Margaret Sanger & the American Eugenics Society: It's Not Pretty, But It's True History. Will It Repeat? Can We Do This Well?

Planned Parenthood has a dark history. If they had not changed their name, their organization's mission would be far clearer to more Americans. The question is how can we safely move into the future?

It goes without saying that women who choose, with fully informed consent, to pursue birth control via the use of the pill of course have that right. This article deals with some extremely controversial issues, but it is important to face squarely what wrongs have been done, and how far we should - and should not go - in the name of “equity”. Also my readers will note that Margaret Sanger had nothing to do with Sanger sequencing.

Margaret Sanger was not only an avowed Eugenicist. She was the movement’s leader.

PBS says that Margaret Sanger had a “complex” relationship with eugenics and that “many” historians believe “Sanger opposed eugenics along racial lines”. That’s simple revisionism, and that belief is not true.

From the Denver Post (2010) (Rebecca R. Messall):

“On a Sunday dedicated to honoring motherhood, May 11, 2010, the Denver Post chose to celebrate everything glaringly responsible for preventing or terminating motherhood. And, to someone like me who is slightly older than the “Pill” and who was 18 at the time of Roe v. Wade, the appearance of the Post’s Mother’s Day article was curious because there is much more that people should know about the threesome of Margaret Sanger, the “Pill” and Planned Parenthood, the nations’ (sic) largest abortion provider.

Margaret Sanger belonged to an organization called the American Eugenics Society, organized in the early 1900’s. Members from the American Eugenics Society actually formed Sanger’s original group whose name was changed to Planned Parenthood, but even the latter’s first three presidents were officers or members in the AES, including Alan Guttmacher. Sanger is listed as a member in 1956 under her then-married name, Mrs. Noah Slee.

Later called social biology, genetics, and population control, eugenics was a “scientific” endeavor born from evolutionary biology. It was never confined to state-sponsorship under Communists and Socialist dictators. Eugenics operated quite openly in the United States, England and around the world. The efforts of the American Eugenics Society resulted in many states passing laws to sterilize more than 63,000 Americans. Several states passed official apologies in the 1990’s. The eugenics movement, particularly Margaret Sanger, ranted against the Catholic Church for opposing eugenic legislation and ideology.

Leaders of the American eugenics movement were later troubled that Hitler tarnished the word “eugenics;” however, they did not abandon the quest for a thoroughbred stock of humans, such as Margaret Sanger herself touted. They simply chose new words to describe eugenics. As recently as 1968, one of the leading evolutionary biologists and an officer in the American Eugenics Society, Theodosius Dobzhansky, said that the word “genetics” meant the same thing as “eugenics” and commended the goals of eugenics. The control of reproduction remained the primary goal of eugenics in order to improve the human gene pool. Throughout its existence Planned Parenthood has been a key tool to reduce or eliminate births among blacks, other minorities and the disabled.”

It wasn't until 2021 that ASHG, the American Society of Human Genetics, took overt action to reconcile the past of genetics with the humanitarian reality. Here’s a quote from ASHG upon denouncement of the eugenics past of genetics:

“Now, as an evolutionary biologist, I want the public to understand that not all geneticists are eugenicists - but some, in fact, are, and have always been. As we strive to realize the tremendous health benefits of genetic knowledge, we must also pledge to acknowledge eugenics, racism, and other systemic inequities and their effects on the genetics and genomic community and society at large,” said ASHG President Gail Jarvik, MD, PhD. “As scientists, we disavow eugenics and its underlying racist foundation, yet historic field beliefs, actions and statements contributed to legacy views that have now been discredited and that are inconsistent with ASHG’s values. For this reason, we must continue to be visible in our rejection of eugenics and racism, and we must be honest in addressing human genetics’ past. This project is one of many ways the Society is embracing a deep commitment to equity and incorporating it as a scientific and community imperative. Together, we can move the field forward by rejecting discredited notions that divide our one humanity and by embracing an inclusive vision for profound health benefits of genetic research.”

