Planned Parenthood founder: Republican Party is pro-choice

Peoria Journal Star ^ | 9/23/05 | Elaine Hopkins

[Crackingham]

Republicans who support abortion rights should take back their party, the grandson of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger told a Peoria audience Thursday. Alex Sanger, 57, spoke at the 40th anniversary celebration and awards dinner of Planned Parenthood Heart of Illinois at the Hotel Pere Marquette.

"Reproductive freedom is in the hands of the Republican Party," he said. "No freedom, no right is safe if one party platform opposes it."

Sanger said polls show 73 percent of registered Republicans support abortion rights in at least some circumstances.

"The Republican Party is pro-choice," he said. This group must be encouraged to "show up in primaries and precinct meetings and vote that way."

Sanger, the married father of three adult sons, lives in New York City, and is an author and activist in the reproductive rights movement. He wrote "Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century," chairs the International Planned Parenthood Council and serves as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund. His grandmother's greatest achievement, he said, was to make birth control respectable and discussed by everyone.

"We failed to do that with abortion," he said.

The debate should be reframed, he said, and not in the way the Democratic Party has in mind. "We've got to be rid of the shame. We should be asking why we should have reproductive freedom."

The answer, he said, is to put reproductive freedom in a biological context, "about wanting children, healthy babies and grandchildren," so that all children are wanted.

"The vast group in the middle," the 60 percent of people who support abortion rights in some or most circumstances, can be reached in this way, he said,

[montag813]

Alex Sanger is himself a decent argument for abortion.