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If you missed the first part of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s biography, please click here. It will put this second and final part into perspective.
Beginnings of respectability
Once she returned home to New York from England, Margaret employed age-old radical forms of public relations she had learned from her Socialist friends. These are still used today, most recently in America’s 2008 general election, as codified in Saul Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals. By skillfully drumming up public support, Margaret was able to get herself off charges of violating the Comstock Laws. She then used this new fame and notoriety to good effect in a public-speaking tour, which took her across America for three-and-a-half months.
In the 1920s, New York had large numbers of European immigrants. Margaret decided to open a birth control clinic in one of the largest immigrant enclaves, Brownsville, a district in Brooklyn. Although the authorities closed it down within two weeks and sentenced her and her sister to a month in the workhouse, upon her release, Margaret launched a new publication, The Birth Control Review. A respectable-sounding publication would help her build the reputation she needed to open new clinics. She was right. It wasn’t long before she had the ear and the support of prominent socialites who could help further her cause. She was also able to commission guest pieces from well-known authors and innovators such as Pearl Buck, H. G. Wells and Karl Menninger. By 1922, the name Margaret Sanger became a household word. In 1925, she was able to hold an international conference about population control.
Her book which came out at the same time, The Pivot of Civilisation, advocated the elimination of ‘human weeds’, a ‘cessation of charity’ and the sterilisation of ‘genetically inferior races’. Why was she against charity?
Philanthropy is a gesture characteristic of modern business lavishing upon the unfit the profits extorted from the community at large. Looked at impartially, this compensatory generosity is in its final effect probably more dangerous, more dysgenic, more blighting than the initial practice of profiteering.
Eugenics and left-wing ideology
Never forget that Socialism and Fascism are inextricably linked: both are left-wing ideologies. Sanger maintained her support among eugenicists, many of whom served on the board of her American Birth Control League, which later became Planned Parenthood. Other political groups which supported eugenics at the time were the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis (National Socialists). Both groups believed that governments were best placed to control family decisions and reproduction. Only the government knows whether a woman should have children or how many. These decisions are often made on the basis of gender, health or race. Discrimination is always part of the eugenicist’s plan, which is rooted in power politics. Think of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Mao and their cults of death.
You read in a preceding post about the Negro Project. Sanger also wanted similar restrictions on ‘Hispanics, Amerinds, Fundamentalists and Catholics’. Even religion entered into the picture for her. Remember that, like the dictators of the 20th century, she, too, was an atheist.
Post-war ‘successes’ continue
After the Second World War, Sanger’s organisation held an international meeting in Bombay with eugenicist societies to define what the new Planned Parenthood, renamed in 1942, would do. The name was purposely chosen to sound non-threatening and nice. Together, they put together a philosophy of what Planned Parenthood programmes were to be about:
- Advocating ‘legal access’ to ‘unrestricted abortion’
- Coercive government action to force eugenic sterilisations and limits on births
- Lobbying for legal and economic reproductive incentives and disincentives: maternity leave, child ‘tax’
- ‘Value-free’ sex education for children, including the use of pornography, active encouragement of sexual activity and discouraging long-established family values.
On the last point, Madalyn Murray O’Hair — the atheist who had school prayer banned in the US — also advocated compulsory sex education in schools.
Planned Parenthood applauds the ‘success’ of restricted births in China, calling it a ‘stunning success … worth our attention and awe‘. As for abortion, even in countries where it is illegal, they have ways of working around the law. In the Phillipines, for example, Planned Parenthood can perform a ‘menstrual extraction’. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out this is actually an abortion. In Brazil, which forbids sterlisation, the organisation performs as many as 20m of these procedures annually in its field clinics.
In the UK, Planned Parenthood issued the following advice internally:
Family Planning Associations and other non-government organisations should not use the absence of the law or the existence of an unfavourable law as an excuse for inaction; action outside the law, and even in violation of it, is part of the process of stimulating change.
Abortion becomes a Catholic issue
Around the world, Western countries adopted Planned Parenthood projects. Even the United Nations began subsidising them in developing countries as far back as 1958.