Back to Messall’s Denver Post article in 2010:

The Post’s Mother’s Day article typifies the popular narrative, which was really a sophisticated marketing campaign so good that no one questions it. Almost never, anyway. It sought to convince women to become customers of a then-unpopular product by convincing them that, prior to the commercial launch of the Pill in the 1960’s, our mothers and grandmothers were veritable slaves to their wombs, their husbands and the very concept of marriage.

Coincidentally, of course, legal abortion also covered up the “Pill’s” failure rate. In the new movie, “Blood Money,” former abortionist Carol Everett says her abortion facility intentionally passed out low dose (sic) (b)irth control pills to increase the likelihood of customer pregnancies and those money-making back-up abortions.

In the 70’s, one of the messages was that women had a singular duty not to add another child to a polluted, war-torn mad, mad world which would be blown up at any minute by nuclear war. However, the other sub-text, the one where evil should have been blatantly denounced if media, politicians, academia and the rest of us had not been so – to put it charitably – timid, was the pronouncement that disabled and minority children were particularly “unwanted” and specially targeted for elimination through abortion and the parallel development of genetic tests for destructive uses.

Now, nearly all Downs Syndrome babies are terminated before they are born, as part of a public policy by the U.S. Supreme Court laid down in Roe and reiterated again and again. Pro-life leader Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. writes, “Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness.”

Largely, the eugenics/population control movement has been powered by huge trusts with billions of dollars in global assets. As investment vehicles, they likely receive income from corporations engaged in a global distribution of birth control pills, IUDs, patches, injections and so forth. If so, their capital holdings, dividends and bonuses are gilded by U.S. taxpayer funding for the system of product distribution, funding appropriated as a quid pro quo from politicians grateful for the campaign donations. Money talks. Blood money.”

It gets worse.

The history of Margaret Sanger includes zealous leadership in the Eugenics movement in the United States to, specifically, enact a program of negative eugenics. Instead of merely promoting a healthy superior race through positive eugenics (as if that was not bad enough), Sanger was motivated to reduce the reproduction rate of blacks in the population through the spread of birth control. What follows next is an excerpt from:

McCrea, Sarah (2015) "Eugenics No Mater What?: An Investigation of the Eugenic Origin of Planned Parenthood and its Effect on Contemporary Society," Black & Gold: Vol. 1. Available at: https://openworks.wooster.edu/blackandgold/vol1/iss1/5

The reader should cite her work for any use of the text below, and refer to her work for citations. Her work is thoroughly and exquisitely referenced (quotes around her writing are avoided to allow flow with her citations and quotes). Be warned: parts are infuriating:

Planned Parenthood was originally established as the American Birth Control League by Margaret Sanger in 1921. According to Students for Life of America,1 Sanger was an active member of the Eugenics movement who developed it with the goal of “ridding the world of ‘human beings who never should have been born.’” They also argue that Planned Parenthood is still working toward that goal today.2 While some of the pro-life views toward this organization are more than a little problematic, I find this assertion to be the most disturbing. In the following paper, I investigate these claims, as well as draw conclusions about the current mission of Planned Parenthood, taking into account the factor of institutional racism and its relationship to poverty and lack of resources among women of color in the United States.”

The Link Between the Birth Control and Eugenics Movements

“As the founder of the American Birth Control League, Margaret Sanger had a unique opportunity to encourage the application of eugenic principles. In her book, The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger defines these principles as ‘the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either mentally or physically’…[eugenics is] the attempt to solve the problem from the biological and evolutionary point of view.”3 Many reproductive rights activists and supporters of Planned Parenthood claim that ensuring the purity and improvement of the white race was not the primary goal of Sanger’s work in the Birth Control movement; however, when one takes into account the historical evidence found in the writings of Margaret Sanger, as well as in her connections with major players in the Eugenics movement, her intentions become clear.4 The American Birth Control League and the Birth Control Federation of America, which later merged to become Planned Parenthood, were, in fact, founded with population control in mind.

