose providence in this world so often appears to us to be incomprehensible and dangerous . . . [People] need face only themselves. That is the appeal of idolatry."
- David F. Wells
Thursday, August 20, 2009
She founded the first Birth Control clinic in 1916. Later she founded the American Birth Control League (ABC) which became Planned Parenthood.
From everybody's favorite source:
Sanger was a proponent of negative eugenics, a social philosophy which claims that human hereditary traits can be improved through social intervention. Methods of social intervention (targeted at those seen as "genetically unfit") advocated by some negative eugenicists have included selective breeding, sterilization and euthanasia. In A Plan for Peace (1932), for example, Sanger proposed a congressional department to:
Keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.
And, following:
Apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.
Her first pamphlet read:
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. Herein lies the key of civilization. For upon the foundation of an enlightened and voluntary motherhood shall a future civilization emerge.
Sanger saw birth control as a means to prevent "dysgenic" children from being born into a disadvantaged life, and dismissed "positive eugenics" (which promoted greater fertility for the "fitter" upper classes) as impractical. Though many leaders in the negative eugenics movement were calling for active euthanasia of the "unfit," Sanger spoke out against such methods. She believed that women with the power and knowledge of birth control were in the best position to produce "fit" children. She rejected any type of eugenics that would take control out of the hands of those actually giving birth.
About placing the responsibility for eugenic control in the hands of individual parents rather than the state, she wrote:
"The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics.... We are convinced that racial regeneration, like individual regeneration, must come 'from within.' That is, it must be autonomous, self-directive, and not imposed from without."
She said, "Only upon a free, self-determining motherhood can rest any unshakable structure of racial betterment".(emphasis mine)
She nevertheless advocated certain instances of coercion, in cases where she considered the parents unfit to decide whether they should bear children:
"The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind."
She was hailed by Gloria Steinem in Time magazine as one of the most important people in the 20th century. But there are some who believe she was a racist and that Planned Parenthood is carrying on her legacy.
Abortion and the Black Community
Minority women constitute only about 13% of the female population (age 15-44) in the United States, but they underwent approximately 36% of the abortions.
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, black women are more than 5 times as likely as white women to have an abortion
On average, 1,876 black babies are aborted every day in the United States.
This incidence of abortion has resulted in a tremendous loss of life. It has been estimated that since 1973 Black women have had about 16 million abortions. Michael Novak had calculated "Since the number of current living Blacks (in the U.S.) is 36 million, the missing 16 million represents an enormous loss, for without abortion, America's Black community would now number 52 million persons. It would be 36 percent larger than it is. Abortion has swept through the Black community like a scythe, cutting down every fourth member."
I think Margaret Sanger would be proud.
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Comments on "Was Margaret Sanger A Racist?":
2. Shrode
- 08/20/2009 1:06 pm CDT
There's a new documentary out -
Youtube clips of MAAFA21 - documentary on abortion and black genocide
And other people are blogging about this too.
3. Andrew
- 08/20/2009 5:23 pm CDT
Not that it justifies anything, but it should be mentioned that being a proponent of eugenics wasn't really all that shocking back then. It's kind of like anti-semitism, in that it didn't really become unfashionable until after we learned about the Holocaust.
Again, I'm not trying to justify Sanger's legacy. I'm just saying, given the time, it's not that surprising.
4. Mandi
- 08/20/2009 10:59 pm CDT
If anyone is interested in learning more about this there is a book called Blessed are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood -- It goes in depth into the history and life of Margaret Sanger along with the progression of Planned Parenthood. It was a fascinating read.
5. jez
- 08/21/2009 5:57 am CDT
The word "eugenics" automatically makes us think of nazis, but her version of it was a lot less offensive than the nazi's. As far as I know, she wanted the decisions to come from the parents, not for any government or agency to dictate who could reproduce.
Also, dunno why but I kind of fancy a smoke...
6. Bob Sacamento
- 08/21/2009 8:27 am CDT
Not that it justifies anything, but it should be mentioned that being a proponent of eugenics wasn't really all that shocking back then.
Some truth to this, but Margaret Sanger's crusade was one of the reasons (among others) that eugenics became a mainstream idea of the day.
As far as I know, she wanted the decisions to come from the parents, not for any government or agency to dictate who could reproduce.
