That Margaret Sanger — eugenicist, birth control activist and founder of Planned Parenthood — wished to preserve society from blacks, immigrants, and the “feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others” through a “rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted” is an embarrassing fact that contemporary members of PP would like to sweep under the rug.
However, what Sanger actually thought of abortion may come as a surprise.
July 21st, 2009 | 2:57 pm
This is early Sanger. Did she change her tune in the 50’s and sixties (after antibiotics decreased mortality from abortions)? She was good at manipulating and changing the mindset of the day, so I wonder if her “anti-abortion” talk was just smoke and mirrors. She knew that if she advocated abortion publicly, her libertinism would have been exposed, and her organization would have stopped in its tracks.