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| Margaret Sanger |
Wait - I'll take that back. A lie is a conscious untruth, with intent to deceive. Certainly liars are involved with the mishmash of falsehood, half-truths, and logical fallacies relating to Ms. Sanger, but many honest people are now passing this misinformation along, sometimes embellishing it in the process. I believed some of it myself, though I wondered how a woman respected by so many in my mother's generation could be reviled by so many today.
So when I saw a copy of her Autobiography (1938) on a library bookshelf, I checked it out, found it fascinating, and reviewed it on my book blog, The Neff Review.
After I posted the review, a friend reminded me of a Sanger quotation that often shows up on anti-Sanger websites: "The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." My friend told me that the sentence is from Sanger's Woman and the New Race (1920), so I immediately looked it up. Indeed it is there - at location 466 if you're reading it on Kindle - exactly as she quoted it. Margaret, I said to myself, what were you thinking?
To find out, I read the whole chapter in which the sentence appears (V: "The Wickedness of Creating Large Families"), and what Sanger was thinking became clear. Excessively large families, she argues, are the root cause of all kinds of evils: prostitution, low wages, child labor, war, the oppression of women, ill health, mental dejection, spiritual hopelessness, malnutrition, inadequate medical attention, crime, feeble-mindedness, insanity, child abuse, unchastity, and - especially - infant and child mortality. She quotes research showing that the likelihood of death before the first birthday rises with each additional child, reaching 60% by child number twelve - and, as she points out, many of the children who survive to age one will not make it to age five. Sanger is by no means advocating infanticide: she is using hyperbole to underline the unimaginably squalid conditions of the large working-class families she encountered in her daily work as a visiting nurse in New York tenements. "Let the day perish wherein I was born," wailed the suffering Job. "Why died I not from the womb?" The families Sanger served were equally miserable.
How can I know she is not advocating infanticide? Her second chapter is a history of infanticide - an extremely common practice from ancient times right up to the present day, though tending in modern times to be replaced by abortion. Frequently lumping abortion, infanticide, and child abandonment together, she calls them "abhorrent practices." "It is apparent," she writes, "that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide" [loc. 202]
Hold the phone - the horrors of abortion? Wasn't Sanger the founder of Planned Parenthood? Didn't she promote abortion?
Not in her autobiography, at least, written when she was in her late 50s (see page 217, for example, where she says that abortion, no matter how early in the pregnancy, is the wrong way to limit family size, because it is the taking of human life), and certainly not in Woman and the New Race. Quoting estimates that between one and two million abortions are performed each year in the United States - in 1920, when the population was only a third of what it is today! - she writes:
Apparently, the numbers of these illegal operations are increasing from year to year. From year to year more women will undergo the humiliation, the danger and the horror of them, and the terrible record, begun with the infanticide of the primitive peoples, will go on piling up its volume of human misery and racial damage, until society awakens to the fact that a fundamental remedy must be applied. [Loc. 218]Sanger calls abortion "an abhorrent operation which kills the tenderness and delicacy of womanhood, even as it may injure or kill the body" [loc. 575]. "While there are cases where even the law recognizes abortion as justifiable when recommended by a physician," she writes, "I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization" [loc. 945].
Sanger was a Utopian visionary. In her view, widely available contraceptives would usher in a new age of health, happiness, and justice for all. War - the inevitable result of overpopulation and the concomitant search for new territory - would lose its raison d'être. Abortion would disappear:
When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race. There will be no killing of babies in the womb by abortion, nor through neglect in foundling homes, nor will there be infanticide. Neither will children die by inches in mills and factories. No man will dare to break a child's life upon the wheel of toil. [Loc. 1695](Note to the suspicious: when Sanger writes of "racial damage" and "a new race," she is referring to the whole human race. If she ever favors one subset of the human race over another, it appears neither in this book nor in her autobiography, though by lifting certain sentences out of context and applying the usual 21st-century usage of the word race, some writers have portrayed her as a racist.)
OK, Sanger was mistaken. If her figures are correct, over the last century the number of abortions in the U.S. has remained constant (though, since the population has tripled, that represents a major per capita decrease). Despite the availability of contraception, says the Guttmacher Institute's most recent fact sheet, "nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion." If you want to argue that contraception does not prevent abortion, Planned Parenthood will provide the statistics to back you up.
But being mistaken is not a crime. It's not even a moral failing, if a person is using the best information she has - and if she is careful to consider the information's source, literary context, historical context, and use of logic. It's mistaken, though, to accuse Margaret Sanger of promoting infanticide and abortion when she worked tirelessly to make both of those desperate measures unnecessary. And it's morally wrong to pass on such accusations without thoroughly investigating them, as a means of discrediting political opponents.
And anyway, why would pro-lifers want to base a campaign against abortion on misinformation? Why not just sweetly point out that Planned Parenthood's founder called abortion a horror and devoted her life to making it unnecessary?
Thank you for publishing this -- being suspicious about the motives of some anti-abortionists, I also did some research and made similar conclusions.
ReplyDeleteNice article. As a pro-lifer myself, I found it very interesting and enlightening. Thank you for your research.
ReplyDeleteIf this is true, then I am puzzled as to why the current and historical planned parethood has been so adamant about not allowing young women to know all their alternatives, but rather convince them abortion is the right thing to do. Must not the fruit of the organization stem from the root...?
ReplyDeleteNot necessarily, because times change. When abortion was made illegal at the turn of the last century, it had nothing to do with "morality"; rather, many women were being left financially destitute by men looking only to "score." Today, however, women have become more openly sexual, which to some men is threatening.
ReplyDeleteI don't frequent the sites that made these charges against Sanger, so had never heard them. I have read that Sanger endorsed the eugenics movement of her era, which isn't surprising, or condemning. In the predominant farm culture of the early 20th Century this "good breeding" thinking made sense to many decent people, who would not have foreseen it leading to a Hitler. I have also read that the eugenics programs at university level persisted well into the 1960, with the last one closing late in that decade, which does show the persistence of "racial purity" thinking even well after Hitler among intellectuals. I'd be interested to know if anyone reading this discussion can verify or correct Sanger's involvement with the eugenics movement/thinking.
ReplyDeleteI do know that she opposed promoting eugenics as government policy.
ReplyDeleteIn her article "A Plan for Peace" she states, "To give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.
ReplyDeleteg. to apportion farm lands and homesteads for these segregated persons where they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives."
Furthermore her use of the word "feebleminded" is exceedingly broad and could apply to almost anyone. She did have a "Negro Project" and she did speak in front of the KKK.
Lavonne
ReplyDeleteFascinating article. Thanks for this.
Yes, llmarmalade, there was a Negro Project. You can read about it here: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/secure/newsletter/articles/bc_or_race_control.html . And yes, she spoke to the wives of KKK members - and found it a strange and upsetting experience (it's in her autobiography). And yes, she advocated sterilization or segregation for certain groups (not racially based), as did quite a lot of thinkers in her day. Her primary focus, however, was on improving the lives of the poor through teaching them how to limit the number of their children.
ReplyDeleteSo, because she explained why killing a baby was a good thing makes it ok? Really? My mom and father were both from families 12+. NONE of those children turned to any of the things Sanger listed. All people should have a choice and the last time I checked babies are human. You are blinded by your own hypocrisy.... Sad!
ReplyDeleteI really wish, Anonymous, that you had read my article carefully before commenting on it. Sanger was in favor of birth control but opposed to abortion. Her comment about killing babies was a figure of speech, not a recommendation, as the context makes clear.
ReplyDeleteYou've turned the language inside out in an attempt to cleanse Sanger of her sins.
ReplyDeleteAnd, you've failed.
Yes, she was a bitter proponent of infanticide and abortion. And her animosity was particularly directed against blacks.
I'm not trying to absolve anybody of their sins - I'm trying only to get at the truth about Sanger, which seems to be largely absent on the "shouting" types of websites. Her views on eugenics were, I believe, entirely wrong, though extremely common in her day. And I have seen no evidence to contradict what I said in this post, that she was opposed to infanticide and abortion.
ReplyDeleteShouting Thomas -- Prove that. I did some research on Sanger before LaVonne wrote this blog entry, and my findings correspond with hers.
ReplyDeleteStill quite a callous quote in my opinion. I know many people from me, my parents and grandparents generation who attributed their success in life to the large family they grew up in.
ReplyDeleteIt's not likely that you lived in New York City, and certainly not during the turn of the last century, when and where Sanger did her work. In her context too many children resulted in early death and more illness, so she wanted women to be able to control their fertility.
ReplyDelete"The ministers 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 to any of their more rebellious members."
ReplyDeleteCommenting on the 'Negro Project' in a letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, December 10, 1939. - Sanger manuscripts, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
Explain this away, please - I've LOVE to hear your apology.
I would have to see the context -- we already know that many of her more "inflammatory" statements were indeed distorted. On top of that, MLK Jr. received an award from PP in 1966 -- hardly someone who believed in racial "extermination."
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, I'm well aware of that paragraph. For a balanced discussion of it, see http://www.factcheck.org/2011/11/cains-false-attack-on-planned-parenthood/.
ReplyDeleteWell, LaVonne, I read your post and thought you made some good points. Then, I read the chapter from Sanger's book where the quote came from and was appalled. She talks of women as if she is talking of cattle. She was not just talking about women in the inner city of New York City, she even speaks derogatorily of wealthy women who had many children. I am not convinced that she oppossed abortion based on this chapter of her book. http://www.bartleby.com/1013/5.html
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't suggest that she didn't. Remember that abortion was illegal then anyway but went on anyway despite the law.
ReplyDeletePerhaps before defending her and her stance as a sign of the times that she lived in, you should remember that even today racist, bigoted people exist, but that would not excuse me taking up their banner. Margaret Sanger was a woman full of anger and hate, not love. Her goal in limiting the the number of births by African-Americans and the Irish had nothing to do with a love for the women of these groups, but everything to do with her hate. Furthermore you may interpret her writings however you wish, but the woman herself was quite clear on her racial hatred. Just google the video from her 60 Minutes appearance. It is very difficult to rewrite what is coming from her own lips, or to talk about context. If she and her counterparts had won I nor my husband would exist, both from large families, both considered mixed race. My husband commits the double sin her opinion of being Irish and Native American. A vile creature and her mark on this country in the millions of aborted babies.
