Fact Check: Was Planned Parenthood Started To 'Control' The Black Population? (NPR)

NPR ^ | aug 14, '15 | Amity Kelly

[Drango]

Ben Carson alleged in an interview with Fox News Wednesday that Planned Parenthood puts most of its clinics in black neighborhoods to "control the population" and that its founder, Margaret Sanger, "was not particularly enamored with black people."

Planned Parenthood has been a target on the campaign trail after a series of sting videos was released alleging the organization illegally profits from selling aborted fetal tissue. Carson, a famed neurosurgeon turned Republican presidential candidate, has been a vocal opponent of the group. He was also in the news this week after reports surfaced that he once used aborted fetal tissue for research.

Here's a closer look at Carson's comments:

What Carson said

On Fox News Wednesday, Carson was asked about Democrats' criticism that Republicans who want to defund Planned Parenthood are waging a "war on women." He responded:

"Maybe I am not objective when it comes to Planned Parenthood, but, you know, I know who Margaret Sanger is, and I know that she believed in eugenics, and that she was not particularly enamored with black people.

"And one of the reasons you find most of their clinics in black neighborhoods is so that you can find a way to control that population. I think people should go back and read about Margaret Sanger who founded this place — a woman Hillary Clinton by the way says that she admires. Look and see what many people in Nazi Germany thought about her."

It's not the first time Planned Parenthood has faced criticism about its founder and the placement of its clinics — former presidential candidate Herman Cain made a similar statement in 2011.

What Planned Parenthood said

In response, Planned Parenthood said Carson was not only "wrong on the facts, he's flat-out insulting." Alencia Johnson, assistant director of constituency communications, told NPR:

"Does he think that black women are somehow less capable of making the deeply personal decision about whether to end a pregnancy than other women? ... It's a shame that a doctor, who should understand the barriers black women face accessing high-quality preventive and reproductive health care services, would pander so clearly to anti-abortion extremists on the right."

Did Margaret Sanger believe in eugenics?

Yes, but not in the way Carson implied.

Eugenics was a discipline, championed by prominent scientists but now widely debunked, that promoted "good" breeding and aimed to prevent "poor" breeding. The idea was that the human race could be bettered through encouraging people with traits like intelligence, hard work, cleanliness (thought to be genetic) to reproduce. Eugenics was taken to its horrifying extreme during the Holocaust, through forced sterilizations and breeding experiments.

In the United States, eugenics intersected with the birth control movement in the 1920s, and Sanger reportedly spoke at eugenics conferences. She also talked about birth control being used to facilitate "the process of weeding out the unfit [and] of preventing the birth of defectives."

Historians seem to disagree on just how involved in the eugenics movement she was. Some contend her involvement was for political reasons — to win support for birth control.

In reading her papers, it is clear Sanger had bought into the movement. She once wrote that "consequences of breeding from stock lacking human vitality always will give us social problems and perpetuate institutions of charity and crime."

"That Sanger was enamored and supported some eugenicists' ideas is certainly true," said Susan Reverby, a health care historian and professor at Wellesley College. But, Reverby added, Sanger's main argument was not eugenics — it was that "Sanger thought people should have the children they wanted."

It was a radical idea for the time.

Sanger wrote about this mission herself in 1921: "The almost universal demand for practical education in Birth Control is one of the most hopeful signs that the masses themselves today possess the divine spark of regeneration."

Was Sanger "not particularly enamored with black people"?

Sanger's birth control movement did have support in black neighborhoods, beginning in the '20s when there were leagues in Harlem started by African-Americans. Sanger also worked closely with NAACP founder W.E.B. DuBois on a "Negro Project," which she viewed as a way to get safe contraception to African-Americans.

In 1946, Sanger wrote about the importance of giving "Negro" parents a choice in how many children they would have.

"The Negro race has reached a place in its history when every possible effort should be made to have every Negro child count as a valuable contribution to the future of America," she wrote. "Negro parents, like all parents, must create the next generation from strength, not from weakness; from health, not from despair."

Her attitude toward African-Americans can certainly be viewed as paternalistic, but there is no evidence she subscribed to the more racist ideas of the time or that she coerced black women into using birth control. In fact, for her time, as the Washington Post noted, "she would likely be considered to have advanced views on race relations."

Are most of Planned Parenthood's clinics in black neighborhoods?

