Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson acknowledged that the abortion giant’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a proponent of eugenics but stopped short of labeling her a “racist.”
“We will no longer make excuses or apologize for Margaret Sanger’s actions. But we can’t simply call her racist, scrub her from our history, and move on. We must examine how we have perpetuated her harms over the last century — as an organization, an institution, and as individuals,” Johnson wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times on Saturday.
“Up until now, Planned Parenthood has failed to own the impact of our founder’s actions. We have defended Sanger as a protector of bodily autonomy and self-determination, while excusing her association with white supremacist groups and eugenics as an unfortunate ‘product of her time,'” she wrote. “Until recently, we have hidden behind the assertion that her beliefs were the norm for people of her class and era, always being sure to name her work alongside that of W.E.B. Dubois and other Black freedom fighters. But the facts are complicated.”
Sanger founded Planned Parenthood in 1916 when she and two others established the country’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn. Sanger was a noted supporter of eugenics, a movement based on improving human civilization through selective breeding, and published an article in 1919 titled “Birth Control and Racial Betterment,” among other published pieces and speeches.
In some of her writings, she referred to black Americans, immigrants, and indigenous Americans as “human weeds,” “reckless breeders,” who are “spawning … human beings who never should have been born.”
PLANNED PARENTHOOD STRIPS MARGARET SANGER’S NAME FROM NYC CLINIC OVER EUGENICS BELIEFS
Johnson said in her piece that it “is not a simple yes or no” answer to whether Sanger was a racist herself, instead characterizing the answer as complicated.
“We don’t know what was in Sanger’s heart, and we don’t need to in order to condemn her harmful choices. What we have is a history of focusing on white womanhood relentlessly. Whether our founder was a racist is not a simple yes or no question. Our reckoning is understanding her full legacy, and its impact. Our reckoning is the work that comes next,” she wrote.
Johnson did acknowledge in her op-ed that Sanger also spoke to the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey to promote birth control, adding that Sanger eventually moved away from the eugenics movement due to its racism.
“And even though she eventually distanced herself from the eugenics movement because of its hard turn to explicit racism, she endorsed the Supreme Court’s 1927 decision in Buck v. Bell, which allowed states to sterilize people deemed ‘unfit’ without their consent and sometimes without their knowledge — a ruling that led to the sterilization of tens of thousands of people in the 20th century,” Johnson added.
Anti-abortion activists have long condemned Sanger as a racist, and Live Action’s Lila Rose slammed the op-ed as “PR games” that still defend the organization’s founder.
“Still defending Margaret Sanger. Still refusing to name her work racist. Most horrifically—still killing 900 children a day. Doesn’t matter how they try to rebrand or play PR games, Planned Parenthood should be a relic in a museum about the horrors of abortion & nothing else,” Rose tweeted Monday.
Still defending Margaret Sanger.
Still refusing to name her work racist.
Most horrifically—still killing 900 children a day.
Doesn’t matter how they try to rebrand or play PR games, Planned Parenthood should be a relic in a museum about the horrors of abortion & nothing else. https://t.co/iFsd2DqEqW
— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) April 19, 2021
The op-ed comes months after the Planned Parenthood of Greater New York said it would remove Sanger’s name from a Manhattan clinic because of her connections to eugenics.
“The removal of Margaret Sanger’s name from our building is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color,” Karen Seltzer, the chairwoman of the New York affiliate’s board, said in a statement last July.
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A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Greater New York said in a statement that removing Sanger’s name is a step “to address historical inequities to better serve patients.”
“Planned Parenthood, like many other organizations that have existed for a century or more, is reckoning with our history, and working to address historical inequities to better serve patients and our mission,” spokeswoman Melanie Roussell Newman said.
