Planned Parenthood is finally finding it convenient to distance itself from its founder, Margaret Sanger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the New York Times<\/em> last week, current Planned Parenthood President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson wrote a piece headlined, \u201cI\u2019m the Head of Planned Parenthood. We\u2019re Done Making Excuses for Our Founder.\u201d<\/a> McGill Johnson continues, \u201cWe have defended Sanger as a protector of bodily autonomy and self-determination, while excusing her association with white supremacist groups and eugenics as an unfortunate \u2018product of her time.\u2019\u201d McGill Johnson cites Sanger\u2019s speaking to a women\u2019s auxiliary group of the KKK, her support of the 1927 decision Buck v. Bell<\/em> (which allowed for forced sterilization), and her unethical experiments on poor women in Puerto Rico as reasons for Planned Parenthood to part ways with Sanger\u2019s legacy. “We don\u2019t know what was in Sanger\u2019s heart, and we don\u2019t need to in order to condemn her harmful choices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n McGill Johnson then calls for Planned Parenthood to reverse course on its history of \u201cprivileging whiteness,\u201d and vows to fight against the \u201cdehumanization\u201d of both Black and Latino victims of police violence, and also of transgender people who cannot access health care. (This last is a notable call-out to Planned Parenthood\u2019s latest cash cow<\/a>, hormone therapy.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is an interesting but likely meaningless piece of virtue-signaling for Planned Parenthood (although McGill Johnson says not, citing her diverse board as evidence). For years, the abortion behemoth has struggled with how to reckon with its founder\u2019s bigoted and eugenicist leanings. Sanger clearly wrote in Woman and the New Race<\/a><\/em> (1920), among many other publications, that she thought birth control would free women from the scourge of \u201cinvoluntary motherhood.\u201d Once free, women would be free to pursue education, career, a more \u201cenlightened\u201d motherhood, etc. They would produce better children, because they themselves would be healthier and more educated.Sanger writes, \u201cBirth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, or preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives.\u201d She in particularly devalued the poor, the disabled, and the \u201dfeeble-minded,\u201d and argued in her journal, The Birth Control Review<\/em>, that the fit would never catch up to the \u201cunfit\u201d via a \u201ccradle competition.\u201d<\/a> This, she says, is why the eugenics movement needed birth control\u2014to reign in the fertility of poor or otherwise unfit women. (Sanger herself actually tried to keep distance from the abortion movement, instead devoting herself to the development and dissemination of birth control.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Planned Parenthood doesn\u2019t actually care about the well-being of its patients. In a study by the Guttmacher Institute, the primary reasons<\/a> given for terminating a pregnancy were that a baby would interfere with a woman\u2019s work, education, or caregiving for others; that the woman could not afford a baby right now<\/em> (emphasis added); and that she did not want to be a single mother or was having relationship difficulties. Another recent study<\/a> indicates that the rate of abortion for black women is nearly four times that for white women. Research has demonstrated that abortion is hard on women\u2014post-abortive women experience elevated rates of depression, anxiety, suicidal behavour, and substance abuse, according to a large, international study<\/a> (whose lead researcher is actually pro-choice). In the face of decades of research demonstrating that abortion is generally not a woman\u2019s first choice, and that it continues to exacerbate racial and economic inequalities, Planned Parenthood continues to promote abortion as the cornerstone of its business model. Former CEO Leana Wen was infamously fired<\/a> for her desire to reorient around other women\u2019s healthcare services and begin deemphasizing abortion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Margaret Sanger was in some ways a confusing figure. A close reading of her work seems to indicate genuine care for the poor people she served as a nurse in New York City. On the other hand, she was also undeniably bigoted, worked hard for eugenicist purposes, and ushered in technologies and procedures that have been hugely damaging to poor and minority women. Planned Parenthood may now want to distance itself from its founder, but its own actions tell us that its agenda will always be its own bottom line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an interesting and likely meaningless piece of virtue-signaling for Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":68329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"This is an interesting but likely meaningless piece of virtue-signaling for Planned Parenthood.","format":"standard","video":"","gallery":"","source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override":[{"single_blog_custom":"","sidebar":"","second_sidebar":"","share_position":"","share_float_style":"","post_date_format":"","post_date_format_custom":"","post_reading_time_wpm":"","zoom_button_out_step":"1","zoom_button_in_step":"1","number_popup_post":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"","single_post_gallery_size":""}],"trending_post_position":"","trending_post_label":"","sponsored_post_label":"","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":""},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"808"},"jnews_social_meta":{"fb_title":"","fb_description":"","fb_image":"","twitter_title":"","twitter_description":"","twitter_image":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[804,805,808],"tags":[475,5829,490],"class_list":["post-68098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-foreground","category-life","tag-abortion","tag-margaret-sanger-4","tag-planned-parenthood"],"yoast_head":"\n