Posted on 08/30/2015 9:02:16 AM PDT by Isara
Birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger embraced some truly horrific ideas. But she also did quite a lot of good.
Senator Ted Cruz has become the first GOP presidential candidate to formally sign on to the efforts by a group of black pastors to get a bust of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger removed from an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. The participants, who held a press conference Thursday, claim that Sanger’s appearance in the exhibit, called, “Struggle for Justice,” is offensive, because it places the reproductive rights trailblazer in a position of honor alongside such icons as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks.
Thanks to the recent release of a series of controversial videos, Sanger’s link to Planned Parenthood would have likely been enough to elicit criticism of her inclusion in the exhibit. But Sanger also espoused some views about race and class that were, at times, deplorable.
So are Cruz and his fellow conservatives correct? Should black Americans find Sanger’s legacy, and the celebration of her legacy by the National Portrait Gallery and Planned Parenthood, offensive?
There is no question that Margaret Sanger, born in 1879, held some views that any reasonable person today would consider unconscionable. She viewed eugenics as sound policy and considered the Ku Klux Klan an appropriate ideological partner to advance her work as a family planning advocate. For these reasons, she’s not someone I would call a great person, particularly speaking as an African-American woman who is not from a wealthy background, meaning Sanger likely would have deemed me “unfit” to reproduce.
But that does not change the fact that all reasonable people should also be able to agree that America would be far worse off had Margaret Sanger never existed. The fact is before Sanger’s arrest in 1916 and subsequent jail sentence for aiding women in acquiring birth control, which resulted in a landmark legal ruling, most American woman did not have access to reliable forms of family planning.
This means that most American women lacked the ability to plan the number of children they would have. As a result, families were larger, poorer, and women were more likely to die earlier. Infant mortality rates were also high. This shouldn’t be particularly surprising. A woman lacking access to quality health care and nutrition is less likely to give birth to a healthy baby, or to be able to provide access to necessary nutrition or health care to a baby that was originally born healthy.
Besides the many health advantages American families experienced due to greater access to contraception thanks to the Sanger case, there have also been countless cultural benefits to society. As families have shrunk women’s participation in society has increased, as has the emergence of more women in positions of power. There are more women in colleges, corporate boardrooms and Congress. This shouldn’t come as a shock. After all, if a woman has eight children, the norm for 1800s America, she might have second thoughts about committing to the grueling schedule required to be a political candidate, particularly one who has to commute between Washington, D.C., and another state on a regular basis.
So with the exception of GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who is opposed to birth control and has a large family, it is highly likely that Republican candidates, including Senator Ted Cruz, owe a debt of gratitude to Margaret Sanger, whether they want to admit it or not. (Cruz, it should be noted, has two children, and his wife, Heidi, is a high-powered investment banker.)
For Cruz and other Sanger critics, her sins outweigh her contributions. But my question is: Who gets to decide that? While Sanger’s inclusion in the “Struggle for Justice” exhibit has drawn protests, Henry Clay’s inclusion in the “A Conversation About America” exhibit at the same institution has not.
Clay, like many of the men that shaped our nation, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, owned slaves. Which means if we removed the statues and portraits of every leader who contributed to this country in a meaningful way for gross moral failings, then the walls of the White House, the Capitol and most State Houses would be empty.
As a black American, I can say that while I am troubled by some of Margaret Sanger’s words, I would be remiss not to acknowledge her contributions to my community. Though some conservative critics seem to hold Sanger accountable for the high abortion rates within the black community since she founded the precursor to Planned Parenthood, Sanger’s own attitudes about abortion were complex, and not what we might call “pro-choice” today.
In 1918 she wrote, “While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.” Instead, she argued that government’s failure to not make contraception widely accessible to all women made the government culpable in any deaths resulting from abortion.
Sanger also railed against what she saw as the class inequality and hypocrisy evident in the multitude of family-planning options available to well-to-do white women versus what was available to the poor, many of them immigrants or black. Both of my grandmothers, born in the 1910s, were from large families. One of them was one of 14 children, the other was one of eight. They struggled in poverty as children, something they both talked about. When they decided to have families of their own, they were able to plan a size that worked for them, an option that had not been available to their mothers.
As a result, my parents became the first in their families to graduate from college, and I grew up a member of America’s middle class. This would not have been possible without Margaret Sanger’s contributions, which benefited millions of Americans from all walks of life. So if she doesn’t belong in American exhibit titled “Struggle for Justice,” then who does?
I think the author meant a ‘racist’ right......
Oh, fair enough. This is a black woman who says she needs to overlook the Sanger’s eugenics, racism, and partnership with the KKK and see the benefit of her advancing family planning.
Fair enough, and very mature of her.
So now will she also extend such courtesy to Jefferson, Washington, Jackson, Lee, Forrest, and many others who are exactly the same???
You’re right, we need to have an open mind on this.....sarc
“All the old Progressives should be remembered in their true light rather than the rosy picture painted today.”
At a bare minimum, progressive heroes should be held to the standards they hold Jefferson and Jackson to.
The nazis were very much just following the progressives of America from a decade or two earlier.
What an obnoxious comment. It's not enough to state her opinion that America would have been far worse off if Sanger never existed, but she prefaces it with "all reasonable people should also be able to agree". 'Here's my opinion, and let me point out that reasonable people agree with it.'
Goebbels learned propaganda from them.
It’s been perfected in this country, most people don’t even recognize it.
Bullseye!
That is quite literally true. Mengele was actually financed from the Rockefeller foundation in the prewar years.
Holy KKKrap!!! This woman is saying that diaphragms make genocide worth it????
This is what racist Germans said: “At least Hitler made the trains run on time.”
Mussolini made the trains run on time. Wrong Axis dictator. Germany had no such problem, before or after. Well, maybe in Bavaria, being a little more happy-go-lucky than your typically stern, punctual German.
"But that does not change the fact that all reasonable people should also be able to agree that America would be far worse off had Adolf Hitler never existed."
"Hitler oversaw the introduction of the Volkswagen Beetle, the first "assault rifle", jet aircraft and rocket science. Could man have even landed on the moon if it weren't for Adolf Hitler?"
(Hmmmmm. No, that doesn't work, either.)
Hitler also loved his dog.
Soon they will be glowing over him, after all he was a devout fascist/socialist just like them.
Edward Bernays was a Wilsonian progressive propagandist. Bernays (who was Jewish) wrote later in life that he was shocked that Joseph Goebbels was using his propaganda methods to manipulate the German people against the Jews.
For what its worth, Bernays was a nephew of Sigmund Freud.
“Say what?? Abortion and birth control are responsible for her success?? Not her parents? Not her church? Not the millions of armed services members who have fought to keep this great country free?
Truly deranged.”
The proper response to democrats on this kind of issue is to first quote Margaret Sanger on minorities, then agree that, yes, had not Sanger done what she had, the cities and suburbs would be full to bursting with criminals that the non stop crime wave would make it impossible for anybody to live and succeed
And conversely for the presence of too many cities ("overcitying"?) in other parts of Europe.
“This means that most American women lacked the ability to plan the number of children they would have.”
Really? Good thing Margaret came along to plan for them.
Oh yeah?
Keli Goff’s a fool. Margaret Sanger believed in killing off the black race using medicine and medical treatments. She was a monster.
Thanks for the information
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