The Real Margaret Sanger (Planned Parenthood’s Founder) Will Shock You

Leadership. Excellence. Outstanding contributions to reproductive health.

These are the characteristics often ascribed to Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. But the real Margaret Sanger would shock and disgust all but the most radical abortion zealots.

Every year the biggest abortion provider celebrates Sanger, whom it proudly believes mirrors her qualities, by giving an award it calls the Margaret Sanger Award to its latest champion in the war on human life. Among those who have been presented this award are Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi.

So, who is Margaret Sanger, and why is she so revered by Planned Parenthood?

When presented with the Margaret Sanger Award in 2009, Hillary Clinton laid it on thick: “I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision. . . . I am really in awe of her.” Planned Parenthood describes her as “a true visionary,” and someone who had “deeply held compassion for . . . women and children” – a champion of “basic human rights.” But as much as Planned Parenthood promotes Sanger as “heroic,” even it felt compelled to weave in to its tribute to Sanger’s magnificence a little disclaimer – that “Sanger had some beliefs, practices, and associations” that were “flawed.”

Flawed. That’s one way to describe “a woman who cheated on her husbands, committed felonies, jumped bail, served jail time and neglected her children.” It’s also a way to downplay the horrific beliefs that a selfish, bitter person not only held, but turned into action.

Planned Parenthood states that Sanger had a “fervor to spread and mainstream birth control [which] led her to speak to any group interested in learning how to plan their reproduction . . . even to a women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Indeed, “Sanger was a life-long, unapologetic eugenicist.”

Sanger believed that there is a “scale of human development,” and she described “the aboriginal Australian” as “the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development.”

In keeping with her belief in eugenics, Sanger wrote:

The lack of balance 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.  The example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and physically fit, and therefore less fertile, parents of the educated and well-to-do classes.  On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.  Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon American society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupid, cruel sentimentalism.

Contrary to Planned Parenthood’s attempt to portray Sanger as “deeply compassionate,” Sanger actually believed that “[o]rganized charity is the symptom of a malignant social disease.” And according to Sanger:

The most serious charge that can be brought against modern “benevolence” is that it encouraged the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents, and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression. 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 . . . .

As we pointed out before, “Planned Parenthood claims that Sanger was a human rights activist. Normally, when one thinks of human rights, one thinks of standing up for and defending the vulnerable members of society that are downtrodden and abused.”  But to Sanger:

No matter how much they desire children, no man and woman have a right to bring into the world those who are to suffer from mental or physical affliction.  It condemns the child to a life of misery and places upon the community the burden of caring for it, probably for its defective descendants for many generations.

Eugenicist. Immoral. Unmerciful. Bigoted. These words appropriately describe the woman revered by an organization that promotes – and then profits from – the death of innocent babies. It’s disgusting that the type of leadership, excellence, and achievements that Planned Parenthood celebrates are, well . . . evil. But it’s not surprising. After all, Planned Parenthood is evil. We can’t be surprised when its “highest honor” is given out in the name of a woman who was also evil.

Whether you like it or not, your tax dollars fund Sanger’s dream.  Enough is enough. It’s time that we hold our leadership accountable for allowing the perpetuation of evil and call on them to end federal funding of Planned Parenthood.

No longer should our tax dollars support an organization that kills babies and celebrates the legacies of a eugenicist like Margaret Sanger.