In 2014, the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research center, surveyed all known abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood clinics, in the U.S. (nearly 2,000) and found that 60 percent are in majority-white neighborhoods.

Planned Parenthood has not released numbers on the neighborhoods of its specific clinics, but responding to a request for demographic information, the organization said that in 2013, 14 percent of its patients nationwide were black. That's nearly equal to the proportion of the African-American population in the U.S.

However, Carson is tapping into a more subtle sentiment — the targeting of African-Americans in health care systems. There have been documented cases of that happening, including the now-infamous Tuskegee study. Starting in the 1930s, the Tuskegee Institute enrolled black sharecroppers in experiments and allowed them to suffer from syphilis untreated, though they were told they were getting treatment.

And, Wellesley's Reverby said, that was sometimes the case for birth control clinics historically, too. They may have been available in communities where more general health care was not, raising some ethical questions.

"One of the issues is ... what happens when you can find birth control clinics but you can't find primary care? It's just a question of what the state's willing to provide for," Reverby said. "Was there overuse of birth control and sterilization in poor communities in some states? Absolutely. It's a complicated story."

Did Sanger have a connection to Nazi Germany?

Not that NPR found. Sanger herself wrote in 1939 that she had joined the Anti-Nazi Committee "and gave money, my name and any influence I had with writers and others, to combat Hitler's rise to power in Germany."

She also said books of hers had been destroyed and that she had intellectual friends who were sent to concentration camps or put to death. Sanger did not have a connection to the Nazis, but a loose association comes through her involvement in the eugenics movement.

American and German eugenicists closely collaborated, and the Nazis reportedly borrowed much of their 1933 so-called sterilization law from American models. That law allowed the government to forcibly sterilize people with alleged genetic disorders.

[matthew fuller]

I wish Dr. Carson well. I am sure that a very great number of low information voters have never been exposed to what Carson is saying, and he is doing them and the public at large a great favor.

[hoosiermama]

There is a season
Spin spin spin
And a reason for their omissions

[Yardstick]

PP claims that 14% of its patients are black. That seems low given the disproportionate number of abortions performed on black women. I’d like to see someone fact check that number.

Also, the NPR writer cites a stat saying that 60% of abortion clinics are in majority white neighborhoods. I can think of several different ways that that stat could be misleading.

[Qiviut]

Hillary: 2009 PPFA Margaret Sanger Award

"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the 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."

Margaret Sanger's December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.

[Always A Marine]

Planned Parenthood’s desperate dissembling about Margaret Sanger reads like old Nazis’ claims that the Schutzstaffel’s treatment of European Jews was misunderstood. Abortion is a sacrament to Satan; Dr. Carson has scored a direct hit and now the demons are fighting back.

[GraceG]

[But, Reverby added, Sanger’s main argument was not eugenics — it was that “Sanger thought people should have the children they wanted.”

---

Sanger thought people should have.the children that *society* wanted. Blacks were not the only people’s on that list of the unwanted or lesser-wanted. ]

Pro-Regressive(s) otherwise known by the ironic name of “progressives”, think that they can make these decisions for society using government as a tool of coercion to subvert the will of the “individual” to make them behave like a bee in the hive... You know for society’s “good”....

Kings and Queens on the other hand used government as a tool of coercion to subvert the will of the individual to behave like a bee in the hive to do their bidding.

All “progressives” did was replace the “King and Queen” with the abstract concept of “For the good of society” while they hide behind their bureaus and committees. That way they can make all their decisions behind the scenes so there is no castle to burn down and rulers to behead when their bull sh!te gets too repressive for the masses. Instead they can easily slink away or join the crowds and blend in when any revolution comes.

All Progressive-ism is, is a cloaking device for Tyranny. Which is why I call it “Neo-Feudalism”

[ez]

Oh, I get it. There are “good” eugenics, and “bad” eugenics. Our eugenics are good eugenics and are enlightened... aimed at improving humanity and avoiding unhealthy babies. Your eugenics are bad eugenics and evil and bigoted and aimed at killing people who are different than you.
Yawn. Same old crap...

[JustaCowgirl]

Take your cue from Donald Trump, Dr. Carson. Go after them with claws and teeth bared,and attack.

[ForYourChildren]

PP should be constantly hounded as the racist organization it was intended to be by its founder Margaret Sanger.

If they can hound the confederate flag out of existence, then why not PP?

[martin_fierro]

Defund PP. And NPR.

