Abortion giant Planned Parenthood has said it will distance itself from its founder, Margaret Sanger, after acknowledging her eugenicist and racist actions.
Writing in The New York Times, the abortion giant’s president and CEO, Alexis McGill Johnson, said the organisation “must reckon” with Sanger’s activities.
The move has been dismissed as an empty gesture by pro-lifers.
Margaret Sanger
Sanger was a leading advocate of the eugenics movement and promoted sterilisation of people she deemed to have undesirable traits or economic circumstances.
Johnson admitted that Sanger had called upon the Ku Klux Klan for support, as well as giving her backing to the first human trials of the birth control pill in Puerto Rico – which did not inform the women of the potential dangerous side effects.
She added that the founder “harmed generations with her beliefs” and that the abortion giant had removed the eugenicist’s name from its buildings and awards.
‘Irrelevant’
However, Christian pro-life campaigner Benjamin Watson said Johnson’s comments were irrelevant, given the organisation’s ongoing practices.
Writing on Facebook, he said: “Whether they personally identify with Sanger’s ideology or not, they continue to carry out her mission”.
He added: “The same Sanger they claim to disavow would applaud their efforts and results, as a disproportionate percentage of Black American children have been killed in Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinics.”
Figures released last year by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention show that the babies of black women are significantly more likely to be aborted than those of white women.
‘Racist legacy’
Alexandra DeSanctis, writing in the National Review, also argued that the abortion industry was “perpetuating Margaret Sanger’s racist legacy”.
Last year, MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International) distanced itself from its founder, claiming it no longer has any “meaningful connection” to Stopes’ views.
Stopes, a Nazi sympathiser, lobbied Parliament extensively for enforced sterilisation of those with diseases or mental health issues, ‘half-caste’ individuals, those of ‘bad character’ or ‘prone to drunkenness’ and the ‘ugly and unfit’.
Marie Stopes International changes name in break from eugenicist founder
The Long Read: Abortion’s link to eugenics – US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas