Cain smears Planned Parenthood

[unregistered]

 

[badbabysitter]

because vetteman forgot about what I posted 2 pages ago

The Negro Project, instigated in 1939 by Margaret Sanger, was one of the first major undertakings of the new Birth Control Federation of America (BCFA), the product of a merger between the American Birth Control League and Sanger's Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, and one of the more controversial campaigns of the birth control movement. Developed by white birth control reformers, who consulted with African-Americans for help in promoting the project only well after its inception, the Negro Project and associated campaigns were, nevertheless, widely supported by such black leaders as Mary McLeod Bethune, W. E. B. DuBois, and Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Influenced strongly by both the eugenics movement and the progressive welfare programs of the New Deal era, the Negro Project was, from the start, largely indifferent to the needs of the black community and constructed in terms and with perceptions that today smack of racism.

What it became was not the project Sanger had first envisioned. As she wrote in an initial fund-raising request to Albert Lasker, the wealthy advertising executive just beginning his post-business career in medical philanthropy, she simply hoped to help "a group notoriously underprivileged and handicapped to a large measure by a ‘caste' system that operates as an added weight upon their efforts to get a fair share of the better things in life. To give them the means of helping themselves is perhaps the richest gift of all. We believe birth control knowledge brought to this group, is the most direct, constructive aid that can be given them to improve their immediate situation." Sanger viewed the Negro Project as another effort to help African-Americans gain better access to safe contraception and maintain birth control services in their community as she had attempted to do in Harlem a decade earlier when Sanger's Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB), in cooperation with the New York Urban League, opened a birth control clinic there. (MS to Lasker, July 10, 1939, Mary Lasker Papers, Columbia University (to be microfilmed in a later addendum to the MSM)

By the late 1930s, the birth control activists began to focus on high birth rates and poor quality of life in the South, alerted to alarming Southern poverty by a 1938 U.S. National Resource Committee report which asserted that Southern poverty drained resources from other parts of the country. Starting in the mid-1930s, Sanger sent field workers into the rural South to establish birth control services in poor communities and conduct research. She sought to test various contraceptive jellies and foam powders to see if they could effectively be used without a diaphragm, which would be cheaper and easier for poor women to use. Physician and philanthropist Clarence Gamble (1894-1966), who was on a quest to find the best birth control for the "uneducated masses," funded and supervised several of these rural Southern projects. The birth control movement also looked to Southern states as the ideal region in which to secure funding under New Deal legislation and to establish birth control services as part of state and federal public health programs. These birth control initiatives were designed, in part, to demonstrate to government bureaucrats on the county, state and federal levels that contraceptive clinics were essential in impoverished Southern communities and could be successfully duplicated in other regions.

In 1937, North Carolina became the first state to incorporate birth control services into a statewide public health program, followed by six other southern states. However, these successes were clouded by the failure of birth controllers to overcome segregated health services and improve African-Americans' access to contraceptives. Hazel Moore, a veteran lobbyist and health administrator, ran a birth control project under Sanger's direction and found that black women in several Virginia counties were very responsive to birth control education. A 1938 trip to Tennessee further convinced Sanger of the desire of African-Americans in that region to control their fertility and the need for specific programs in birth control education aimed at the black community. (Hazel Moore, "Birth Control for the Negro," 1937, Sophia Smith Collection, Florence Rose Papers.)

In 1939 Sanger teamed with Mary Woodward Reinhardt, secretary of the newly formed BCFA, to secure a large donor to fund an educational campaign to teach African-American women in the South about contraception. Sanger, Reinhardt and Sanger's secretary, Florence Rose, drafted a report on "Birth Control and the Negro," skillfully using language that appealed both to eugenicists fearful of unchecked black fertility and progressives committed to shepherding African-Americans into middle-class culture. The report stated that "[N]egroes present the great problem of the South," as they are the group with "the greatest economic, health and social problems," and outlined a practical birth control program geared toward a population characterized as largely illiterate and that "still breed carelessly and disastrously," a line borrowed from a June 1932 Birth Control Review article by W.E.B. DuBois. Armed with this paper, Reinhardt initiated contact between Sanger and Albert Lasker (soon to be Reinhardt's husband), who pledged $20,000 starting in Nov. 1939. ("Birth Control and the Negro," July 1939, Lasker Papers)

However, once funding was secured, the project slipped from Sanger's hands. She had proposed that the money go to train "an up and doing modern minister, colored, and an up and doing modern colored medical man" at her New York clinic who would then tour "as many Southern cities and organizations and churches and medical societies as they can get before" and "preach and preach and preach!" She believed that after a year of such "educational agitation" the Federation could support a "practical campaign for supplying mothers with contraceptives." Before going in and establishing clinics, Sanger thought it critical to gain the support and involvement of the African-American community (not just its leaders) and establish a foundation of trust. Her proposal derived from the work of activists in the field, discussions with black leaders and her experience with the New York clinics. Sanger understood the concerns of some within the black community about having Northern whites intervene in the most intimate aspect of their lives. "I do not believe" she warned, "that this project should be directed or run by white medical men. The Federation should direct it with the guidance and assistance of the colored group – perhaps, particularly and specifically formed for the purpose." To succeed, she wrote, "It takes a very strong heart and an individual well entrenched in the community. . . ." (MS to Gamble, Nov. 26, 1939, and MS to Robert Seibels, Feb. 12, 1940 [MSM S17:514, 891].)

Sanger reiterated the need for black ministers to head up the project in a letter to Clarence Gamble in Dec. 1939, arguing that: "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." This passage has been repeatedly extracted by Sanger's detractors as evidence that she led a calculated effort to reduce the black population against their will. From African-American activist Angela Davis on the left to conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza on the right, this statement alone has condemned Sanger to a perpetual waltz with Hitler and the KKK. Davis quoted the incendiary passage in her 1983 Women, Race and Class, claiming that the Negro Project "confirmed the ideological victory of the racism associated with eugenic ideas." D'Souza used the quote to buttress erroneous claims that Sanger called blacks "human weeds" and a "menace to civilization" in his best-selling 1995 book The End of Racism. The argument that Sanger co-opted black clergy and community leaders to exterminate their own race not only gives Sanger unwarranted credit as a remarkably cunning manipulator, but also suggests that African-Americans were passive receptors of birth control reform, incapable of making their own decisions about family size; and that black leaders were ignorant and gullible.

In the end, Sanger's plan for an educational campaign to precede the demonstration project lost out to the white medical and public relations men running the new Federation. They were particularly swayed by Robert Seibels (1890-1955), chairman of the Committee on Maternal Welfare of the South Carolina Medical Association, who was chosen by the BCFA to direct a Negro demonstration project in that state. Seibels distrusted Sanger and her loyal crew of field workers, calling them "dried-up female fanatics" who had the gall to tell doctors what to do. Robert E. Seibels to Frederick C. Holden, Jan. 28, 1939, Sophia Smith Collection, Records of PPFA.) He saw no need for prerequisite education and propaganda and advised incorporating birth control services for blacks into a general public health program. The BCFA then dismissed the notion of building a community-based, black-staffed demonstration clinic that could become permanent, and instead set in motion a plan that closely resembled the vaccination and VD caravans that swept in and out of the region.

Lasker's money was used to set up demonstration projects between 1940 and 1942 in several rural South Carolina counties, under Seibels's direction, and in urban Nashville, TN under the auspices of the Nashville City Health Department. In South Carolina, the BCFA hired two African-American nurses to make house calls and meet with women in groups at schools and community centers to encourage them to visit a clinic, but contraceptives were dispensed by white doctors only. In Nashville, demonstration clinics were opened at the Bethlehem Center, a black settlement house, and later at Fisk University, and black nurses were eventually employed with some success there as well.

The Federation immediately claimed that the Negro Project had exceeded its expectations and even persuaded Life Magazine to carry a photo spread of the demonstration clinics in South Carolina in May 1940. But relatively few women, (only about 3,000) visited the demonstration clinics to receive contraceptive instruction. And among those that did, the dropout rates were high as many women would not return to white doctors for follow-up exams, though the black nurses in both Nashville and South Carolina met with greater success. In 1942 the Federation ended funding for the demonstration clinics claiming to have developed "workable procedures" for providing contraception to African-Americans in both rural and urban communities; but no other clinics appear to have opened as a result of the Project. ("Better Health for 13,000,000," PPFA Report, April 16, 1943, Rose Papers; John Overton, "A Birth Control Service Among Urban Negroes," Human Fertility, Aug. 1942, 97-101.)

However, the "Division of Negro Service," a department created at the BCFA initially to oversee the Negro Project, did implement some of the educational goals Sanger outlined. Under the direction of Florence Rose, with money raised by Sanger, and inspired by an advisory council of eminent black leaders, educators and health professionals, the Division undertook significant education projects from 1940-1943. Rose flooded every black organization in the country with planned parenthood literature, set up exhibits, instigated local and national press coverage and hired a black woman doctor, Mae McCarroll, to teach birth control techniques to black doctors and lobby medical groups. Though still stinging from the rejection of her earlier proposal for the Negro Project, Sanger wrote enthusiastically to Albert Lasker in July of 1942 about what she now framed as a pioneering effort: "I believe that the Negro question is coming definitely to the fore in America, not only because of the war, but in anticipation of the place the Negro will occupy after the peace. I think it is magnificent that we are in on the ground floor, helping Negroes to control their birth rate, to reduce their high infant and maternal death rate, to maintain better standards of health and living for those already born, and to create better opportunities for those who will be born. In other words, we're giving Negroes an opportunity to help themselves, and to rise to their own heights through education and the principles of a democracy." (MS to Lasker, July 9, 1942, MSM S21:404)

But the BCFA (which changed its name to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942) forced Florence Rose to leave in 1943 – a result of her inability to follow new bureaucratic procedures and her allegiance to Sanger, who was immersed in her own clashes with Federation staff. With Rose's departure, the Division of Negro Service floundered and soon shut down. The Federation delegated "Negro" work to other departments and eventually passed off remnants of the program to state affiliates.