[BAW]

I should believe NPR? Get real.

[EEGator]

Blacks are voluntarily getting abortions. I don’t think the Jews were cool with Nazi “decisions”.

[Always A Marine]

Also, the NPR writer cites a stat saying that 60% of abortion clinics are in majority white neighborhoods. I can think of several different ways that that stat could be misleading.

This means that 40% of Planned Parenthood's extermination resources is targeted at only 12% of the population (a resource/target ratio of 333%) while the remaining 60% of its resources is aimed at a whopping 88% of America (a ratio of only 68%). By this reckoning, Planned Parenthood allocates five times more resources (3.33 / .68 = 4.89) toward killing Black babies than to killing "undesirable" White babies. Planned Parenthood is damned by its own statistics.

[Poison Pill]

the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research center, surveyed all known abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood clinics, in the U.S. (nearly 2,000) and found that 60 percent are in majority-white neighborhoods.

Another way to say this is that 40% of abortion centers are employed to service just 13% of the population. So, on a per capita basis, most of their assets target blacks.

Why is that percentage so disproportionately high?

[Yardstick]

Here’s the source of that stat:

https://www.guttmacher.org/media/evidencecheck/provider-location.html

They claim only 6% of abortion clinics are in majority black neighborhoods. That number seems very oddly low which I think points to something being wrong with the data they’re using. My guess is it’s in the subtleties of the racial stats about neighborhoods. Like what if you have a 60/40 neighborhood and the abortion clinic is in the 40% black part?

[Always A Marine]

Blacks are voluntarily getting abortions. I don’t think the Jews were cool with Nazi “decisions”.

No, but just as Hitler enjoyed the assistance of Jewish "kapos" to herd other Jews to their deaths, Planned Parenthood has cultivated useful Black "preachers" to encourage the sacrifice of millions of Black babies to Moloch.

[Yardstick]

Well, the 40 percent is directed at more than 12% since you also have hispanics and other minorities but you make a very good point.

[CyberAnt]

Sooooo .. if you don’t want them .. then you can just throw them away ..??

Of course Sanger wanted to stop the influx of black people. What’s really sad to me is that so many black people believe the DemocRATS love them .. and all the while they have clinics where the DemocRATS are trying to get rid of as many of them as they can.

And .. besides that .. when rich and powerful women get pregnant - because they’ve been fooling around with someone other than their husband, abortion is the quick answer; just get rid of the evidence.

The DemocRATS have a lot to answer for, and I believe the 2016 election is going to be a house cleaning in that regard. Time for the left to pay the piper.

[mrsmel]

All of which, even if there wasn’t more to the story (which there is), would be more than enough for NPR to smear anyone on the right as a racist. It’s not like they don’t hold up Robert Byrd-a former Grand Kleagle or something like that-as “the conscience of the Senate”, while looking for racist dog whistles in words like “macaca” from someone on the right. The pity of it is that we let them get away with it by apologetically rolling over and eccepting their premises.

[markomalley]

Margaret Sanger was one of the most evil women of the 20th Century, if not THE most evil woman of the 20th Century. She was a Eugenicist who wanted to wipe out whole populations. For example, in this 12/10/1939 letter to Charles Gamble, founder of P&G, she discloses:

If you take a look at page 102 of the April, 1933 issue of the Birth Control Review (Sanger's Journal of her Birth Control League which, after the war, morphed into Planned Butcherhood) you will note an interesting article titled, Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need. The doctor was Dr. Ernst Rüdin. In case you're not familar, Dr. Ernst Rüdin was honored by Hitler as being the "pioneer of the racial-hygienic measures of the Third Reich." He was one of the collaborators of Margaret Sanger.

Sanger was a child of the sexual revolution 50 years before the sexual revolution was even conceived. She believed the birth of a child was a shame and a large family was a catastrophe:

Many, perhaps, will think it idle to go farther in demonstrating the immorality of large families, but since there is still an abundance of proof at hand, it may be offered for the sake of those who find difficulty in adjusting old-fashioned ideas to the facts. The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.

Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race, (New York: Eugenics Press, 1920), chapter 5.

(btw, if you click on the link, there's even worse to read in that book)

Here's another one from her 1926 "epic" Pivot of Civilization (available on the Web Archive:

And then there's this, from the February, 1919, edition of the Birth Control Review (available here):

What a quote: …seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit.