Margaret Sanger’s Plans To Control Negros Through Planned Parenthood and Eugenics Margaret Sanger's views and involvement in eugenics h...
Margaret Sanger’s Plans To Control Negros Through Planned Parenthood and Eugenics
Margaret Sanger's views and involvement in eugenics have been a subject of controversy and criticism. While she did advocate for birth control and reproductive rights, some of her statements and actions have led to accusations of promoting eugenics and racist ideologies.
Facts have come to light proving that Sanger did advocate for eugenics, a theory that aimed to improve the human population through selective breeding and sterilization. At the time, eugenics was a widespread movement supported by many intellectuals, politicians, and scientists. However Sanger specifically used Eugenics as a tool of control upon the African American population within the United States.
Sanger's statements and writings suggested that she held views that could be interpreted as racially biased. For instance, she addressed audiences that included white supremacist groups and proposed birth control efforts to limit the growth of specific racial and ethnic groups, including African Americans.
Planned Parenthood's Founding: The founding of the organization that later became Planned Parenthood was solely driven by eugenics or racial motivations. Sanger started “The Negro Project” in 1939, with the aim of expanding birth control services for Black communities in the south, according to the New York University’s project documenting Sanger’s writings. Sanger’s concern was to avoid a suspicion that the program’s objective was to stop Black people having babies, which having white people in charge could create.
She wrote: “The minister’s work is also important and he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want 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.”
In 2015, the Washington Post, addressing accusations of racism levelled against Sanger brought up her 1939 letter, saying that while the passage quoted above was “inartfully written” it was “frequently taken out of context to suggest Sanger was seeking to exterminate blacks.”
The NYU’s Margaret Sanger Papers Project acknowledged that Sanger was a supporter of eugenics, a now-discredited practice of selective breeding with specific characteristics, and described “The Negro Project” as controversial from the onset and “constructed in terms and with perceptions that today smack of racism.”
In July 2020, a New York clinic moved to remove Sanger’s name from a health center over her views on eugenics, as seen in a statement by Planned Parenthood.
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