Unfortunately, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY) announced Tuesday it plans to remove the name of the organization’s founder, Margaret Sanger, from its flagship abortion facility in New York City because of her alleged “harmful connections to the eugenics movement.” Eugenics… The idea that breeds can be improved by selecting characteristics that will improve the breed. It’s used by various entities but there’s no legal or moral way to use it with people.
In 1916, Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) published What Every Girl Should Know. It not only provided basic information about such topics as menstruation, but also acknowledged the reality of sexual feelings in adolescents. It was followed in 1917 by What Every Mother Should Know. That year, Sanger was sent to the workhouse for “creating a public nuisance.” Sanger was a tireless pioneer for birth control, though her career is clouded in controversy due to her association with eugenicists and for supposed racist writings early in her career. Eugenics is the “applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population”, usually referring to the manipulation of human populations…
Planned Parenthoods announcement indicated the organization would be working with city officials to “rename an honorary street sign that marks the ‘Margaret Sanger Square’ at the intersection of Bleecker and Mott Streets in Manhattan.”
“The removal of Margaret Sanger’s name from our building is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color,” said Karen Seltzer, PPGNY board chair, in a statement.
“Margaret Sanger’s concerns and advocacy for reproductive health have been clearly documented, but so too has her racist legacy,” she added. “There is overwhelming evidence for Sanger’s deep belief in eugenic ideology, which runs completely counter to our values at PPGNY.”
The announcement comes one month after Planned Parenthood workers accused former PPGNY CEO Laura McQuade of “systemic racism” and “abuse” and called for her removal.
In an open letter listing their complaints about McQuade, several hundred Planned Parenthood employees also referred to Sanger.
“Planned Parenthood was founded by a racist, white woman,” the workers wrote. “That is a part of history that cannot be changed.”
The plan to remove Sanger’s name also comes less than a year since Planned Parenthood Federation of America CEO Alexis McGill Johnson wrote in letter to the editor at the Wall Street Journal that editorial board member Bill McGurn’s depiction of Sanger’s involvement in the Negro Project, an effort to curb blacks from reproducing, “is callous and incorrect.”
McGurn had asserted that “eugenics have been used to justify abortion from the start,” explaining that Sanger was concerned the “more rebellious members” of the black community would begin to consider “we want to exterminate the Negro population.”
“A full reading of Sanger’s letter about the project reveals her outlining the important role black doctors and nurses serve to calm concerns about eugenics, not to promote it,” Johnson defended in her letter, and continued:
Framing access to reproductive health care and bodily autonomy as eugenics exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of the racialized gender oppression on which antiabortionists stand. The truth is, the antiabortion movement was born out of racist and xenophobic concerns about the falling white birth rate—echoes of which you still hear in today’s white supremacist rhetoric.
“We stand with black women and refuse to cower to the misogyny and white supremacy that seek to deny access to our autonomy and the full spectrum of reproductive health care, including abortion,” she stated, “because more than any antiabortion politician or activist, we know what is best for our lives, our bodies and our families.”
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