UPDATE: CLICK HERE FOR 14 MORE POSTS ON QUOTES AND A TV INTERVIEW WITH MIKE WALLACE IN 1957.
Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger in her own words:
“Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”
Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.
“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the 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.”
Margaret Sanger’s December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
Note: Clarence Gamble, president of the American Eugenics Research
Association, said, “There is a great danger that we will fail because
the Negroes think it a plan for extermination. Hence lets appear to
let the colored run it as we appear to let [the] south do the
conference in Atlanta.”[2] Under this policy, Planned Parenthood of
America hired a full-time “Negro Consultant” in 1944.
“Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need … We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock.”
Margaret Sanger, April 1933 Birth Control Review.
“The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics.”
Margaret Sanger. “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda.” Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5
“As an advocate of birth control I wish … to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit,’ admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation….
On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”
Margaret Sanger. “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda.” Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5
“Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying … demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism … [Philanthropists] encourage the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant … We are paying for, and even submitting to, the dictates of an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.”
Margaret Sanger. The Pivot of Civilization, 1922. Chapter on “The Cruelty of Charity,” pages 116, 122, and 189. Swarthmore College Library edition.
“The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind.”
Margaret Sanger, quoted in Charles Valenza. “Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?” Family Planning Perspectives, January-February 1985, page 44.
“The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.”
Margaret Sanger. Speech quoted in Birth Control: What It Is, How It Works, What It Will Do. The Proceedings of the First American Birth Control Conference. Held at the Hotel Plaza, New York City, November 11-12, 1921. Published by the Birth Control Review, Gothic Press, pages 172 and 174.
“The marriage bed is the most degenerative influence in the social order…”
Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.
Quote Source: EadsHome Ministries.
Coming Home 
Gerard, if you really want to know the truth about Maraget Sanger go to the Margaret Sangers Papers Project at NYU.
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/
Her views on feminism, birth control, abortion and sexuality may differ from yours but that’s no reason to take her words out of context and perpetuate lies even if it is unintentional. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are misinformed.
Asitis,
Thanks for the link. I’ve been a student of Margaret Sanger for some time now. I’ll leave it to the readers to research her writings and see if she is being taken out of context here.
I don’t think she is.
Margaret Sanger lived in a time and helped to shape a eugenics movement that is a national shame, a scandal of monumental proportions. The organization she started went on to become Planned Parenthood and operates the majority of its “clinics” in inner city neighborhoods. I think that speaks volumes. So does the fact that Adolf Hitler took the eugenics movement as a model for his notorious Third Reich.
Oh I can imagine where you went for your research Gerard. Likely not the original source. There is so much out there that has been taken out of context. I double dog dare you to go read what the researchers at NYU have to report. Quite a bit different than your christian conservative writers.
Perhaps this would explain to you why receiveing the Margaret Sanger Award is truly considered an honor be some of our most remarkable citizens.
Reading the books within their context actually makes Margaret Sanger look even worse, not better.
If anyone takes the time to read any of Margaret Sanger’s books which are available freely online, they’ll find that these quotes are not taken out of context and in fact sum up her entire mission very well.
Oh, and by the way Gerard, it’s not surprising that PP clinics are in poor, inner city neighbourhoods. That’s where the need is for free birth control, reproductive health care and abortion services. Women with health insurance and financial means go to their physicians.
Gosh Bethany, I guess you know better than the researchers at NYU.
No, Asitis…they know just as much as I do. They’re just not willing to share what they know.
All one has to do is read her own books for themselves. Problem solved.
Well, actually many women get those services through medicaid, which is not available to middle class folk. As for free abortion being necessary in the inner city, where blacks constitute 11% of the overall population but have 37% of the abortions… I think your statement speaks for itself.
Asitis,
I’ve been in academia my entire adult life. NYU is somewhere to the left of Mao, so I’m not impressed. The radical leftists control hiring, promotion and tenure, making most universities little more than left-wing echo-chambers.
The real academics are being done by individuals such as Bethany, whose clear mind is better suited to the task than most left-wing Ph.D.’s, as well as in think tanks.
Really Gerard? Real academics are better done by Bethany? Well, so much for knowledge and understanding that comes from a formal advanced education. Why did you bother all those years? And why do you stay in academia if you think this way? It must be hard for you as a conservative christian whose thoughts are so shaped by your religious beliefs.