The story of the eugenic roots of Planned Parenthood can be traced back to the Reconstruction era. It was at this time that whites across the United States were forced to think about what would happen to the millions of slaves who were freed at the end of the Civil War. In their works Maafa21 and “Margaret Sanger and the Racial Origins of the Birth Control Movement,” Mark Crutcher and Dorothy Roberts provide useful insights to the historical context of this time period. At the time, many whites—especially those in the South—believed that the blacks who had been enslaved were mentally incapable of functioning without the assistance of white people, and would have to be looked after by the government, which would therefore cause a drastic rise in taxes. In the words of renowned eugenicist Francis Galton, many white Americans, as well as others worldwide, felt that “[a]verage Negroes possess[ed] too little intellect, self-reliance, and self-control to make it possible for them to sustain the burden of any respectable form of civilization without a large measure of external guidance and support.”5

Whites also feared miscegenation - the mixing of the races through marriage or illicit sex - and the effects that it would have on the purity of the white race.6 These fears eventually translated to immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, when they began coming to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Founded in 1922, the American Eugenics Society was established to deal with this perceived problem from a scientific point of view. This organization was backed by some of the most wealthy, influential, and philanthropic families in the nation, including the Rockefellers and the Carnegies.7 Originally, the founders of the American Eugenics Society followed in the footsteps of Francis Galton and supported positive eugenics - the idea that those who were best fit to continue the race should be encouraged to reproduce as much as possible in order to overwhelm the undesired population. In this case, the wealthy white population was encouraged to have as many children as possible in order to saturate the national population and suppress the growth of the black population. However, this changed when the American Eugenics Society became involved with Margaret Sanger and her organization, the American Birth Control League.8,9

Sanger initially took up the issue of birth control in order to free women from the burden of unwanted pregnancies and to allow them to freely express their sexuality outside of the confines of marriage.10 Prior to World War I, Sanger was relatively unsuccessful in her crusade; in fact, she was arrested several times for disseminating materials that promoted the use of birth control. (These arrests occurred because of a law that classified such materials as “obscene.”)

However, by the beginning of World War II, birth control was accepted and even lauded as a means of social control in the United States.11 This occurred because the focus of the birth control movement shifted from ensuring the rights of women to ensuring the racial identity and purity of the American population. In this way, Sanger was able to win the support of the eugenicists of her day.12 However, their methods differed from hers. Contrary to those of Galton and the founding members of the American Eugenics Society, Sanger’s beliefs did not include encouraging the “well born” to reproduce as much as possible; she felt that even when those reproducing were the people best suited to continue the race, high birthrates would lead to “extreme poverty, recklessness, deficiency and delinquency.”13 Rather, Sanger favored the method of negative eugenics, or preventing births in the communities that were deemed “unfit.”

In The Pivot of Civilization, she declared that “Birth Control [sic], which ha[d] been criticized as negative and destructive, is really the greatest and most truly eugenic method…” and that “…[it] ha[d] been accepted…as the most constructive and necessary of the means to racial health.”14

She also asserted that those who supported positive eugenics “[were] ignoring the exigent problem of the elimination of the feeble-minded.”15

Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in 1921 in order to achieve these eugenic goals. In the appendix of The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger stated that the purpose of the American Birth Control League was to reduce the procreation of “those least fit to carry on the race” and “[t]o create a race of well born (sic) children.”16 The people whose reproduction rates the American Birth Control League intended to reduce included the “feeble-minded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal,…illiterates, paupers, unemployables, [and] criminals.”17 It was the “unceasing and unrestrained”18 procreation of these people that Sanger considered to be“ the most urgent problem”19 of the day. Through her writings and speeches, Sanger was soon able to convince her eugenic contemporaries of the worth of her method. She subsequently joined forces with the American Eugenic Society to implement birth control in the communities they believed needed it most. The communities included those of impoverished whites, as well as recent Southern and Eastern European immigrants and blacks.