It seemed that Planned Parenthood had only one opponent: the Catholic Church, namely in Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae. And, from that moment, abortion became inextricably linked with the Catholic Church. Never mind that some Protestant denominations and other major world religions also strongly oppose the practice. It doesn’t matter in progressive PR and rhetoric, which has been used to discredit the Church — and Catholics — with dramatic and devastating effect.
Just one more thing — SEX!
Meanwhile, what of Margaret Sanger’s private life during this time? Well, before the Second World War, her daughter died of pneumonia while Margaret was away from home. Her two sons were left to their own devices. Margaret suffered the effects of being without her loving husband. She turned to libidinous relations and alcohol to ease her woes. Her lovers were many, yet even increased sex couldn’t dull the pain.
Then she met conservative Episcopalian J Noah Slee of the 3-in-1 Oil fortune. He couldn’t have disagreed more with Margaret’s organisation and her personal philosophy but he fell in love with her in a big way. So big, in fact, that he proposed to her and would share his $9m fortune with her in marriage. Yes, it was a lot of money in those days. And, if there was one thing that Margaret loved as much as sex, it was money. She didn’t feel about Slee the way he felt about her, so she drew up a hard-hearted pre-nuptial agreement whereby he would have to ring her on the phone to even see her! She would have her own apartments in his home and would be free to come and go as she pleased. Best of all, she would have access to cold, hard cash.
And one final thing — MONEY!
She was still miserable as Mrs Slee, but, hey, at least she had money again! Slee’s fortune helped Margaret open doors and fight battles she couldn’t have done previously. She opened a clinic as a ‘research bureau’ to avoid legal tangles. She smuggled diaphragms into the US from Holland. She lobbied doctors and won them over. She secured bigger and better grants from the Rockefeller, Ford and Mellon foundations. She testified before Congressional committees advocating social planning and birth control. Imagine doing all this during the Depression and Second World War.
The post-war period enabled her to work on the psyches of ordinary, middle-class Americans. She knew they were eager to live in nice houses, drive cars and participate in the new consumer society. In order to enjoy these things, they would need a secure, safe and clean environment. So, she emphasised the values that accompany these: patriotism, personal choice and family values.
To make Planned Parenthood a part of the Establishment and a household word, Sanger enlisted celebrities, corporations and charities. Of course, she could not have done it without Slee’s money. She returned to her radical roots in New York City and London to get the activist youth interested and on-side. She was even able to get tax-exempt status for the organisation, so that it was like a charity or a church!
Like a true leftist, Margaret Sanger was tenacious in her efforts and skilled in her propaganda. And it worked. Planned Parenthood is part of our lexicon of today’s received wisdom.
Let us learn from this
Despite all this, her affairs continued as did her use of alcohol and, now, drugs. She also became deeply interested in the occult. None of this brought her happiness.
Meanwhile, back at Planned Parenthood, the organisation teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. She didn’t pay the bills on time and failed to give an account of her financial mismanagement to her benefactors. Although the Planned Parenthood board was able to remove her from the board several times, they couldn’t do without her services completely. So, they kept her on for her genius in promoting the organisation.
Yet, one sin begets another and, with the lack of belief in God, Margaret Sanger believed in sex, money, the occult, mind-altering substances and control. This led to lust, avarice, distorting the truth and advocating violence towards women.
Margaret Sanger died just before her 87th birthday on September 6, 1966. By then, she had lost friends, family and peace of mind.
Slee’s money had run out. And time was called on Margaret Sanger.
For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but to lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Mark 8:36-37)
Source: Killer Angel, by George Grant, Ars Vitae Press (1995)
What type of person was Margaret Sanger? To many middle-class women she embodied a forward-thinking, liberating philosophy, manifested internationally through Planned Parenthood. Many people find nothing wrong with this family planning organisation.
Yet, most of us do not know about Planned Parenthood’s founder and what she really thought about sex and choice. We probably assume that, deep down, she was a nice person who wanted to improve the lives of women everywhere. After all, many prominent women today speak of Sanger in glowing terms and actively support Planned Parenthood. Shouldn’t we all?