But back to the matter in hand…. You state that “blacks constitute 11% of the overall population but have 37% of the abortions…” And from there you make the leap that this high abortion rate is because PP is targeting blacks? How astute of you! How unbiased. No Gerard, it’s actually this high because the unintended pregnancy rate among blacks is similarly high. I’m surprised you missed this fact. Or perhaps you just chose to ignore it.
Asitis,
I’m not the sort of pedantic academic who thinks in elitist terms. I’ve seen some of the best original thinking done by undergraduates who haven’t been molded by a given systemic approach.
It’s refreshing.
Why did I bother all of those years? Because I studied under faculty who encouraged individuality and critical thinking. One needn’t go to college, or have advanced degrees to pick up Margaret Sanger and realize that she was a vicious bigot.
As for the rest of your comments, I reiterate that I will delete personal attacks.
This blog is my virtual living room, with the same requirements of civility and decorum that prevail in my home. Keep it civil.
As for the rest of my comment? You mean this:
But back to the matter in hand…. You state that “blacks constitute 11% of the overall population but have 37% of the abortions…” And from there you make the leap that this high abortion rate is because PP is targeting blacks? How astute of you! How unbiased. No Gerard, it’s actually this high because the unintended pregnancy rate among blacks is similarly high. I’m surprised you missed this fact. Or perhaps you just chose to ignore it.
What’s so offensive about that? Unless perhaps you had no idea that the unintended pregnancy rate was also high. In which case I apologize for suggesting you ignored the fact. But that also means you made a baseless conclusion.
So what do you say Gerard?
Oh and I’m all for original thought and critical thinking! And I don’t think that is only ( and always) the result of a higher education. But an understanding of the subject is required.
Asitis, what is your explanation as to why the unintended pregnancy rate is so much higher in blacks than whites?
Bethany,
I just posted an interview of Margaret Sanger by Mike Wallace in 1957. Devastating.
Asitis,
In absolute numbers, the unplanned pregnancies among Blacks are much smaller than whites. This does not explain why PP is mostly in the inner city.
They have butchered black babies at three times the rate that whites abort theirs.
As for the incivility, knock it off with telling people that they are not observant, ill-educated and uninformed. It’s old and you’ve had your last shot at it. If you can’t be civilized, please leave.
Gerard, I remember watching that interview about a year ago…. It’s amazing that anyone could deny what her motives clearly were, when it’s available for anyone to see.
She was a hateful, bitter woman who wanted nothing more than to rid the world of those “undesirables” who she held such contempt for.
Bethany,
I just added your blog to the blogroll. Tell me if this is how you want the name to appear. If not correct me. Now to add Carla.
It’s a work in progress
Whatever works for you is fine! I usually go by “Happy to be Called “Mommy”, but I realize that’s a long title so might not fit very well….the preciousinfants.com one works fine as well! 🙂 Thanks so much, Gerard, I really appreciate that!
I’ve got you in my sidebar too! 🙂
Happy to be Called Mommy it is! 😉
I was reading this, and the comments, and was just going to suggest the Mike Wallace interview with Margaret Sanger when I saw that you had added it already. GREAT!!
I followed Bethany’s link to this post.
God bless!
Thank you, Gerard! 🙂
“In absolute numbers, the unplanned pregnancies among Blacks are much smaller than whites”.
Much smaller? I’m not sure what you mean by “much”. But according to Guttmacher for 1994 there were approx 4 million white pregnancies and 1.1 miliion black. Of these 42% and 72% were unintended respectively. So what’s that?….. roughly 2 million unintended white pregnanies compared to 800 thousand unintended black pregnancies.
is just under half “much less”?
“This does not explain why PP is mostly in the inner city.”
Why not?The black population is concentrated in inner cities. Their pregnancy rate, unintended pregnancy rate
and abortion rates are all high. On top of that, their poverty level is high.
“They have butchered black babies at three times the rate that whites abort theirs.
Yes, there are approximately 6 times as many whites in this country as blacks, but only twice as many white abortions. Again this is because the unintended pregnancy rate for blacks is higher.
Now, as for your question Bethany. Why is the unintended pregnancy rate higher for blacks? No doubt you are aware of the various contributing factors but I think poverty and lack of good parenting are the biggest factors. And that can be a vicious circle when you throw unintended pregnancy in the mix.
Asitis,
Unintended or not, death is not the answer.
Sanger’s answer to poverty was death.
Sanger’s answer to mental retardation was death.