Sanger's opinions on the aforementioned groups are evident in her writings and speeches.

For example, she spoke of impoverished whites in a speech entitled “Program for the Future,” and declared that “[t]he Birth Control Movement [was] designed and organized to…make available to the poorest and most afflicted of our people, scientific information, to regulate and control the size of the family…[and to] raise the mass population to a higher intelligence and level of life.”20 In the case of the Southern and Eastern European immigrants who were coming into the United States at the time, Sanger stated that a step toward peace in America would include “keep[ing] the doors of Immigration [sic] closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as…[those] in the class barred from entrance by the Immigration Laws of 1924.”21 These laws set yearly quotas for the entry of immigrants of all national origins, and completely prohibited the entry of Asians. They applied to all immigrants, not just the “feeble-minded” ones.22

As far as I have found, Sanger did not make any directly racist comments about blacks; however, she was not fighting for racial equality, either. If we take into account the general attitude toward blacks at the time, and consider the notion of white privilege, in addition to the things that she wrote about other non-white groups, we can reasonably infer that Sanger’s defense of birth control for the purpose of preventing births in undesirable communities also extended to blacks in America. Since the era of slavery in the United States, whites have perceived blacks as lazy and too stupid to function without their guidance and leadership. We see this attitude in Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, in which he argues that “blacks…[are] inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.”23 We know from the existence of Jim Crow laws in the South and de facto segregation in the North that these attitudes did not disappear just because slavery ended. We can clearly see this in the June 1932 issue of The Birth Control Review (the newsletter and journal published by the American Birth Control League), in which Sanger addressed what she termed the “Negro problem.”24 In her article, Sanger asserted that “[t]he composite picture [threw] light on the need for birth control among the underprivileged Negroes, on the lack of…birth control work for Negroes, and…by Negroes for themselves.”25 Coupling this statement with the purposes of the American Birth Control League given by Sanger, we can see that her definition of feeble-minded - along with those of many Americans at the time - included blacks.

She also indicated this in letters to Albert Lasker, a man from whom she received funds for her cause. On one occasion, she stated that “poor white people down South [were] not much better off than the Negroes,” but that “there ha[d] at least been a start in several states to help the poor whites.”26 On another occasion, she exclaimed that “[she thought] it was magnificent that [she and Lasker were] in on…helping Negroes to control their birth rate.”27 As the editor of The Birth Control Review, Sanger also chose to publish pieces that discussed the desire of eugenicists to control the black population.28

Because of our knowledge from her other writings of Sanger’s feelings toward poor whites, we are able to infer that the way she was interested in “helping” blacks coincided with the way she was “helping” poor whites—by working to prevent their populations from becoming a majority in the United States.

This is clearly an accurate representation of the Eugenics views, and Sanger’s views, at the time. The conspiracy to rid North America of “Negroes” via what evolutionary biologists would call “soft selection” (hard selection would include increased death rates), Sanger and her colleagues realized the program would have to be covert:

The members of the American Eugenics Society believed that “[e]ugenic goals [were]
most likely to be attained under a name other than eugenics.”29 It is for this reason that the organization became involved with Margaret Sanger and the American Birth Control League.

Soon after, Sanger began raising funds necessary to open a birth control clinic in Harlem to serve the black community exclusively and measure “material concerning racial inter-mixture.”30

Sanger also focused on bringing birth control services to poor communities (both black and white) in the South by sending researchers out to assess their knowledge of birth control methods and later set up clinics and educational projects.31 Throughout this process, she advocated for the use of black ministers and doctors to disseminate birth control information, because she did not “want the word to go out that [they] want[ed] to exterminate the Negro population.”32 She claimed that “the minister [was] the man who [could] straighten out [this] idea if it ever occurr[ed] to any of their more rebellious members.”33 The intention was to get African-American women to accept birth control voluntarily. In the event that they did not accept birth control on a voluntary basis, Sanger supported giving “the whole dysgenic population” the options of “segregation or sterilization.”34 In fact, forced sterilization was put into practice and ruled constitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Buck vs. Bell in 1927.35

Buck vs. Bell, by the way, also happens to be the Supreme Court ruling that has been cited to try to affirm the government’s right to force vaccines on those who would care to refuse them.