Arguments persist about whether or not the Negro Project was purely a racist endeavor (search for "Sanger" "Negro Project" and "racism" on the Internet and be prepared for the onslaught). Certainly the patriarchal racism of the time that guided many of the social policies in Washington and the practices of philanthropic and charitable organizations working to "lift up" African-Americans, dictated both the Federation's and Sanger's approach to blacks and birth control. The public rationale for the Project was rooted in economics, tax-payer burden, and the social threats posed by what was perceived to be an exploding black underclass, rather than the health and sexual liberation of black women (though it should be notes that the birth control movement largely ignored the issue of women's —black or white— sexual autonomy in the interwar years). And there is no doubt that a good number of medical professionals involved in the birth control movement exhibited strong racist sentiments, some of them arguing for and even carrying out compulsory sterilization on black women considered to be of low intelligence and therefore not capable of choosing not to control their fertility, as well as on those deemed morally or behaviorally deviant. But there is no evidence that Sanger or even the Federation coerced or intended to coerce black women into using birth control. The fundamental belief, underscored at every meeting, mentioned in much of the behind-the-scenes correspondence, and evident in all the printed material put out by the Division of Negro Service, was that uncontrolled fertility presented the greatest burden to the poor, and Southern blacks were among the poorest Americans. In fact, the Negro Project did not differ very much from the earlier birth control campaigns in the rural South designed to test simpler methods on poor, uneducated and mostly white agricultural communities. Following these other efforts in the South, it would have been more racist, in Sanger's mind, to ignore African-Americans in the South than to fail at trying to raise the health and economic standards of their communities.

herpy derp derp

 

[badbabysitter]

herpity derp?

Recently, the press has been filled with reports of sightings of flying saucers. While we need not give credence to these stories, they allow our imagination to speculate on how visitors from outer space would judge us. I am afraid they would be stupefied at our conduct. They would observe that for death planning we spend billions to create engines and strategies for war. They would also observe that we spend millions to prevent death by disease and other causes. Finally they would observe that we spend paltry sums for population planning, even though its spontaneous growth is an urgent threat to life on our planet. Our visitors from outer space could be forgiven if they reported home that our planet is inhabited by a race of insane men whose future is bleak and uncertain.

There is no human circumstance more tragic than the persisting existence of a harmful condition for which a remedy is readily available. Family planning, to relate population to world resources, is possible, practical and necessary. Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess.

What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims.

It is easier for a Negro to understand a social paradox because he has lived so long with evils that could be eradicated but were perpetuated by indifference or ignorance. The Negro finally had to devise unique methods to deal with his problem, and perhaps the measure of success he is realizing can be an inspiration to others coping with tenacious social problems.

In our struggle for equality we were confronted with the reality that many millions of people were essentially ignorant of our conditions or refused to face unpleasant truths. The hard-core bigot was merely one of our adversaries. The millions who were blind to our plight had to be compelled to face the social evil their indifference permitted to flourish.

After centuries of relative silence and enforced acceptance, we adapted a technique of exposing the problem by direct and dramatic methods. We had confidence that when we awakened the nation to the immorality and evil of inequality, there would be an upsurge of conscience followed by remedial action.

We knew that there were solutions and that the majority of the nation were ready for them. Yet we also knew that the existence of solutions would not automatically operate to alter conditions. We had to organize, not only arguments, but people in the millions for action. Finally we had to be prepared to accept all the consequences involved in dramatizing our grievances in the unique style we had devised.

There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts. She, like we, saw the horrifying conditions of ghetto life. Like we, she knew that all of society is poisoned by cancerous slums. Like we, she was a direct actionist — a nonviolent resister. She was willing to accept scorn and abuse until the truth she saw was revealed to the millions. At the turn of the century she went into the slums and set up a birth control clinic, and for this deed she went to jail because she was violating an unjust law. Yet the years have justified her actions. She launched a movement which is obeying a higher law to preserve human life under humane conditions. Margaret Sanger had to commit what was then called a crime in order to enrich humanity, and today we honor her courage and vision; for without them there would have been no beginning. Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her. Negroes have no mere academic nor ordinary interest in family planning. They have a special and urgent concern.

Recently the subject of Negro family life has received extensive attention. Unfortunately, studies have overemphasized the problem of the Negro male ego and almost entirely ignored the most serious element — Negro migration. During the past half century Negroes have migrated on a massive scale, transplanting millions from rural communities to crammed urban ghettoes. In their migration, as with all migrants, they carried with them the folkways of the countryside into an inhospitable city slum. The size of family that may have been appropriate and tolerable on a manually cultivated farm was carried over to the jammed streets of the ghetto. In all respects Negroes were atomized, neglected and discriminated against. Yet, the worst omission was the absence of institutions to acclimate them to their new environment. Margaret Sanger, who offered an important institutional remedy, was unfortunately ignored by social and political leaders in this period. In consequence, Negro folkways in family size persisted. The problem was compounded when unrestrained exploitation and discrimination accented the bewilderment of the newcomer, and high rates of illegitimacy and fragile family relationships resulted.