Sanger’s answer to autism was death.
Sanger’s answer to class warfare was death.
Sanger’s answer to Christian charity was ridicule.
Sanger’s answer to conjugal fecundity was scorn.
That’s all these people know. Death. Ridicule. Scorn.
I worked with teenage, homeless mothers for five years at Covenant House in the 1980’s, then an additional two years there with kids who had HIV/AIDS. I’ve earned the right to call PP on their indecency.
It takes courage, moral courage to look poverty and despair in the eye and not blink. It takes hard work to build an illiterate mother’s literacy and self-esteem, to teach her life skills, to teach her child care. It’s brutally hard work. But it’s done every day.
Chris Bell and his staff at Good Counsel Homes (linked in my sidebar) do it every day. Chris has been doing it since we worked together briefly at Covenant House in 1983, the year he founded Good Counsel.
All Sanger and her ilk know are abortion and contraception-putrid copouts from people who have no soul or imagination.
Ask yourself this question, how much has all of that contraception, those 18 million aborted black babies helped the inner city?
Harlem and Detroit ought to be oases of literacy and middle class civility, what with all that freeing young women to pursue their education.
They aren’t.
They aren’t because contraception allows young men to realize their most base impulses, to use young women as playthings and to walk away. Contraception reduces, dehumanizes girls to objects. It trains young men to act like wild dogs. The inner cities are marked by orders of magnitude more disease and squalor than when Sanger got started on them.
They aren’t oases because all PP does is take girls in, rip out their children, pump them full of hormones, hand them condoms and ship them out the door.
No literacy
No GED
No life skills
No professional mentoring.
Just death and the prevention of life.
Hmmmm… I wouldn’t expect PP to be teaching young women how to read not provide them with life skills or career counselling. I would not expect them to mentor them. These are things that their parents and schools should be doing.
Blacks living in poverty (or near-poverty) in urban communites are failed by their parents, inadequate schools and their own communities. They aren’t taught and don’t see the importance of getting an education, finding a good stable job or career, building a solid loving relationship with their mate, and waiting until they are financially and otherwise able to provide for a child before having one (and that includes, if necessary, moving outside the dangerous comunity they live in). In short, they don’t have what so many of their white counterparts have. Instead, they are raised by their mothers or grandmothers, go to under-resourced schools and live in neighbourhoods riddled with drugs and violence where young black men look to gangsters as their mentors. While black women have a higher rate of abortions than white women they also also have a higher rate of single motherhood, not to mention singlemotherhood, living in low income. This does not get them out of the ‘hood and their children to a better place where they might have a chance themselves.
Asitis,
Listen to yourself. PP can’t change any of the parameters that you cite. Even with 18 million abortions and all the contraception in the world, it hasn’t gotten these women out of poverty.
No. It hasn’t helped them one iota.
So what is all of this ‘family planning’ about? What good HAS PP done? Nothing except butcher Black babies and indoctrinate young women into a lifestyle of sexual licentiousness. and impulsivity.
A pity, because the nurses, doctors, social workers at PP are all college educated, and know that self-advancement requires self-discipline and self-control, delay of gratification.
Kinda hard to preach that with a straight face while pumping the girls full of hormones, aborting their babies, and stuffing their pockets with condoms.
It’s called hypocrisy and betrayal.
Well Gerard, it seems that perhaps you won’t be posting my replies to your last comment.
I suppose the problem is that you want to call PP hypocritical, but they are not. You claim that they “know” the only way to get ahead is to delay sex and yet they distribute and promote the use of birth control to those that want sex without pregnancy. This, according to you, makes them hypocrites. Well the whole problem with that argument Gerard is that the nurses, doctors and social workers at PP very likely do notbelieve you have to delay sex in order to get an education and advance one’s self professionally. It is most likely that they themselves did not delay sex.
They want others less fortunate to have what they had. And that is hardly hypocritical.
It seems evident that Asitis has never read a word actually written by Margaret Sanger herself (if he/she has, they are hiding it well), but is going but what one research group from one university says about her. NYU is not the supreme authority on all things.
