100 Years of Planned Parenthood: Celebrating What Exactly?
One Planned Parenthood experience has remained seared into my memory like no other. I was standing outside of Planned Parenthood in downtown Birmingham, praying on my lunch break. There was a woman across the street at an apartment building, holding her toddler in her arms. She stared at me for a few minutes before crossing the hot pavement. I saw nervousness in her eyes and a sort of longing that I understood later.
She immediately asked me, "Are you praying?"
"Yes. Do you need prayer?"
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"Yes," she replied emphatically.
I was not prepared to hear the story that would stream out of her mouth.
She asked if I would pray that her husband would come back home. He had run off with a sex trafficking ring that frequented this Planned Parenthood — to perform forced abortions on the women who had become pregnant during their abuse. She explained she had done everything to try to find him and report his crimes to authorities, but there was no hope as of yet.
I asked her if she was certain that Planned Parenthood knew they were performing abortions for abused women held against their will.
She responded, "Of course they know! And they never report it."
My heart was broken in an even deeper way to realize yet another deeply horrific truth of this international abortion mill. There was no darkness too dark for them, no vulnerable woman too vulnerable as long as they were being paid — and I can only assume, being paid even more money to be quiet and not report to authorities.
I wept. The wife and I wept together and we prayed. We prayed her husband would have revelation for his deep sin of being party to these criminal acts and turn himself in. We prayed the ring would be exposed and the precious women rescued. And we prayed for Planned Parenthood to come to an end.
This Sunday, October 16, will mark 100 years of Planned Parenthood — a century of the dark, twisted ideals and principles they were founded on, and still fully operate within. People are actually celebrating this morbid anniversary without understanding what they are celebrating. (If they did, they would know Halloween would be a more fitting day.)
Without further ado, I will seek to unveil who and what is being celebrated.
In 1916, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and full supporter of Adolf Hitler's Nazi party, created her back alley birth-control establishment based on a racial genocide agenda — particularly towards African Americans and immigrants who were, in her words, "the unfit" of the population.
The stated goals of Margaret Sanger regarding planned, calculated population reduction fit squarely within the textbook definition of genocide: "Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group. Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the groups conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
It was with these ideas that Sanger created her illegal, back-alley birth control business in New York City. She strategically placed her first Planned Parenthood center in the Brooklyn borough, where she could get the most access to the people she hated most. She was arrested and put in jail for a month. But she didn't stop.
Today, New York has the highest abortion ratio of any state in the nation.
Here are a few of Margaret Sanger's most famous quotes and ideals:
"The main objects of the Population Congress would be to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring[;] to give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization." –Margaret Sanger ("A Plan for Peace," 1932).
"Article 1. The purpose of the American Baby Code shall be to provide for a better distribution of babies … and to protect society against the propagation and increase of the unfit.
Article 4. No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child, and no man shall have the right to become a father, without a permit.
Article 6. No permit for parenthood shall be valid for more than one birth."
–Margaret Sanger ("America Needs a Code for Babies," March 27, 1934).
"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 writing on what she termed the 'Negro Project' (in a letter to Clarence Gamble, Dec. 10, 1939).
"I accepted an invitation to talk to the women's branch of the Ku Klux Klan ... I saw through the door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses ... I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak ... In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered." –Margaret Sanger (Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography, p. 366)
The truth is, Margaret Sanger fashioned the eugenics movement in America in the 1930s and 1940s. Her beliefs and those in her communities' belief in the movement contributed to compulsory sterilization laws in 30 U.S. states that resulted in more than 60,000 sterilizations of vulnerable people, including the people she superficially measured as "feeble-minded," "idiots" and "morons."
It's shocking to believe that in 2016, such a woman as Sanger and her still existing dynasty of Planned Parenthood is celebrated. Four years ago, Sanger was named one of the "20 Most Influential Americans of All Time" by TIME Magazine. There are awards given to women in her name and I shudder to think of someone being honored by receiving such a dark award.
Many supporters of Planned Parenthood believe the organization that it is today is far removed from Sanger's early views. But to see that is frankly not the case, one only need hear the words of Dr. Alan Guttmacher, President of Planned Parenthood from 1962-1974, who proudly stated that, "We are merely walking down the path that Mrs. Sanger carved for us." Also, to ensure that Sanger's ideals are maintained her grandson, Alex Sanger, is the current Chair of the International Planned Parenthood Council.