For the Negro, therefore, intelligent guides of family planning are a profoundly important ingredient in his quest for security and a decent life. There are mountainous obstacles still separating Negroes from a normal existence. Yet one element in stabilizing his life would be an understanding of and easy access to the means to develop a family related in size to his community environment and to the income potential he can command.

This is not to suggest that the Negro will solve all his problems through Planned Parenthood. His problems are far more complex, encompassing economic security, education, freedom from discrimination, decent housing and access to culture. Yet if family planning is sensible it can facilitate or at least not be an obstacle to the solution of the many profound problems that plague him.

The Negro constitutes half the poor of the nation. Like all poor, Negro and white, they have many unwanted children. This is a cruel evil they urgently need to control. There is scarcely anything more tragic in human life than a child who is not wanted. That which should be a blessing becomes a curse for parent and child. There is nothing inherent in the Negro mentality which creates this condition. Their poverty causes it. When Negroes have been able to ascend economically, statistics reveal they plan their families with even greater care than whites. Negroes of higher economic and educational status actually have fewer children than white families in the same circumstances.

Some commentators point out that with present birth rates it will not be long before Negroes are a majority in many of the major cities of the nation. As a consequence, they can be expected to take political control, and many people are apprehensive at this prospect. Negroes do not seek political control by this means. They seek only what they are entitled to and do not wish for domination purchased at the cost of human misery. Negroes were once bred by slave owners to be sold as merchandise. They do not welcome any solution which involves population breeding as a weapon. They are instinctively sympathetic to all who offer methods that will improve their lives and offer them fair opportunity to develop and advance as all other people in our society.

For these reasons we are natural allies of those who seek to inject any form of planning in our society that enriches life and guarantees the right to exist in freedom and dignity.

For these constructive movements we are prepared to give our energies and consistent support; because in the need for family planning, Negro and white have a common bond; and together we can and should unite our strength for the wise preservation, not of races in general, but of the one race we all constitute — the human race.

derppity flurp

 

[badbabysitter]

flappity fluripty flurp?

Search for Margaret Sanger's name on the Internet and you will quickly be bombarded by claims that she supported Hitler and the Nazi's human elimination programs, or at the very least inspired the Nazi architects of race improvement. "Hitler and Sanger Join Hands" blares one anti-Sanger diatribe; "Margaret Sanger, Sterilization and the Swastika" is the title of another; "Let us look forward to the day when Planned Parenthood clinics are made into holocaust museums," concludes another attack on Sanger's writings. One web site features photos of Sanger and Hitler united under a Swastika. Another inserts the phrase "concentration camps" into a 1932 Sanger speech to demonstrate her real motives, a novel form of textual annotation that is then passed on like a virus to other sites who point to the phrase as documented evidence of Sanger's final solution.

Though this disinformation campaign, designed to arouse anger and anti-choice activism, resides largely on the Internet, in colorful, sensationalized pages, even the more respectable print outlets have picked up many of the most extreme Nazi-related allegations about Sanger as voiced by anti-abortion activists at newsworthy events or on Op-Ed pages. They then print them without comment, in effect publishing them as fact. The Associated Press, for example, reported on an anti-abortion march in Birmingham on October 14 of this year, quoting a participant who described Sanger "as racist as she could be," and linked her to Hitler's race policies. A Canadian paper, the Calgary Sun, ran a Sept. 1 opinion piece that claimed Sanger "backed the Nazi race purification program until it became unfashionable." And even though mainstream publications are not actually calling Sanger a Nazi, they are, increasingly, referring to her (as the New York Times did in a September 19 article on the opening of the Museum of Sex in New York City) as a "eugenicist" before associating her with birth control.

Every year there are dozens more characterizations of Sanger as a pro-Nazi, genocidal racist appearing in newspapers, right-wing biographies and purported histories of planned parenthood, and especially on the Internet. Sanger is by no means alone among controversial social reformers and liberators painted as grotesques by extremist opponents of their beliefs and accomplishments; Martin Luther King, Jr., and Eleanor Roosevelt can ably compete with her for this posthumous fame. But the attacks against Sanger resonate in a way that attacks on others do not, largely because of the emotions generated by the abortion debate.

Unfortunately these misrepresentations of Sanger as a Nazi sympathizer who carried out her own quiet form of genocide through abortions, the spread of harmful contraceptives and the advocacy of racist "eugenic" policies – supported by the circulation of Sanger's controversial writings on eugenics – have begun to infect unbiased student research that is increasingly dependent on unverified and unsubstantiated information only a mouse click away. Granted most of the Internet sites that link Sanger and Hitler as the dark angels of human carnage don't hide their pro-life, anti-choice associations. But the "Big Lie" theory works – the more you say it, the more it sticks.

Sanger never met Hitler, except in her unconscious (see below). And the reality is that despite the fact that Sanger's anti-militarism and isolationism during the 1920s and 1930s at times obscured her abhorrence of the Nazis, she was deeply shocked and horrified by the evils and dangers of fascism, Hitler and the Nazi party. "All the news from Germany is sad & horrible," she wrote in 1933, "and to me more dangerous than any other war going on any where because it has so many good people who applaud the atrocities & claim its right. The sudden antagonism in Germany against the Jews & the vitriolic hatred of them is spreading underground here & is far more dangerous than the aggressive policy of the Japanese in Manchuria." (MS to Edith How-Martyn, May 21, 1933 [MSM C2:536].) She joined the American Council Against Nazi Propaganda and "gave money, my name and any influence I had with writers and others, to combat Hitler's rise to power in Germany." ("World War II and World Peace," 1940? [MSM S72:269].) For Hitler the feeling was mutual; in 1933 the Nazis burned Sanger's books along with those of Ellis, Freud, German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, and others. (Ellis to MS, Sept. 3, 1933 [LCM 3:385].)

How then does Sanger end up keeping company with Hitler? In this predominantly Internet-based netherworld of revisionist Sanger profiles there are two paths linking Sanger to Hitler, and they frequently intersect. On one, Sanger is accused of murdering millions through abortion, either directly as an abortionist, or as the primary force in creating a culture that devalues human life as evidenced by the rising number of abortions through the twentieth century. This is the unacknowledged "holocaust" commandeered by Sanger. In these absurd depictions she was an even more efficient killer than Hitler or Stalin. One well-quoted assault on Sanger's legacy, George Grant's 1995 book, Killer Angel, charges Sanger with the "brutal elimination of thirty million children in the United States and as many as two and a half billion worldwide." The fact that Sanger's clinic did not offer abortions and that she advocated birth control as the only remedy for abortion does little to dispel the myth that Sanger pressed abortion upon the masses.

But the main vehicle used to metamorphose this feminist liberator into a Nazi is Sanger's limited and largely self-serving role in the short but spectacular rise of American eugenics – a movement that sought to apply the principles of genetics to improving the human race. By lifting passages from Sanger's writings on eugenics and sterilization while failing to provide the complete argument or proper context, and by linking her with notorious racists within the eugenics movement, debunkers of Sanger's achievements have given her a fiendish make-over.

In one of the seminal texts in this extremist assault on Sanger, the 1979 Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society (both its title and cover – pictured here– prepare the reader for the many leaps of faith to come), the author suggests that Sanger, through her "eugenic" writings and speeches, put into motion a "‘polite' genocide with an army of biologists, sociologists, eugenicists and psychologists at her side," and did so without raising any suspicions among the people. (p. 24) So effective was Sanger as a propagandist, claims the author, that her debased "values" have become "those of modern Western civilization and are rapidly becoming the morals which dominate the rest of the world." (p. 9)

What is, of course, overlooked is that Sanger used the popular eugenics movement to help promote birth control as a science-based remedy for overpopulation, poverty, disease and famine. Incorporating the rhetoric of the eugenics movement into her writings allowed Sanger to make a stronger biological argument that fertility control was necessary for the improvement and health of the entire human race, not only as a means to liberate women. Sanger did seek to discourage the reproduction of persons who were, in the terms of her day, "unfit" or "feebleminded," those, it was believed, who would pass on mental disease or serious physical defect. And she did advocate sterilization in cases where the subject was unable to use birth control. This was a popular position espoused by many progressive medical leaders, scientists and health reformers of the day – those groups who Sanger hoped to win over to the birth control fight. But in approaching eugenics as a propagandist rather than a scientist, Sanger's language became dehumanizing, her eugenic recommendations overly simplistic, and her understanding of genetics flawed. Take the oft quoted 1931 "My Way to Peace," in which Sanger recommends that the government:

. . . keep the doors of Immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feeble-minded, idiots, morons, insane, syphiletic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class . . . apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization, and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring. (Jan. 17, 1932 [LCM 130:198].)

These are harsh words intended to appeal not only to eugenicists, but social and health workers who came in contact with all manner of sickness and suffering. Sanger was not referring to short stature or pattern balding when she used the phrase "objectionable traits," rather she was talking about diseases such as syphilis that were ravaging especially the poor. Unfortunately, she did sometimes apply the term to moral as well as mental defects, though never as virulently as others in the eugenics community.

Offensive terminology aside, Sanger's beliefs, however inhumane they may seem in the current age of medical enlightenment when human suffering is much less visible in our daily lives, actually came from her direct experience with the poor and oppressed. An illustration can be found in a 1932 letter written to Sanger by a woman requesting birth control advice:

"I will be thirty-six years old on December 16, 1932. and I shall have been married fifteen years on December 13, 1932. During this time I have given birth to eleven children, of whom four are now living–a boy of 13 1/2 years–a girl of 12 years and twin boys two years old. Three of these eleven children were born badly deformed–one with a hare lip and split palate and two with excessive water and a frog-like form. The last birth (one of the deformed ones) was in August 1931 and had to be accomplished with instruments and the Doctor . . . feared for my life and warned us against further pregnancy." (Client to MS, July 5, 1932 [MSM S7:218].)