Early life
Margaret Louise Higgins was one of 11 children born to an Irish Catholic-turned-atheist. Margaret was born in 1879 in Corning, New York. Times were tough, especially for Irish immigrants. Her father, Michael Higgins, was physically rough on his sons and psychologically abusive to his wife and daughters. He was an alcoholic who railed against God. It was for this reason that his wife, herself a devout Catholic, did not have Margaret baptised and confirmed until she was a teenager, and then, in secret.
Margaret lived a Catholic life until her mother, her buffer against household misery, died of tuberculosis. Before long, Margaret found it so unbearable that she left home at 17. She enrolled in a Methodist school in the Hudson Valley, Claverack College, taking a part-time job to pay for her tuition. Immersing herself in the progressive ideology of the day, she found the atmosphere so liberating that she soon forgot her studies and her job.
Margaret had to return home but left shortly thereafter and embarked on short-lived service-based jobs away from home: kindergarten teacher and nurse. She was qualified for neither. She had little patience for working with immigrants and the sick.
Margaret longed for an easy life and found it when she met William Sanger, a young architect who worked for the well-known McKim, Mead and White firm in New York City. William loved Margaret and their courtship was something out of a movie. He showered her with gifts. Three months later they were married and lived comfortably in Manhattan.
Living in the big city
Both Sangers saw much to admire in Modernism and Socialism. William had the means to open his home to entertain prominent progressive socialites along with activists and writers, such as Eugene Debs and Upton Sinclair. Margaret was gradually drawn in by Socialist speakers and events to the point that even when she had her three children, she often left them with other people so she could participate and speak at rallies. She was quite taken with Eugene Debs’ views on equality towards women.
Unfortunately, in his generosity to his wife, Sanger found that he had a smaller and smaller part to play in her life. In an attempt to reverse the distance in their marriage, he stopped his involvement in Socialist activity. He had hoped that Margaret would follow suit. His plan failed. Because of her new associations, Margaret had even suggested an open marriage to her husband, her sole source of income and indulger of whims. Needless to say, Sanger was wounded to the core.
He then came up with a brilliant idea: take Margaret and the children to Paris for an extended holiday they wouldn’t forget. They accepted invitations to the most intellectual, progressive salons of the day and took in the sights and sensory experiences of that beautiful city. For a while, Margaret was happy, accepting each day as a new discovery with her husband and family taking part. Then, gradually, she began to miss her radical friends in Manhattan.
Whilst Sanger hoped the Paris trip would change Margaret’s social habits and bring her closer to him, Margaret found that her causes in New York meant more to her than her marriage did. A blazing row in Paris between husband and wife brought everything out into the open. Margaret packed her trunks and took the children back home to New York. Her marriage had ended.
Sex and gender politics
Back in New York, Margaret resumed her friendship with ‘The Red Queen of Anarchy’, Emma Goldman, a militant utopian whose ideas she adored. Goldman introduced her to the works of Tolstoy and Rousseau but also taught her about how to wage revolution and enjoy sex. The progressives of the day — Margaret’s circle — were known for revelling in ‘free love’. Yet, Margaret took this to new levels that even they found surprising.
This period in her life, particularly now that she was liberated from her adoring husband, would set the stage for the rest of her days. Her interest in sex would turn into hunger and then an obsession.
To support herself she continued writing for a radical publication, The Call, then started her own newsletter, The Woman Rebel. Her articles denouced marriage and sexual modesty. She encouraged women to be angry and adopt ‘a go-to-hell look in the eyes’. She also encouraged other women to be just like her and demand ‘rights’, among these the ‘right to be lazy, the right to be an unwed mother, the right to destroy … the right to love’. She also wrote editorials in support of two political assassinations at the time and advocating birth control.
She soon fell foul of the Comstock Laws of 1873, designed to ‘keep the posts clean’ of sexual materials, including publications. She had her friends forge a passport for her and fled to England, where she would stay for a year. Before she left, she fired one last ‘salvo’ in the post — 100,000 copies of a pamphlet all about contraceptives, douches and abortifacients one could make at home from Lysol, laxatives or herbs.
Escape to Blighty
During her stay in England, Margaret made friends with supporters of population control as advocated in the 19th century by Thomas Malthus. Her conversations with Malthusians led her to advocate eugenics. ‘Unfit’ people should not breed. Their numbers must be strictly limited for the good of the Earth and of society. Malthus’s ideas are still advocated today in genteel terms designed to get middle class heads nodding in agreement: ‘over-population’, ‘natural resources’, ‘birth control’. Each of these terms sets off in our minds an associated thought: ‘too many children’.
Margaret’s love of sex and birth control gave her an idea. She would be able to discuss both openly if she adopted the Malthusian idea of couching her thoughts in scientific-sounding and socially-acceptable vocabulary. Then, she would be able to use the post freely and speak openly.
Of course, in the early 20th century, talking about eugenics directly actually posed less of a problem. All the trendy people of the day — authors, artists, playwrights — and their wealthy benefactors supported it. There was no question in their minds that it was the right thing to do. After all, the foremost American universities, such as Harvard and Princeton, Columbia and Stanford even had their own Eugenics departments. These were endowed by the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie foundations. No one minded that some American states allowed doctors to sterilise poor, black or mentally feeble women.
For recreation, Margaret explored the pleasures of the flesh with her new-found English gentlemen friends among the socialist Fabians. She sought new and ever more exciting ways of exploring her sexuality, and the Fabians happily indulged her every whim, most of which are too unspeakable to mention.
To be continued tomorrow …
Source: Killer Angel, by George Grant, Ars Vitae Press (1995)
Yesterday, Churchmouse Campanologist featured a post about Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s love of eugenics.
Today, I’d like to pass along a page of her quotable quotes, a few of which follow. Be sure to visit the link to read them all. It’s hard to believe that these are just under a century old, but they show that today’s way of thinking took root when Modernism was becoming more widespread among the cognoscenti.
It should come as no surprise that Sanger was an atheist:
The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.
Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.
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.
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.
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 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.
The past president of Planned Parenthood, Faye Wattleton, said in 1979:
As we celebrate the 100th birthday of Margaret Sanger, our outrageous and our courageous leader, we will probably find a number of areas in which we may find more about Margaret Sanger than we thought we wanted to know…
Did Ms Wattleton mean to say that? Hmm … I wonder.
Feminism could do itself a big favour by jumping off the abortion wagon and tackling the issues that are common to women everywhere: pay, poverty and domestic violence to name a few. But, those are unglamorous and require some thought. So, instead, they keep flogging (selling) the same dead horse — abortion. (Newsflash: It’s legal. Has been for decades. An overused method of birth control. Has been known to cause ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages or sterility.) Move onto something useful, ladies.
To many feminists Margaret Sanger is a hero(ine) of personal choice and freedom. To a middle class woman who wants the ability to rid herself of an unwanted child at an inconvenient time (college or career), the late Ms Sanger’s Planned Parenthood and its offshoots enable her to do so.
For many years, abortion seemed to be a middle-class issue. But, Margaret Sanger wasn’t really fighting for the liberation of middle-class American women. She and her acolytes were fighting to limit the population of certain groups, including American blacks.
An 1995 article in Citizen magazine, reproduced online, discusses the murky views of Sanger and her associates. In the 1920s, she wrote a number of articles and made several appearances speaking about:
sterilizing those she designated as ‘unfit’, a plan she said would be the ‘salvation of American civilization’: And she also spoke of those who were ‘irresponsible and reckless’, among whom she included those ‘whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers’. She further contended that ‘there is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.’ That many Americans of African origin constituted a segment of Sanger considered ‘unfit’ cannot be easily refuted.
Sanger staunchly supported eugenics and wrote about it appending words such as ‘moral’ and ‘conscience’ in the titles of her articles to give it legitimacy.
One of her supporters, Harvard-educated Lothrop Stoddard, wrote a book entitled The Rising Tide of Color against White Supremacy. He admired the progress the Third Reich was making in this direction, calling it ‘scientific’ and ‘humanitarian’. Another associate, Dr Harry Laughlin, referred to:
purifying America’s human ‘breeding stock’ and purging America’s ‘bad strains’. These ‘strains’ included the ‘shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of antisocial whites of the South’.
See how easy it is to make evil acceptable? But, as they say, ‘you can dress it up but you can’t take it out’.