Pivot of Civilization, her book that I am about halfway done reading, is perhaps the most revealing work ever done by Sanger, in words she penned herself, and it illustrates with perfect clarity nearly everything stated here on this blog. If one can ignore the existence of Margaret Sanger, the eugenicist, then she might have been a woman leading a misguided attempt to help women control their bodies and fertility; it’s a shock to read in that book how she refers to abortion as ‘the crime of abortion’ and ‘most abortions done are a great disgrace’. But we cannot ignore her words on how to get rid of the ‘feeble minded’, or how she believed getting rid of the impoverished and the disabled would be better for the human race. I can’t quite remember quotes off the top of my head, so that’s why I’m advising people to read the damn book, and not go by what a group of researchers says. Pivot of Civilization, by Margaret Sanger. Order it from Amazon or Borders, and educated yourself with her words, not with what someone else says.
I think it takes a chauvinist and classist attitude to say that poor women need more birth control, sterilization, and abortion to better their lives (instead of literacy, safer housing, better paying jobs, and affordable daycare for example) and to act like we know better than them and what’s good for them, instead of asking the individual women what it is they need to better their lives and how to make it work. And BTW, Gerard, Asitis was banned from commenting on Jill Stanek’s site for impolite discourse after multiple warnings, and continued to attempt to return under other monnikers, just to let you know 😉
Asitis,
I’ve deleted some of your posts because They do not advance the conversation and descend into petty, myopic focus on detail. They miss the main points by a mile, and I’m not interested in detours that lead to shrill polemics.
Also, try to concentrate it all in one or two posts a day rather than a series that end up big-footing the thread.
I do appreciate that the tone has changed for the better.
Calling a cease fire for a moment, I wish you, and everyone else here a very Happy and Healthy New Year.
Thanks Rachel for the heads-up, and yes, I do agree that it’s a really classist and chauvinist attitude. I’ll even go further and suggest that it’s the worst manifestation of reacism.
God Bless
Asitis,
1. Have you worked directly with these girls, as I have.
2. How close have you come to a direct encounter with abortion (rhetorical question here), family, friends?
Your line of argumentation suggests that you are both intimately familiar with some of this and simultaneously rather distant.
Sure, some professionals were able to manage a sex life and college. That’s because they had work habits, academic skills, and executive functioning capacities that aided them in getting their jobs done.
When you are 17 years old with a seventh grade education, no executive skills to speak of and poor impulse control, then it’s all the more imperative that one learn self-mastery beginning with one’s own bodily functions and drives-be they food or sex. One needs to learn how to keep their living environment clean. The outside matches the inside.
It’s called discipline.
Teaching girls and boys to yield to impulse doesn’t help them master themselves sufficiently enough to begin to even focus on, let alone succeed in academics.
I too want them to have what I have. But sex comes at the end of that process, an education and a job comes frst. Responsible sex means being able to care for a baby if one gets pregnant, not killing it because one has put the cart before the horse.
Habit is the daily battleground of character.
Gerard,
You write well. God has given you the gift of eloquence.
Back to the original topic:
Asitis,
I agree that it is important to read original writings rather than commentary if you want to rightfully understand an author. That goes for “researchers” at NYU as well as “christian conservative writers”. I urge you to take Gerard’s advice and read some of Sanger’s writings, so as not to rely on quotes that may be taken out of context. As Stephanie commented, Sanger’s “Pivot of Civilization” (text online) is a good place to start. While reading, note the faulty “research” she uses to draw conclusions. Look at sample sizes (often a small handful of anecdotal stories). Look at numbers. Look at the conclusions of the “research” (e.g., of men drafted into the US Army, “47.3 per cent…of the population had the mentality of twelve-year-old children or less–in other words that they are morons”, “Authorities tell us that 75 per cent. of the school-children are defective.”) Are her statistics and conclusions really believable? She tends to appeal to people on an emotional level. Take a good, hard look at what she says. Under critical examination, Sanger’s arguments fall apart and reveal her pro-eugenics bias.
One has to pity Sanger. If I give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she actually wanted to do good in relieving poverty. But the truth was lost in the darkness of her vision. Instead of seeing real bona fide ways to help women (as listed in other posts above), she brought more chaos, disorder, and sin into the world. Most of all, she failed to see the beauty in God’s designs. Very sad.
And by the way, letters after someone’s name, signifying college degrees, don’t make a person more intelligent, more capable, or somehow magically more special than anyone else. Bethany, if she is good at research, can potentially know more than a researcher at NYU. Advanced (or any) education encompasses a broad base of knowledge. An independent person focusing on a particular subject can amass a much greater, indepth understanding and expertise in his/her area of concentration. Think of the little boy (I’ve known a couple of these) who can identify the name and habits of every dinosaur discovered (OK, an exaggeration, but you know what I mean). I’d be lucky to remember the few I learned in my college comparative vertebrate anatomy class.
There are also many brilliant people out there who’s circumstances or interests never take them through college. God gives us all different gifts. Degrees, accolades, and honors don’t make one better than another. Sanger couldn’t understand this. I hope you can do better, Asitis, and see that all life has value.
Actually Gerard, those comments do NOT miss the main point.
When your argument that PP professionsals are hypocritical is based on the premise that they got a college education by being abstinent and yet they push BC on others, then it is important to point out to you that this is wrong. I don’t know if you are unaware that the vast majority of college students and the majority of high school graduates have had sex or if you just choose to ignore this fact.
Similarly, it’s important to point out to you that the high rate of abortion among black women coincides with a high rate of unintended pregnancy. You seemed to be unaware of this as well. Which I must say surprises me.
Asitis, it is very interesting that you seem to be unable to properly spell Christian. Why do you insist on ‘christian’? It reminds me of someone close to me, a rabid anti-Christian, who is unwilling to even say the name ‘Mary’.
Gerard, this is a very nice website. If I remember correctly, Vince P. was at Covenant House at the same time. We went to school together and I am sure he would value this site.
ttpm,
Thanks for the kind words. Have Vince drop by to refresh my memory on where he worked (It was a big place).
Ttpm, actually I am a very good speller. I’m just not a very careful iPhone typist!
Maafa21 : New film exposes Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. The film is called:
Maafa21 Black Genocide in 21st Century America:
Some claim that the abortion issue is about choice, privacy, women’s rights, or reproductive freedom.
But that’s just marketing hype.
In reality, the legalization of abortion was about EUGENICS.
And now, a stunning new movie lays it all out with incredible documentation.
The film is called Maafa 21 and it exposes a plan to create “racial purity” that began 150 years ago and is still being carried out right now.
It’s about the ties between the Nazis, the American eugenics movement and today’s “family planning” cartel.
It’s about elitism, secret agendas, treachery and corruption at the highest levels of political and corporate America.
Maafa 21 will show you things the media has been hiding and politicians don’t want you to know.
So if you’re ready to see the real agenda behind “choice,” fasten your seatbelts …
IT’S SHOCK AND AWE TIME!
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More flattering photo of Sanger replaces photoshopped image. 1/14/10
[…] He sounds a lot like Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. Anyone criticizing him is also criticizing the founding principles of PP. Eugenic sterilization […]
[…] if you aren’t racist, your policies drive the ultimate racism. Margaret Sanger, the found of Planned Parenthood, would be proud. She worked very hard to limit the creation of […]
More self-control not birth control!
Andrew
All times that I came here, my interest in your site increase very much.
It amazes me that the likes of Asitis will take the side of NYU, which clearly states that they offer the “selected works” of Sanger. Selected? Hmm… Why not, for the sake of “education” print the “entire works”? Because the goal of NYU is NOT education, it is propaganda. They simply want to reinforce that planned parenthood is good. They would have to admit that Sanger was a half-crazed, sexual deviate interested in eliminating races of people based on her own perception of the perfect race.
Pat, you just summed it up beautifully!
I knew about the race-centered eugenics stuff, but I’d never heard her “stop the stupid people from procreating” quotes before. What’s bafflingly ridiculous about that is the fact that children of parents with extremes of intelligence usually come out average. Really smart parents won’t necessarily produce smart children, and really dumb parents can produce geniuses. What she tries to paint as practicality is really just as stupid as the racist part of it.
OK I read through 75% of Assitis’s posts (the same type which I have seen time and time again in defense of Margaret Sanger), and your comments… and the thought occurred to me that there was no attempt by Assitis at a justification for anything other than Margaret Sanger. Which in and of itself is kind of sick.
No problem with abortion but let’s make sure not to disparage the founder of PP for her racism.
The killing of innocent babies could not possibly be related to anything other than the casual lack of desire to parent them… and the only defense she has is “you took the words out of context.”
I’d like to see any of her words in context that would justify what she did, or somehow take away from the extreme nature of the so-called out of context words about how badly she wanted to exterminate so-called mentally infirm and physically unfit and black populations.
I would challenge Assitis to take a single quote from this article and put them back in context to explain what Margaret Sanger either ACTUALLY said, or what she ACTUALLY meant. Just one would be nice.