Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger gained worldwide renown, respect, and
admiration for founding the American birth control movement
and, later, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, as well as
for developing and encouraging family planning efforts throughout the
international community.
Among her many visionary accomplishments as a social reformer, Sanger
established the principles that a woman's right to control her body is
the foundation of her human rights; that every person should be able to
decide when or whether to have a child; that every child should be
wanted and loved; and that women are entitled to sexual pleasure and
fulfillment just as men are
brought about the reversal of federal and state "Comstock laws" that
prohibited publication and distribution of information about sex,
sexuality, contraception, and human reproduction
helped establish the contemporary American model for the protection of
civil rights through nonviolent civil disobedience — a model that later
propelled the civil rights, anti-war, women's rights, and AIDS-action
movements
created access to birth control for low-income, minority, and immigrant
women
expanded the American concept of volunteerism and grassroots
organizing by setting up a network of volunteer-driven family planning
centers across the U.S.
Sanger also entertained some popular ideas of her own time that are out of
keeping with our thinking today. Finding it easier to undermine her character
than to confront the message she conveyed, the anti-family planning
movement has seized upon some of these ideas, taken them out of context,
and exaggerated and distorted them in order to discredit Sanger and the
organization she founded.
Not content with exaggeration and distortion, anti-choice activists have also
fabricated and attributed to Sanger points of view that she, in fact, found
abhorrent. This fact sheet is designed to separate fact from fiction and to
further explain Sanger's views and the background against which they must be
judged.
Sanger and Eugenics
Eugenics is the science of improving hereditary qualities by socially controlling
human reproduction. Unable to foment popular opposition to Margaret Sanger's
accomplishments and the organization she founded, Sanger's critics attempt
to discredit them by intentionally confusing her views on "fitness" with
eugenics, racism, and anti-Semitism. Margaret Sanger was not a racist, an
anti-Semite, or a eugenicist. Eugenicists, like the Nazis, were opposed to the
use of abortion and contraception by healthy and "fit" women (Grossmann,
1995). In fact, Sanger's books were among the very first burned by the Nazis in
their campaign against family planning ("Sanger on Exhibit," 1999/2000).
Sanger actually helped several Jewish women and men and others escape the
Nazi regime in Germany ("Margaret Sanger and the 'Refugee Department',"
1993). Sanger's disagreement with the eugenicists of her day is clear from her
remarks in The Birth Control Review of February 1919:
Eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we
contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state. We
maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her
reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions
under which her child should be brought into the world. We further
maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to
determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many
children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother (1919a).
Margaret Sanger clearly identified with the issues of health and fitness that
concerned the early 20th-century eugenics movement, which was enormously
popular and well-respected during the 1920s and '30s, when treatments for
many hereditary and disabling conditions were unknown. However, Sanger
always believed that reproductive decisions should be made on an individual
and not a social or cultural basis, and she consistently repudiated any racial
application of eugenics principles. For example, Sanger vocally opposed the
racial stereotyping that effected passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, on
the grounds that intelligence and other inherited traits vary by individual and
not by group.
In 1927, the eugenics movement reached the height of its popularity when the
U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell, held that it was constitutional to
involuntarily sterilize the developmentally disabled, the insane, or the
uncontrollably epileptic. Oliver Wendell Holmes, supported by Louis Brandeis
and six other justices, wrote the opinion.
Although Sanger uniformly repudiated the racist exploitation of eugenics
principles, she agreed with the "progressives" of her day who favored
incentives for the voluntary hospitalization and/or sterilization of people
with untreatable, disabling, hereditary conditions
the adoption and enforcement of stringent regulations to prevent the
immigration of the diseased and "feebleminded" into the U.S.
placing so-called illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals,
prostitutes, and dope-fiends on farms and open spaces as long as
necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct
Planned Parenthood Federation of America finds these views objectionable
and outmoded. Nevertheless, anti-family planning activists continue to attack
Sanger, who has been dead for over 30 years, because she is an easier target
than the unassailable reputation of PPFA and the contemporary family
planning movement. However, attempts to discredit the family planning
movement because its early 20th-century founder was not a perfect model of
early 21st-century values is like disavowing the Declaration of Independence
because its author, Thomas Jefferson, bought and sold slaves.
Sanger's Outreach to the African-American
Community
In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning clinic in Harlem that sought to enlist
support for contraceptive use and to bring the benefits of family planning to
women who were denied access to their city's health and social services.
Staffed by a black physician and black social worker, the clinic was endorsed
by The Amsterdam News (the powerful local newspaper), the Abyssinian
Baptist Church, the Urban League, and the black community's elder
statesman, W.E.B. DuBois.