Advocates of eugenics argued that birth control was the most humane method of promoting and achieving the goals of their movement. Gunnar Myrdal illustrated this in his book, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, when he claimed that “all white Americans agree that, if the Negro is to be eliminated, he must be eliminated slowly so as not to hurt any living individual Negroes.”36 In addition, Myrdal's statement is in accordance with Sanger's idea that negative eugenics was a more permanent way to “awaken interest” in the issue of purifying the race of the “dysgenic population.”37 In other words, eugenicists felt that it would take time for birth control to be effective in eliminating unwanted populations from the nation. Sanger created her institutions - the American Birth Control League, the Birth Control Federation of America and, finally, Planned Parenthood - as a means to this end. She ultimately intended for these organizations to have a lasting effect on the American population. That being said, it would follow that we would see evidence of a change in the racial composition of the nation today. According to the statistics, we do; however, it is the exact opposite of what eugenicists, and Sanger, hoped to achieve. Census records from 1921 indicate that non-whites comprised 10.2% of the American population that year while the 2010 census reports that non-whites now constitute more than 30% of the population. 38,39 Be that as it may, it can be argued that, while the numbers of non-whites in the United States have increased over the past century, so has the number of Planned Parenthood facilities.40

Planned Parenthood facilities continue to be found in areas with minority populations that exceed state-wide demographics. While the racial disparity in the utilization of abortion services does not directly contribute to decreasing the non-white population, it does prevent an even more rapid change in the demographic composition of the American population from occurring. A study conducted by Mark Crutcher, published in 2011, surveyed every ZIP code in the United States in which a Planned Parenthood facility was located. Crutcher then examined the minority population (by percentage) of those ZIP codes and compared them to the total minority population of the state in which each ZIP code is situated.41 Ultimately, Crutcher found that 73% of Planned Parenthood facilities were located in communities whose black and/or Hispanic populations were greater than those of their respective states. He also came to the conclusion that, out of 116 ZIP codes with more than one Planned Parenthood, 84 were “disproportionately black and/or Hispanic.”42 In addition to the information from this study, data from the Guttmacher Institute (the research branch of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America) and the US Census indicates that while African-American and Hispanic women account for only about 14% of the US population, they receive around 55% of the induced abortion services performed in this country. This is opposed to non-Hispanic white women, who make up roughly 33% of the population and receive around 36% of induced abortion services.43,44 It is understandable that some would use these statistics as an indication of a modern continuation of the Eugenics movement; however, in order to have a full understanding of the communities in which Planned Parenthood facilities are located, we must also take into account their socioeconomic makeup and the role that race plays in relation to economics.

“We’re from the government, and we’re here to help”.

There are better ways to improve the lot of all people of the earth: the solution is to improve the lot of all people of the earth. Clean water. Clean air. Clean food. Reality-based education without agenda. Meaningful employment focused on the reversal of the intoxication of our environment and our bodies, including and first and foremost, our children’s developing brains.

My environmental science instructor taught his students that the best way to increase the standard of living in what were then called “third-world” countries raged by environmental catastrophe was to educate the women, because educated women controlled their own reproductive output. I think that’s a valid point - but improving the neurodevelopment by helping populations avoid toxins of all sorts should, in my view, be prioritized.

Solutions include moving from “sustainability” to “regenerative” thinking: permaculture, soil self-enhancement, valued labor… a whole slew of new possibilities.