Such dilemmas led Sanger to the strongly held belief that the best way to reduce human suffering was to first provide greater access to birth control. It was also necessary, she argued, to somehow regulate the procreation of those individuals likely to pass on physical or mental disease and disability who were incapable of using or denied access to contraception. But her writings on eugenics, including her 1922 book Pivot of Civilization, argued that eugenic measures in and of themselves were not practicable. Instead, she concluded that women's empowerment through birth control offered the only viable means of improving the human condition.

While "My Way to Peace" is brutally frank and among the most extreme of any of Sanger's eugenic writings, it does not condone race-based eugenics. Sanger never accepted the racial hierarchies that led to the deadly racist policies of the Nazis. Rather, she vehemently rejected any definition of the "unfit" when it referred "to race or religions." (MS to Sidney Lasell, Jr., Feb. 13, 1934 [MSM S8:541].) This was not true of the broader eugenics movement, both in Europe and the United States, which blurred the distinction between good science and racial prejudice, and generally failed to protest the perversion of its ideals under the Nazis. A number of American eugenicists excused or even commended reprehensible Nazi race policies camouflaged, however poorly, under the veneer of science.

Sanger did write to and share organizational memberships and conference programs with any number of eugenicists, including such champions of scientific racism as Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin, who ran the genetics laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York; and Leon Whitney, secretary of the American Eugenics Society. All of them conflated physical and mental deficiencies with racial ones. While Sanger publicly criticized these most notable eugenicists for their opposition or indifference to birth control, she never publicly condemned their racial views. Her silence is damning in retrospect, but it does not make her a Nazi.

Those who insist on labeling Sanger a Nazi claim time and again that she inspired the men who unleashed the barbarism lurking in eugenics, yet many of the men she supposedly roused to action had, in the main, only a grudging respect tinged with contempt for the woman they saw as a major deterrent to their quest to breed more of the "best." And though Sanger sought their support for birth control, in most cases she failed to win their endorsement. With few exceptions, American eugenicists advocated increased breeding among the "fit," defined by them as white Anglo-Saxon Protestants with middle or upper class values, and viewed birth control as the major impediment to the proliferation of these "better stocks."

Even more than her links with American eugenicists, Sanger's so-called association with Ernst Rudin, the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry in Munich, who helped align prevalent eugenic theories with Nazi race policy, has been featured in nearly every right-wing assault on Sanger's legacy. The grounds for charges that she knew, corresponded with, or influenced Rudin stem from the April 1933 Birth Control Review (BCR), a special "sterilization number." Rudin did contribute an article to this issue, as did Harry Laughlin and Leon Whitney and other eugenicists. The issue also included excerpts from the works of Havelock Ellis and influential gynecologist Robert Dickinson. Taken as a whole, the issue presents a clear, if not always comfortable, debate on compulsory sterilization, with forceful arguments for and against, and calls for further research on sterilization as a eugenic measure. But Sanger had resigned as editor of the BCR in 1929 and no longer had any affiliation with the publication. Nevertheless the BCR issue has been held out like a smoking gun in the campaign to brand Sanger a sterilization missionary and Nazi sympathizer. What is never noted is that the one voice absent in the issue is Margaret Sanger's.

Historians must grapple with the phenomenal amount of material that is being dumped on the Internet. This flood of historical "evidence" is at once liberating and dangerous, for it includes information and disinformation, and there are no help menus to tell the difference. This has become an immense challenge to historical editors who seek to deliver accurate texts in historical context. Some of the incredible attacks on Sanger have existed in book and pamphlet form for several decades now, but in the past only the most zealous would pay for them or go to the trouble to track them down. Now search engines bring them in an instant to our desktops. With sensational headlines, comical juxtapositions, bold assertions and a kind of Twilight Zone aura about them, these anti-choice, anti-Sanger web sites appear to have a sizeable and growing audience. And therein lies the problem; the proliferation of extremist material makes it all seem less extreme, more acceptable to students, journalists and others looking for a quick take on a controversial and complicated figure. History is never that easy

durpppity daflurpity derp!

 

[badbabysitter]

From 1939 to 1942 Sanger was an honorary delegate of the Birth Control Federation of America, which included a supervisory role — alongside Mary Lasker and Clarence Gamble — in the Negro Project, an effort to deliver birth control to poor black people.[97] Sanger wanted the Negro Project to include black ministers in leadership roles, but other supervisors did not. To emphasize the benefits of involving black community leaders, she wrote to Gamble "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." This quote has been cited by Angela Davis to support her claims that Sanger wanted to exterminate black people.[98] However, New York University's Margaret Sanger Papers Project, argues that in writing that letter, "Sanger recognized that elements within the black community might mistakenly associate the Negro Project with racist sterilization campaigns in the Jim Crow South, unless clergy and other community leaders spread the word that the Project had a humanitarian aim."[99]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger

jesus fuck

It seems to me from my experience . . . in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas, that while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors, they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table. . . . They do not do this with the white people, and if we can train the Negro doctor at the clinic, he can go among them with enthusiasm and with knowledge, which, I believe, will have far-reaching results. . . . , with the Negro workers, as well as the County's white doctors. His success will depnd upon his personality and his training by us.
The minister's work is also important ,also 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


(Sanger, 1939, December).