Beginning in 1939, DuBois also served on the advisory council for Sanger's
"Negro Project," which was a "unique experiment in race-building and
humanitarian service to a race subjected to discrimination, hardship, and
segregation" (Chesler, 1992). The Negro Project served African-Americans in
the rural South. Other leaders of the African-American community who were
involved in the project included Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National
Council of Negro Women, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., pastor of the
Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. The Negro Project was also endorsed
by prominent white Americans who were involved in social justice efforts at this
time, including Eleanor Roosevelt, the most visible and compassionate
supporter of racial equality in her era; and the medical philanthropists, Albert
and Mary Lasker, whose financial support made the project possible.
A passionate opponent of racism, Sanger predicted in 1942 that the "Negro
question" would be foremost on the country's domestic agenda after World
War II. Her accomplishments on behalf of the African-American community
were unchallengeable during her lifetime and remain so today. In 1966, the
year Sanger died, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:
There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret
Sanger's early efforts. . . . 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.
Charges of racism against Sanger are most often made by anti-choice
activists who are unfamiliar with the history of the African-American community
or with Margaret Sanger's collegial relationship with that community's leaders.
The tangled fabric of lies and manipulation woven by anti-choice activists
around the issues of class, race, and family planning continues to be
embroidered today, more than three-quarters of a century after the family
planning movement began.
Published Statements That
Distort or Misquote Margaret Sanger
Through the years, a number of alleged Sanger quotations, or allegations
about her, have surfaced with regularity in anti-family planning publications.
The following are samples of especially pernicious distortions, misattributions,
or outright lies that Margaret Sanger's enemies continue to circulate.
"More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief issue
in birth control."
A quotation falsely attributed to Margaret Sanger, this statement was made by
the editors of American Medicine in a review of an article by Sanger. The
editorial from which this appeared, as well as Sanger's article, "Why Not Birth
Control Clinics in America?" (1919b), were reprinted side-by-side in the May
1919 Birth Control Review.
"The mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously,
so that the increase among Negroes, even more than the increase
among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent
and fit, and least able to rear their children properly."
Another quotation falsely attributed to Margaret Sanger, this was actually
written for the June 1932 issue of The Birth Control Review by W.E.B. DuBois,
founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP). Taken out of the context of his discussion about the effects of birth
control on the balance between quality-of-life considerations and race-survival
issues for African-Americans, Dubois' language seems insensitive by today's
standards.
"Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a menace to the race."
This fabricated quotation, falsely attributed to Sanger, was concocted in the
late 1980s. The alleged source is the April 1933 Birth Control Review (Sanger
ceased editing the Review in 1929). That issue contains no article or letter by
Sanger.
"To create a race of thoroughbreds . . ."
This remark, again attributed originally to Sanger, was made by Dr. Edward A.
Kempf and has been cited out of context and with distorted meaning. Dr.
Kempf, a progressive physician, was actually arguing for state endowment of
maternal and infant care clinics. In her book The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger
quoted Dr. Kempf's argument about how environment may improve human
excellence:
"Society must make life worth the living and the refining for the individual by
conditioning him to love and to seek the love-object in a manner that reflects a
constructive effect upon his fellow-men and by giving him suitable
opportunities. The virility of the automatic apparatus is destroyed by excessive
gormandizing or hunger, by excessive wealth or poverty, by excessive work or
idleness, by sexual abuse or intolerant prudishness. The noblest and most
difficult art of all is the raising of human thoroughbreds (1969)."
It was in this spirit that Sanger used the phrase, "Birth Control: To Create a
Race of Thoroughbreds," as a banner on the November 1921 issue of the Birth
Control Review. (Differing slogans on the theme of voluntary family planning
sometimes appeared under the title of The Review, e.g., "Dedicated to the
Cause of Voluntary Motherhood," January 1928.)
"The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant
members is to kill it."
This statement is taken out of context from Margaret Sanger's Woman and the
New Race (1920). Sanger was making an ironic comment — not a prescriptive
one — about the horrifying rate of infant mortality among large families of early
20th-century urban America. The statement, as grim as the conditions that
prompted Sanger to make it, accompanied this chart, illustrating the infant
death rate in 1920:
Deaths During First Year
1st born children 23%
2nd born children 20%
3rd born children 21%
4th born children 23%
5th born children 26%
6th born children 29%
7th born children 31%
8th born children 33%
9th born children 35%
10th born children 41%
11th born children 51%
12th born children 60%
"We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the
Negro population."
Sanger was aware of African-American concerns, passionately argued by
Marcus Garvey in the 1920s, that birth control was a threat to the survival of
the black race. This statement, which acknowledges those fears, is taken from
a letter to Clarence J. Gamble, M.D., a champion of the birth control
movement. In that letter, Sanger describes her strategy to allay such
apprehensions. A larger portion of the letter makes Sanger's meaning clear:
"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. . . . His work, in my opinion, should be entirely with the Negro
profession and the nurses, hospital, social workers, as well as the County's
white doctors. His success will depend upon his personality and his training by
us. The minister's work is also important, and 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 (1939)."
"As early as 1914 Margaret Sanger was promoting abortion, not for
white middle-class women, but against 'inferior races' — black people,
poor people, Slavs, Latins, and Hebrews were 'human weeds.'"
This allegation about Margaret Sanger appears in an anonymous flyer, "Facts
About Planned Parenthood," that is circulated by anti-family planning activists.
Margaret Sanger, who passionately believed in a woman's right to control her
body, never "promoted" abortion because it was illegal and dangerous
throughout her lifetime. She urged women to use contraceptives so that they
would not be at risk for the dangers of illegal, back-alley abortion. Sanger never
described any ethnic community as an 'inferior race' or as 'human weeds.' In
her lifetime, Sanger won the respect of international figures of all races,
including the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Mahatma Gandhi; Shidzue Kato, the
foremost family planning advocate in Japan; and Lady Dhanvanthi Rama Rau of
India — all of whom were sensitive to issues of race.
The Rising Tide of Color
Against White World Supremacy
This is the title of a book falsely attributed to Sanger. It was written by Lothrop
Stoddard and reviewed by Havelock Ellis in the October 1920 issue of The
Birth Control Review. Its general topic, the international politics of race
relations in the first decades of the century, is one in which Sanger was not
involved. Her interest, insofar as she allowed a review of Stoddard's book to be
published in The Birth Control Review, was in the overall health and quality of
life of all races and not in tensions between them. Ellis's review was critical of
the Stoddard book and of distinctions based on race or ethnicity alone.
For Further Reading
Chesler, Ellen. (1992). Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control
Movement in America. New York: Simon & Schuster.
The Margaret Sanger Papers Project
nyu.edu
Valenza, Charles. (1985) "Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?" Family Planning
Perspectives, 17(1) (January/February), 44-46.
References
Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927).
Chesler, Ellen. (1992). Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control
Movement in America. New York: Simon & Schuster.
DuBois, W.E.B. (1932). "Black Folk and Birth Control." The Birth Control
Review, 16(6), p. 166. Reprint: The Birth Control Review Vol. VIII, Vols. 16-17,
1932-July 1933. (1970). New York: Da Capo Press.
Ellis, Havelock. (1920). "The World's Racial Problem." The Birth Control
Review, 4(10), 14-16. Reprint: The Birth Control Review Vol II, Vols. 4-5,
1920-1921. (1970). New York: Da Capo Press.
Grossmann, Atina. (1995). Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth
Control & Abortion Reform 1920-1950. New York: Oxford University Press.
"Intelligent or Unintelligent Birth Control?: An Editorial from American
Medicine." (10.919). The Birth Control Review, 3(5), 12-13. Reprint: The Birth
Control Review Vol. I, Vols. 1-3, 1917-1919. (1970). New York: Da Capo
Press.
King, Martin Luther Jr. (1966, May 5). "Family Planning — A Special and
Urgent Concern." Acceptance speech upon receiving the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America Margaret Sanger Award.
"Margaret Sanger and the 'Refugee Department'." (1993). Margaret Sanger
Papers Project Newsletter, 5 (Spring), 1-2.
"Sanger on Exhibit." (1999/2000). Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter,
23 (Winter), p. 5.
Sanger, Margaret. (1919a). "Birth Control and Racial Betterment." The Birth
Control Review, 3(2), 11-12. Reprint: The Birth Control Review Vol. I, Vols. 1-3,
1917-1919. (1970). New York: Da Capo Press.
___(1919b). "Why Not Birth Control Clinics in America?" The Birth Control
Review, 3(5), 10-11. Reprint: The Birth Control Review Vol. I, Vols. 1-3,
1917-1919. (1970). New York: Da Capo Press.
___(1920). Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentano's, 62-63.
___(1939, Dec. 10). Personal communication to Clarence J. Gamble, M.D.
___(1942, July 9). Personal communication to A.D. Lasker.
___(1969). The Pivot of Civilization. Elmsford, NY: Maxwell Reprint Company,
144-145.
Current as of October 2000. |