Me? I’ll celebrate every birth, with the hope of inspiring self-responsibility in our approach to the environment. Real and lasting solutions are local. I offer no practical solutions for people in whose shoes I have not lived.

The next section in McCrea’s article explores “The Link Between Race, Poverty, and Abortion”. She deserves your direct attention. The link to the article, again, is:

McCrea, Sarah (2015) "Eugenics No Mater What?: An Investigation of the Eugenic Origin of Planned Parenthood and its Effect on Contemporary Society," Black & Gold: Vol. 1. Available at: https://openworks.wooster.edu/blackandgold/vol1/iss1/5

Reconciliation Cannot Occur via “Equity” and Will be Used to Adopt NeoCommunism

Now, as abhorrent as those ideas, beliefs, actions and programs have been - and continue to be in the hearts, minds and actions of many - and yes, structured racism is real - my next sentence may cause dismay in some readers, but it is true:

Two wrongs do not make a right. We cannot get to where we need to be by programs and biases against people of any color. This is self-evidently true. Nothing can possibly heal America as long as we continue to respond to the primal instincts that reside in all people. For most of us, concern and interest for those like ourselves naturally exceeds - again, in most of us - concern and interest for those unlike ourselves.

A second large lesson - individuals cultivating genuine concern for all of humanity does not - and must not - fall under the spell of self-assigned globalists who are, after all, just Neocommunists. Instead, we should explore the power of releasing ourselves from bigotry and bias - and expect no less from every other person on the planet. This means an end to race-based everything.

I’m not providing a prescription. I am stating a truth that is logically and necessarily so. By definition, bigotry cannot end until bigotry ends - and the to unbiasedness bigotry cannot ever - EVER - include bigoted programs designed to undo the effects of past biases because such programs will alienate and disenfranchise the targets of social justice-type rectification of past wrongs.

I’m also not being pollyanish. These are not easy questions. But whatever solutions we find, it will require all of us have the same expectation of the lack of bias against anyone, regardless of their racial or ethnic background.

There’s a term that has risen to prominence and is being taught across the US in schools that actually embodies as warped representation of the principle of unbiasedness.

The term, of course, is “equity”.

Under one definition of “equity”,

The term “equity” refers to fairness and justice and is distinguished from equality: Whereas equality means providing the same to all, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalance.

This, of course, is not unbiasedness. The pendulum swings in the other direction, too far, and individual students are being told that they are “advantaged” solely on the basis of their skin color, regardless of their own, or their family’s actual history.

They are then made to feel guilt and shame solely on the basis of their skin color, regardless of their own, or their family’s actual history of contributing - or, in many cases fighting against - racism and bigotry.

The bias against people who happen to be born Caucasian will mean they will then given fewer opportunities, solely on the basis of their skin color, regardless of their own, or their family’s actual history. Anyone who sees this as “justice” has become their own enemy.

Some of these newly disadvantaged people will find themselves quite financially disadvantaged, unable to provide for themselves, or their families - in spite of their abilities, and the extent of their hard work dedication, training, and expertise.

They then find themselves angry, bitter, and with no recourse to seek justice for their unfair situation - and the cycle of the struggle for codified bigotry continues.

It is the responsibility of each of us to give far less - as in none, zero - consideration to the skin color or ethnicity of the people we interact with in our daily lives. It’s most important that we remain respectful of the human dignity intrinsic to each individual, no matter how “well-born” they may, or may not, be.

Everyone should expect equal opportunity. It’s one thing to want to help one’s own community pull itself up by the bootstraps. Indeed, individual philanthropists can bet their own money on whatever lineage of the human family they care to support. But when they co-apt the power of government to suit their own ends at the expense of other lineages in the family tree, by definition, that makes them, from an expanded view, not much different than Margaret Sanger.

Watch: Racism, Eugenics, & Hatred: The Truth Behind Planned Parenthood Founder Margeret Sanger