 

[badbabysitter]

in closing.. you still haven't managed to support any of your claims


again

 

[RobDownSouth]

in closing.. you still haven't managed to support any of your claims


again

In other words, just another day at the office for the Vettebigot.

Of course, Vetty is shackled by his "sacred marine honor" *wipe* which forbids him from taking personal responsibility for his errors of fact.

 

[Que]

in closing.. you still haven't managed to support any of your claims to my petulant satisfaction. You have FAILED to overcome my powerful rhetoric of "Nuh UHHH!"

FYP, You're welcome.

The fact that she wanted to gently encourage Blacks to use birth control and engage in voluntary abortions doesn't lessen the impact of her belief system that blacks were generally inferior stock unfit for intelligent breeding.

I guess it's a good thing planned Parenthood aborts a higher percentage of black babies. If not, we would run out of room for 'em in the upper Midwest and they would start migrating in ever greater numbers up into Canada.

It would SUCK if every Canadian girl could get one of her very own, because then you wouldn't get to be such a special little snowflake for finding one and becoming an internationally recognized authority on all things black.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Que]

Seems to me that BBS is the derpidity derp champion of Lit, having posted a wall of text but presenting no credible refutation of my post.

She's the female Spidey. "No YOU prove it!"

With a far less articulate helping of UD, "Words don't mean what they say...here let me randomly highlight some words in hopes of changing the meaning."

Even given in context, context means nothing to her.

As I said elsewhere if she were to hold the position that, "Yes, but her organization founded in ignominy has had such positive results."

Nope. Sanger's a saint. You know- solving woman's health issues like malignant pregnancy.

 

[badbabysitter]

FYP, You're welcome.

I guess it's a good thing planned Parenthood aborts a higher percentage of black babies. If not, we would run out of room for 'em in the upper Midwest and they would start migrating in ever greater numbers up into Canada.

It would SUCK if every Canadian girl could get one of her very own, because then you wouldn't get to be such a special little snowflake for finding one and becoming an internationally recognized authority on all things black.

racial aggregation is awesome...the vast majority of women who get abortions are white.. but since there's a larger percentage of black women that get abortions...PLANNED PARENTHOOD IS KILLING BLACK BABIES....jesus fuck, that's dumb

it's almost as if there is no link to lack of access to abortion, natal care, sex education and services in black dominated neighborhoods.. which has shown leads to increased rates of abortion

it would suck if every Canadian girl could get one... because.. oh wait,, every Canadain girl can get one.. abortion is legal here, we have some of the loosest abortion laws on the planet as well... we also have universal healthcare, an emphasis on birth control in sexual education, and free and easy access to natal care......................and yet magically.. our abortion rates are lower per capita then the US and have been steadily dropping for 15 years

in other words.. shut the fuck up

post script... I'm not even pretending to be the expert on being black.. your buddies brought it up, you brought it up

 

[badbabysitter]

Seems to me that BBS is the derpidity derp champion of Lit, having posted a wall of text but presenting no credible refutation of my post.

dude I literally refuted everything... you claimed she was trying to impose eugenic conditions on black neighbor hoods.. refuted

you said she wanted to exterminate the black community.. not only refuted but demonstrably shown for the lie it was AGAIN


you wanted to show her support for eugenics.. and I showed you she dismissed her beliefs when the Nazi's came to pwer and showed it's inherent evil...you ignored it, but doesnt mean it wasnt refuted

do you only read what your masters tell you?

 

[Que]

racial aggregation is awesome...the vast majority of women who get abortions are white.. but since there's a larger percentage of black women that get abortions...PLANNED PARENTHOOD IS KILLING BLACK BABIES....jesus fuck, that's dumb

it's almost as if there is no link to lack of access to abortion, natal care, sex education and services in black dominated neighborhoods.. which has shown leads to increased rates of abortion

it would suck if every Canadian girl could get one... because.. oh wait,, every Canadain girl can get one.. abortion is legal here, we have some of the loosest abortion laws on the planet as well... we also have universal healthcare, an emphasis on birth control in sexual education, and free and easy access to natal care......................and yet magically.. our abortion rates are lower per capita then the US and have been steadily dropping for 15 years

in other words.. shut the fuck up

post script... I'm not even pretending to be the expert on being black.. your buddies brought it up, you brought it up

Math wasn't your favorite, was it? Numerals? Fractions? Percentages? Ratios? One-to-one correspondences? Probability and Statistics?

1/4 of a pie is better than 1/3 cause 4>3? Is that right?

How ELSE would one measure the relative impact of anything on a community except by percentages?

Comparing quantitative numbers in the general population versus the quantitative number in a subset of that population is meaningless.

If you killed 100% of all fetuses conceived by conjoined twins it would be a small number indeed.

Then you go on to quote a "Per Capita" statistic, apparently not realizing that that is an analog to expressing it by percentage, and the statistic you cite is in a far more homogenous (white) population and is without the targeted quotas and profit motive of Planned Parenthood.

Your sense of logic is profoundly absent.

 

[badbabysitter]

She's the female Spidey. "No YOU prove it!"

