Who is Margaret Sanger, you ask?

She is the founder of the American Birth Control League, latter renamed Planned Parenthood, which is the largest provider of abortions in the United States, and a leader in the advancement of abortion rights worldwide. The group makes no apologies for its support of abortion on demand. However they do not broadly publicize their historic connections to Sanger and her ideology...and with good reason when one considers her less than admirable motives.

Margaret Sanger was active in the reproductive rights movement in America around the same time the Nazis came to power in Germany with their dreams of building a master race by exterminating the Jews and other “undesirables.” While Sanger rejected the anti-Semitic nature of Nazism she did embrace her own version of eugenics, including the sterilization of those she considered unfit to reproduce and preventing the births of those she saw as a burden on society. She believed in building a superior human race through segregation and controlled breeding.

According to an article written by Sanger entitled "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda," published in the October 1921 issue of the journal, Birth Control Review, “The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics.” Sanger envisioned birth control as her own “final solution” for the ills of society. "Eugenics is…the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.”

She spread this propaganda in public speaking engagements across the country including a 1926 speech at a New Jersey branch of the Ku Klux Klan. And in 1939 her organization began what was called The Negro Project which promoted her style of family planning among blacks in the South. She recruited black ministers from the area whom she hoped would more effectively garner support among locals. In a letter to a fellow activist concerning this program Sanger wrote, “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.”

Planned Parenthood attempts to whitewash Margaret Sanger’s statements by claiming she was influenced by the culture of her time and that we must view her work within that context. But when one reads statements like, “Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race,” as she wrote in a 1922 work entitled Woman, Morality, and Birth Control, or “Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need...We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock,” as she wrote in the April 1933 issue of Birth Control Review, it is difficult to see past the obvious implications. Margaret Sanger founded her organization with the idea of ridding the world of the poor, the physically impaired, the uneducated lower class, and all those she deemed unworthy to breed.

Planned Parenthood is understandably ashamed of their late founder’s despicable agenda. But is their present mission any less despicable? Consider the fact that 78% of Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinics are located in minority communities. And while blacks make up only 13% of the United States’ population, they compose almost 36% of all abortions. Sure the rhetoric has changed, but the results are the same. Minorities are suffering worst from the scourge of abortion.

Consider also this statement from Planned Parenthood’s website: “Public funds should be made available to subsidize the cost of abortion [and]…sterilization services for those who choose the procedure[s] but cannot afford [them].” In other words, they want us to pay for sterilizing and aborting the poor of our nation. Margaret Sanger would no doubt applaud this policy statement, as she would also be pleased to know that Planned Parenthood receives its own federal subsidies with nearly one third of its funding coming from government grants and contracts.

Margaret Sanger’s goal of a national policy of eugenics may not be written into law, but the reality of legalized abortion, its inherent cheapening of human life, and the taxpayer funding of organizations like Planned Parenthood give to her the next closest thing. Thanks to Roe v. Wade and the culture of death she inspired an unborn child can be written off as an undesired nuisance and a burden on society.

Margaret Sanger would be proud.