Margaret Sanger was a racist eugenics advocate who shouldn …

Kristan Hawkins, Opinion contributor Published 4:00 a.m. ET July 23, 2020

How a woman who advocated for the selective breeding of her fellow citizens came to be memorialized with those who built a country is hard to understand.

All across America, video of activists attacking statues plays on a loop while some political leadersvoice their supportfor removing all reminders of people whose personal histories put them in a negative light. In asking for the U.S. Capitol to be cleansed of Confederate statues, House SpeakerNancy Pelosisaid they must go because their efforts were to achieve such a plainly racist end. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo saidon NBC's "Today" showthat removing statues is a healthy expression of priorities and values.

For those identifying historical figures with racist roots who should be removed from public view because of their evil histories, Planned Parenthoods founder, Margaret Sanger, must join that list. In promotingbirth control, she advanced a controversial "Negro Project," wrotein her autobiographyabout speaking to a Ku Klux Klangroup andadvocatedfor a eugenics approach to breeding for the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.

In a1939 letter to Dr. C. J. Gamble, Sanger urged him to get over his reluctance to hire a full time Negro physician as the colored Negroescan get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubt.

Like the abortion lobbytoday, Sanger urged Dr. Gamble to enlist the help of spiritual leaders to justify their deadly work, writing,We do not want 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.

And that spirit of racism continues today, as more than 300 former and current employees of Planned Parenthood said recently inan open letter, noting a toxic environment.

Planned Parenthood was founded by a racist, white woman. That is a part of history that cannot be changed, they observed, writing that the pattern of systemic racism, pay inequity, and lack of upward mobility for Black staff continues.

Margaret Sanger in Washington, D.C., on March 1, 1934.(Photo: Unknown/AP)

Cultural iconKanye West has made headlines with hisrecent statements on Planned Parenthoodabortion vendors, which he said have"been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devils work.Hes right about the locations of the businesses.

The vast majority of the abortion vendors haveset up shopin minority neighborhoods, which can be seen in thescarce statisticsavailable at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Though they are only13% of the female population, African Americans made up 38% of all abortions tracked in 2016.

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In the 1970s, when theSupreme Court's Roe V. Wade decision legalizedabortion, polling showed that Blacks were "significantly less likely to favor abortion" than whites. Yet in New York City,more black babies are abortedthan born aliveeach year.And the abortion industry think tank,the Guttmacher Institute,notes that the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women.

It would seem that Sangers vision of ending Black lives has come to pass, though to be accurate she also endorsed endingChinese preborn lifeas well.

Among those who advocate for the removal of statutes, signs and traces of racist ancestors there is no balancing of good and bad deeds. It would be hypocritical to say that the racist attitudes andeugenics policy preferencesof Sanger should be ignored because it was a tacticto advancebirth control that some consider a social good, the position of famed feministGloria Steinem.

But consider Sangers own words. In an article titledA Better Race Through Birth Control,she wrote, Given Birth Control, the unfit will voluntarily eliminate their kind.

Birth Control does not mean contraception indiscriminately practised, Sanger wrote.It means the release and cultivation of the better elements in our society.

Just this week,Planned Parenthood of Greater New Yorkannounced it will remove Sanger's name from itsManhattan abortion vendor location because of her harmful connections to the eugenics movement.

Why stop there?

Sanger is honored in the SmithsoniansNational Portrait Galleryand atMargaret Sanger Squarein Manhattan. And aMargaret Sanger statuestands in the Old South Meeting House in Boston, which ironically enough is on theFreedom Trail commemorating the Revolutionary War. How a woman who advocated for the selective breeding of her fellow citizens came to be memorialized with those who built a country is hard to understand and a mistake easy to address.

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While there are other places celebrating her, these three are a good place to start.They should not be removed through mob violence, but rather through the use of democratic tools, as a Students for Life group at theUniversity of Missouridid in successfully petitioning for posters of Sanger to be removed.

Students for Life of America is launching an SOS: Strike Out Sanger campaign calling on pro-life people nationwide to demand the removal of Sangers statues and symbols, which represent a racist who actively targeted minority communities because she did not value their lives. The founder of Planned Parenthood does not represent our American ideals, and her images and honors should be pulled down to gather dust in historys closet.

Kristan Hawkins is president of Students for Life of America. Followher on Twitter: @KristanHawkins, or subscribe to her podcast, Explicitly Pro-Life.

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Margaret Sanger was a racist eugenics advocate who shouldn ...