True. But she was bound and determined to give minorities in particular the "opportunity" and "education" to make that very decision.
She was a racist, no doubt about it. The really weird thing, though, is that she was adamantly opposed to abortion!
7. Bob Sacamento
- 08/21/2009 8:33 am CDT
The word "eugenics" automatically makes us think of nazis, but her version of it was a lot less offensive than the nazi's.
But, at the end of the day, she was a eugenicist. No way around it. And her idea of hoodwinking "undersirables" into not reproducing is not, to my mind, morally superior to the more brutal approaches that were tried later.
9. Whitney
- 08/21/2009 9:37 am CDT
I was struck by the irony that while Sanger disagreed with the idea that the power of decision should be taken out of the hands of the person,
She rejected any type of eugenics that would take control out of the hands of those actually giving birth.
the movement that she eventually is credited with creating does just that by placing clinics and opportunity smack in the face of the disadvantaged. I guess you could still say that the person still has ultimate choice, but I contend that the "choice" is made more for them when the opportunity is made more available.
10. Alex Costa
- 08/21/2009 10:01 am CDT
Considering the fact that more than half of the 16 million black babies killed would be at a reproducing age right now, there would surely be more than 52 million african-americans in this country.
Of course, some pregnancies would be prevented if mothers knew that pregnancy would undoubtedly lead to birth... I took that into consideration.
11. Bob Sacamento
- 08/21/2009 10:20 am CDT
Andrew,
I'm not sure about America, but wasn't eugenics a fairly mainstream idea in Europe by the end of the 19th century?
With the caveat that the story is kind of complicated, yes. But Sanger was one of the people who helped "mainstream" it in the U.S. Not the only one, and probably not the first, but she was still very important in this regard. She wasn't saying anything that hadn't been said by others already, but she was still very much a "pioneer" in making the idea palatable outside of the more rarified intellectual circles of the day. And she founded the most important organization by far in the U.S. for actually turning these ideas into social action.
Whitney,
the movement that she eventually is credited with creating does just that by placing clinics and opportunity smack in the face of the disadvantaged.
You got it. And this was Ms. Sanger's intent all along.
12. Shrode
- 08/23/2009 3:55 pm CDT
The really weird thing, though, is that she was adamantly opposed to abortion!
WHAT!?!?!?!?! Really??? In all my reading, I never saw that. Can you give me a source? How do you know that?
13. Jonathan W.
- 08/25/2009 7:43 am CDT
Well, Sanger addressed abortion in chapter 10 of Woman and the New Race (1920):
When society holds up its hands in horror at the "crime" of abortion, it forgets at whose door the first and principal responsibility for this practice rests. Does anyone imagine that a woman would submit to abortion if not denied the knowledge of scientific, effective contraceptives? Does anyone believe that physicians and midwives who perform abortions go from door to door soliciting patronage? The abortionist could not continue his practice for twenty-four hours if it were not for the fact that women come desperately begging for such operations. He could not stay out of jail a day if women did not so generally approve of his services as to hold his identity an open but seldom-betrayed secret.
The question, then, is not whether family limitation should be practiced. It is being practiced; it has been practiced for ages and it will always be practiced. The question that society must answer is this: Shall family limitation be achieved through birth control or abortion? Shall normal, safe, effective contraceptives be employed, or shall we continue to force women to the abnormal, often dangerous surgical operation?
This question, too, the church, the state and the moralist must answer. The knowledge of contraceptive methods may yet for a time be denied to the woman of the working class, but those who are responsible for denying it to her, and she herself, should understand clearly the dangers to which she is exposed because of the laws which force her into the hands of the abortionist.
In the same chapter, she condemned abortion (both surgical and chemical) as a danger to the woman's life and health. (She did not mention the fetus.) It was on this basis that she wrote:
While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization. [...] It needs no assertion of mine to call attention to the grim fact that the laws prohibiting the imparting of information concerning the preventing of conception are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths each year in this country and an untold amount of sickness and sorrow. The suffering and the death of these women is squarely upon the heads of the lawmakers and the puritanical, masculine-minded person who insist upon retaining the abominable legal restrictions [on contraception].
I think it's very important to avoid anachronism here. It's easy to think of Sanger as the Founder of Planned Parenthood, but that means several different things. Remember, in 1920 it was generally illegal for an American doctor to advise married couples on contraception. Literature on birth control was legally banned as "obscene." Sanger is now considered a hero to many feminists more for her fight for contraception than for her less direct role in the abortion issue. And it's contraception, not abortion, that she is promoting in the text I quote above.
It's also important to be very careful about the term "race," which can mean a lot of different things. You should not assume that Sanger was talking about skin color when she used the word "race." In 1920, the term was a lot more ambiguous than it usually is now. In fact, when you read her work in context, it becomes clear that she was usually referring to what we would call class and nationality.
Sanger believed that the American "race" was the result of a blending of many different "races," and she believed that this was a good thing. There were plenty of "scientific racists" in her day, people who believed that the white race must not be contaminated by darker skin colors. Sanger was not one of them.
Instead, Sanger explicitly approved of the idea that America was a "melting pot." But she was also frightened by the prospect of a permanent underclass -- that is, working-class Italians and Hungarians and blacks, and illiterate backcountry whites as well -- reproducing rapidly and crowding out the literate and the truly free. She believed that a lack of contraception was keeping the families in this underclass locked in urban poverty (and, as you see above, forcing them into dangerous abortions). In essence, she believed that a lack of contraception was hampering the development of a higher American "race," i.e., a more refined, middle-class American nationality. Thus, she targeted black and immigrant communities for contraception -- not because she wanted to kill them, but because she wanted to help them join the middle-class American race, or way of life.
This is not the same thing as wanting to kill black people.
14. Jonathan W.
- 08/25/2009 8:25 am CDT
Because the Vorthos Forum advertisement is so inflammatory, I'd like to respond to it briefly too.
Jonathan Tremaine, the narrator, says this: "Sanger viewed certain races, especially blacks, as 'genetically inferior' and inclined towards producing 'human weeds.' 'Reckless breeders ... spawning ... human beings who never should have been born.'"
The video actually cites its sources, which is helpful. But it gets them wrong.
The "genetically inferior" and "human weeds" snippets come from a 1925 article that I don't have access to at the present time. (I've put in an interlibrary loan request.) I am suspicious, however, because the actual quoted words are just a short phrase with no context at all. There's no evidence in the video that Sanger was talking about blacks or any other racial group when she used those words. But I'll just have to leave that aside for now.
The "reckless breeders" quotation is sketchy from the beginning because it has two ellipses in such a short excerpt. That immediately puts me on alert. So I went to the cited source: Sanger's 1922 book The Pivot of Civilization.
Here are the passages in Sanger's book where that quotation seems to come from:
[In Marx's Capital,] it is impossible to discover any adequate refutation or even calm discussion of the dangers of irresponsible parenthood and reckless breeding, any suspicion that this recklessness and irresponsibility is even remotely related to the miseries of the proletariat. Poor Malthus is there relegated to the humble level of a footnote. [...]
All of these dangers and menaces are acutely realized by the Eugenists; it is to them that we are most indebted for the proof that reckless spawning carries with it the seeds of destruction. But whereas the Galtonians reveal themselves as unflinching in their investigation and in their exhibition of fact and diagnoses of symptoms, [the eugenicists] do not on the other hand show much power in suggesting practical and feasible remedies. [...]
Everywhere we see poverty and large families going hand in hand. Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly. People who cannot support their own offspring are encouraged by Church and State to produce large families. Many of the children thus begotten are diseased or feeble-minded; many become criminals. The burden of supporting these unwanted types has to be bourne by the healthy elements of the nation. Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to the maintenance of those who should never have been born.
So the video misquotes Sanger ("reckless breeders" for "reckless breeding"; "human beings who should never" instead of "those who should never"). This is a relatively minor problem, alarming as it is.
The problem is that nowhere in that book is Sanger talking about black people. She is talking about poor people -- people of any race who cannot afford to raise their children "properly" and morally. This is absolutely clear in the book. Sanger blames a lack of contraception among the American poor for things like overworked families, child labor, a lack of parental love, and a lack of freedom for mothers. She says these children "should never have been born" because their families can't care for them properly. Terrible as this idea is, the claim that it amounts to an endorsement of "black genocide" would be libel if Sanger were still alive. As it is, it's just a lie.
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Here is an interview that Mike Wallace did with her in 1957. Though there are no explicitly racist comments here, it is still a fascinating piece of history. My how times have changed. You'll see what I mean. Go watch it.