With a far less articulate helping of UD, "Words don't mean what they say...here let me randomly highlight some words in hopes of changing the meaning."

Even given in context, context means nothing to her.

As I said elsewhere if she were to hold the position that, "Yes, but her organization founded in ignominy has had such positive results."

Nope. Sanger's a saint. You know- solving woman's health issues like malignant pregnancy.

he deliberately and intentionally took out of context a single sentence in a paragraph to state Sangers beliefs.. which were then dispelled by everything else she said in the same paragraph

that's not in context.. it's called a flat out lie

you want to attack people for their early beliefs, which is fine and valid.. Sanger was far from a saint in that regard... but neither was Winston Churchill.. where is your outrage about him keeping a personal correspondence with Benito Mussolini.. or his desire to use eugenics to rid the UK of undesirables

but what you and your ilk have done since is make shit up about her to support your politics, just like vette did

 

[KoalaDerp]

1/4 of a pie is better than 1/3 cause 4>3.

Math derp!

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V6rF0yRm8E4/T47zu5I-2-I/AAAAAAAABZA/E1AZQNSbklg/s1600/Meme+Derp+(7).jpg

 

[KoalaDerp]

Seems to me that BBS is the derpidity derp champion of Lit, having posted a wall of text but presenting no credible refutation of my post.

You're the derp champion in my book.

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/5119671040/hBD1C08F6/

 

[badbabysitter]

Math wasn't your favorite, was it? Numerals? Fractions? Percentages? Ratios? One-to-one correspondences? Probability and Statistics?

1/4 of a pie is better than 1/3 cause 4>3.

How ELSE would one measure the relative impact of anything on a community except by percentages?

Comparing quantitative numbers in the general population versus the quantitative number in a subset of that population is meaningless.

If you killed 100% of all fetuses conceived by conjoined twins it would be a small number indeed.

Then you go on to quote a "Per Capita" statistic, apparently not realizing that that is an analog to expressing it by percentage, and the statistic you cite is in a far more homogenous (white) population without the targeted quotas of Planned parenthood.

Your sense of logic is profoundly absent.

group a has 100 people... 50 of them get an apple

group b has 1000 people...300 of them get an apple

according to agreggation... 50 people are more people then 300 people

that's your logic

you wanted to quote stats, I did the same.. but as far as you are concerned..only your stats matter

classy

 

[Que]

Hi, RobDownSouth AKA KoalaDerp!!!! ^^^^ ~Waves~

Those Israelis up to mischief this morning? I haven't browsed the news yet.

I still don't know why you drag out your Koalderp alt to go on your "kill all the jooz" screeds. Everyone knows you hate Jews, why not combine the relatively polite, carefully reasoned hate for Israel with your genocidal screeds under one ID?

 

[badbabysitter]

So is this:

Social Avtivism

In 1911, after a fire destroyed their home in Hastings-on-Hudson, the Sangers abandoned the suburbs for a new life in New York City. Margaret Sanger worked as a visiting nurse in the slums of the East Side, while her husband worked as an architect and a painter. Already imbued with William Sanger's leftist politics, Margaret Sanger also threw herself into the radical politics and modernist values of pre-World War I Greenwich Village bohemia, where she joined the Women's Committee of the New York Socialist party. She took part in the labor actions of the Industrial Workers of the World, including the notable 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike and the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike and she became involved with local intellectuals, artists, socialists, and social activists including John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Mabel Dodge, andEmma Goldman.[8]

your point being?

all socialists kill babies and are racists?

 

[Que]

group a has 100 people... 50 of them get an apple

group b has 1000 people...300 of them get an apple

according to agreggation... 50 people are more people then 300 people

that's your logic

you wanted to quote stats, I did the same.. but as far as you are concerned..only your stats matter

classy

No...that is YOUR lack of logic (again)

The "apples" are poison.

In group A 50% of the group die.

In group B 30% of the group die.

So you want to be in group A because there are 250 less people dying than in group B.

Really?

 

[badbabysitter]

No...that is YOUR lack of logic (again)

The "apples" are poison.

In group A 50% of the group die.

In group B 30% of the group die.

So you want to be in group A because there are 250 less people dying than in group B.

Really?

and what exactly are the people.. zygotes the size of a poppy seed that develop two weeks after conception?

in order for there to be more black women killing their " babies".. there would have to be more black women then any other group doing so

and they'd also have to be babies

which they arent

 

[Sean Renaud]

A disproportionate number of blacks get abortions. What exactly is the controversy here?

 

[badbabysitter]

A disproportionate number of blacks get abortions. What exactly is the controversy here?

that Planned parenthood apparently has a plan to euthanize the black community.. despite it not being grounded in reality

 

[Sean Renaud]

Lets say hypothetically that it did. If people take themselves out I'm still lost as to where the problem is. I mean it's not grounded in reality but even if that answer truth I'm still lost.

 

[Que]

and what exactly are the people.. zygotes the size of a poppy seed that develop two weeks after conception?

in order for there to be more black women killing their " babies".. there would have to be more black women then any other group doing so

and they'd also have to be babies

which they arent

I thought we were discussing you concept of aggregation...