Victor R. Claveau, MJ
Gregory Pincus, co-developer of the Birth Control Pill, credits a visit from Margaret Sanger, who promised research money for the development of the Pill![i] Sanger, the founder of the National Birth Control League, now known as Planned Parenthood,[ii] supported abortion, and was enthused about developing a Pill as a means of curbing the “population explosion.”[iii]
In her 1922 book Pivot of Civilization she unabashedly called for the extirpation of “weeds…overrunning the human garden;” for the segregation of “morons, misfits, and the maladjusted;” and for the sterilization of “genetically inferior races.”[iv]
Sanger realized early in her campaign against the “inferior races” that she must keep open every avenue to “polite” racial manipulation. In her first pamphlet on contraception, Family Limitation, which was circulated in 1914, there was information not only on contraceptives, but also on abortifacients.[v]While promising that contraception would make abortion unnecessary, she did believe in a woman’s right to abortion.[vi]
Margaret Sanger stated clearly her rationale for birth control.[vii] She reminded the “self-supporting, self-respecting, members of society” of the high cost and “tremendous burden” on them of supporting the dependent; she made the appealing plea that it would be logical to expend public finds only on those children constitutionally (i.e. genetically) able to benefit from education; the poor, who were obviously genetically inferior, could not benefit from such help and simply must be eliminated. It is no coincidence that Sanger agreed to collect the hereditary and racial information about her clients for E.A. East, an infamous racist.
Birth control and sterilization for the poor were the tools Sanger advocated openly but abortion was also in her scheme of genocide. In 1929 she worked to advance the acceptability of abortion. There were many women who went to Sanger’s birth control clinics who were classified as “over-dues”. These women were usually pregnant and were turned away. Mrs. Sanger instructed her staff to make a “special study of all over-due cases” and to gather a series of 1,000 cases, showing economic, psychological, and medical justifications for them to have abortions. Sanger hoped to use this as a tool for legalizing abortions.[viii] [ix]
Margaret Sanger is responsible, more than anyone else, for keeping alive international racism. She played the attractive hostess for racist thinkers all over the world. Organizing the first world Population Conference in Geneva in 1926, she invited the most infamous racists of her day.[x]
[i] Gregory Pincus, The Control of Fertility, Academic Press, New York, 1965, p. 6; Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Research Facilities, Activities and Accomplishments, memo, 1/20/53, Margaret Sanger Collection, Library of Congress.
[ii] The BCFA members voted unanimously at a special January 29, 1942, meeting to change the organization’s name to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. By then, BCFA had 34 state league affiliates. The state leagues followed suit in changing their name and bylaws. Particularly, the New York State Federation for Planned Parenthood’s old bylaws stipulated that the object was: “To develop and organize on sound eugenic, social and medical principles, interest in and knowledge of birth control throughout the State of New York as permitted by law [emphasis added].” The new bylaws replaced “birth control” with “planned parenthood.” “Eugenics” was dropped in 1943 because of its unpopular association with the German government’s race-improving eugenics theories. Robert G. Marshall and Charles A. Donovan, Blessed are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 24-25.
[iii] Margaret Sanger, Family Limitation, 1st ed., 1914, 15-16, Margaret Sanger collection, Library of Congress (MSCLC); Sanger Speech, Washington DC, (MSCLC) speech was first given in 1916 and delivered 119 times; letter from Sanger to Hanna Stone, 3/10/32 copy to Marjorie Provost (Sanger’s handwriting) Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
[iv] Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization (New York: Brentano’s, 1922)
[v] Linda Gordan, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, (New York, Grossman Publishers, 1976) p. 223.
[vi] Ibid. p. 223.
[vii] Elasah Drogen, T.O.P., Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society, (Coarsegold, CA, CUL Publications, 1980) p. 91.
[viii] Ibid. p. 34.
[ix] James Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue, (New York, Basic Books, Inc. 1978) p. 118.
[x] Allen Chase, The Legacy of Malthus, The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism, (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1977) 9. 656.