Modern-day supporters of Sanger would say that she grew up in a poor family of 11 children in Corning, New York, and that she knew all the negative aspects of poverty. She blamed the fatal tuberculosis her mother suffered on the 11 pregnancies. Sanger’s delivery of her own first son was difficult and required her to retreat to the Adirondack Mountains beforehand to build up her strength. She recalled the pain and strain on her body many years later ‘as a factor “to be reckoned with” in her zealous campaign for birth control’.
Interestingly, we find a smattering of Modernism and moral relativism in her handbook of 1915 called What Every Boy and Girl Should Know:
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.
To Sanger, the ebbing away of moral and religious codes over sexual conduct was a natural consequence of the worthlessness of such codes in the individual’s search for self-fulfillment.
By the 1930s she wanted birth control to be associated with sex and pleasure in people’s minds and ‘increase the quantity and quality of sexual relationships’.
In 1939, Sanger embarked on her Negro Project. In order to allay fears of blacks that this was a plot against them, she and her associate Dr Clarence J Gamble (of Procter & Gamble) decided to enlist the support of prominent black leaders:
Gamble conceived the project almost as a traveling road show. A charismatic black minister was to start a revival, with ‘contributions’ to come from other local cooperating ministers. A ‘colored nurse’ would follow, supported by a subsidized ‘colored doctor’. Gamble even suggested that music might be a useful lure to bring the prospects to a meeting.
Sanger answered Gamble on Dec. 10. 1939, agreeing with the assessment. She wrote: ‘We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten that idea out if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.’ In 1940, money for two ‘Negro Project’ demonstration programs in southern states was donated by advertising magnate Albert D. Lasker and his wife, Mary.
By 1942, the Chicago Defender, a newspaper serving the black community, had articles supporting birth control as a measure to bring about better health and increased prosperity. More black leaders, especially ministers, were enlisted. By 1949, prominent blacks from every sphere had come out in support of Sanger’s Negro Project. It would have been one thing if Sanger had been sincere about improving health and prosperity for blacks, but this was just sugarcoating for her sinister plan.
At the time, the Negro Project didn’t progress among blacks. Between 1940 and 1968, black women aged 18 and 19 years old experienced an increase of 61 births per 1000 to 112 per 1000 — a 100% jump. Yet, today, 80% of Planned Parenthood offices are in black, urban neighbourhoods. Adrienne of Motivation: Truth notes:
Although Blacks make up about 12% of the population, we make up 37% of abortions. We are no longer the leading minority in this nation. The reason for this? Abortion. More Blacks have died from abortion than have died from heart disease, crime, accidents, stroke, AIDS and all other deaths combined! Almost 50 million babies have been killed by abortion; 15 million of these babies have been Black–and we’re less than 15% of the population! More Blacks are being aborted today than are being born.
Have a look at the graph from the US Center for Disease Control here.
It’s interesting to note that well-informed women like Hillary Clinton view Margaret Sanger in such a positive light. Sanger had a cynical view of humanity. Of course, today, Planned Parenthood is a ‘respectable’ organisation and had a much-celebrated black woman, Faye Wattleton, as its president. They reject Sanger’s eugenicist views.
No one who reveres her mentions Sanger’s ulterior motives. Maybe Sanger voted Democrat, in which case she would be immune from criticism. By the way, she once addressed the Ku Klux Klan. They voted Democrat.
How biased is the following statement of Sanger’s, taken from her 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilisation:
Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying . . . demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism.
As the article asks, ‘Who determines who is a moron?’ It concludes:
In many ways, Sanger is no different from contemporary feminists who, after making the customary acknowledgement of issues dealing with race and class, return to analysis that focuses exclusively on gender. These are the feminists who feel that women should come together around ‘women’s issues’ and battle out our differences later. In failing to acknowledge differences and the differential impact of a set of policies, these feminists make it difficult for women to come together.
Sanger published the Birth Control Review at the same time that black men, returning from World War I, were lynched in uniform. That she did not see the harm in embracing exclusionary jargon about sterilization and immigration suggests that she was, at best, socially myopic.
That’s reason enough to suggest that her leadership was flawed and her legacy crippled by her insensitivity.
If you still think she was okay, imagine Sarah Palin or Laura Bush saying they loved Sanger’s points of view. What would you say then?
Churchmouse Campanologist 