ReplyDeleteI followed your suggestion and found this 60 Minutes interview: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/sanger_margaret_t.html. In it Mrs. Sanger doesn't say anything at all about race, unless you count the place where she notes that her mother was Irish. Did you have a different interview in mind? Can you provide a link to it, or to a transcript of it?
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I am left wondering if she did more than one interview and where to find the video that I watched of her. I assure you it was available and not just as a transcript. Also what was discussed wasn't what is in this transcript. I don't have a link for it at this time, but the focus was her racial opinions on eugenics, not the Catholic church. But when I also put this in a search engine it did not come up??? Might require more searching, which I'm not getting paid for right now.
ReplyDeleteI will say this though: I agree with you, Margaret Sanger would be appalled to find that the new focus of her organization is abortion. That was never her intent in the founding of this organization. And I experienced the modern PP back in the 80's. My husband had just started working for a new company and our health insurance hadn't started, I visited them for a pregnancy test and ended up locked in a room for fifteen minutes , being told how the best thing I could do for my child was get an abortion. The test came back and I wasn't even pregnant.
In response to Anonymous's quote: " "The ministers 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 to any of their more rebellious members.""
ReplyDeleteThe quote is "we DO NOT want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population" (emphasis mine). I have no idea of the context of this, but out of context, it seems that Sanger is not in favor of any sort of race extermination--but against that notion.
She was highly controversial, obviously. But I see no hatred in her writings.
One cause of great frustration to me, is the literary habit of dissolving the potency of a persons words and actions by writing a long winded explanation on how the norms of persons society affected their outlook, somehow this dilutes the wrongness of their words (You just need to understand her position see?). Her conclusion "The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it" is not misunderstood, she blamed ALL of the large families for bringing evil into the world, not just poor ones. Margaret generalized a lot in her work, and was very wrong on many levels in her diagnosis of society; not least her "scientific proof". I do not excuse the racist who grew up in a racist home for his actions or writing, simply because it was his environment that formed his outlook. I am fascinated by Hitler, and what forces external and internal drove him to make the decisions that he did, but I would not be any less outraged at his actions if I found out that horrors were pushed on him as a child; he you see, still made the choice to do what he did. Understanding a person is fine, but when that "understanding" results in just a bombardment of other peoples literary analysis and opinions, it becomes just a muddle in which the author is allowed to escape the sharp scrutiny of logic. I have taken an interest in this, and in her work. I am indeed outraged by her words, and it is perfectly understandable and justified that people be outraged that an organization such as planned parenthood originated from the ideology of woman such as herself. Thank you for the blog post, it stimulated me to research this.
ReplyDeleteSamuel -- Had you lived back then you might have said or done the same thing; it's easy to dissect such comments from the safe distance of history without considering the immediate context.
ReplyDeleteSamuel -- Sanger was in fact being sarcastic when she wrote that clause. It's easy from the safe distance of history to dismiss her words without understanding the context in which she lived.
ReplyDeleteMost of Margaret's more controversial writings have been kept under wraps by the Margaret Sanger Papers Project. One can pick and choose quotes from her enormous body of writing and make her appear as hero or villain depending on one's personal viewpoint. I suggest you read her most important book, The Pivot of Civilization, 1922. She called blacks and poor people many insulting names throughout. In her later work, she honed her message, becoming increasingly sophisticated in her efforts to push birth control on the poor.
ReplyDeleteMore footage of her was published by the BBC recently and is available on Youtube. She spoke to a reporter in 1947 under the name of her second husband, Noah Slee.
The BBC footage can be viewed here:
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/ChCjgYGTL4Y
Nice article. Small minds pass on untruths and misleading info in order to gain political power. Right now it is the Republican puppets who are knocking this great lady in their desperate attempt to belittle Hillary, since they have no one who comes close to her in experience or works' The Democrats do the same thing when they are not in power. Why? Because small minds find it easier to believe misinformation and outright lies, then to actually do a little research before passing on the hype. Good job.
ReplyDeleteI’m a doer. A man who raised 3 daughters. One I adopted. Does really matter what he or she said a 100 yrs ago? Do not Kill was written thousands of years ago. All this death is mostly out of convenience. My goodness we are sliding down a shameful path....when mothers are encouraged to litter the earth with their slain children while educated people call this practical… their children’s blood cries out from the earth. When will it stop? Can anyone hear their cries? We need more Prescriptions!!! to water down the shame and to mask the crying. There no longer a need to grieve. We’ve matured that far. How do we continue this selfishness----is it the love of money the clothes, cars, homes and PRIDE? but It always boils back…in the end. Truth is never lost or outdated and the choices every single man and woman make belong to them; we are all weighed as individuals. Everyone chooses what they will believe and whom they will follow. What is hidden will be exposed and for those who are LEADING the innocent to slaughter their own…it's would be better had THEY not been born. No need for shouting.
ReplyDeleteWhat does that have to do with the topic?
ReplyDeleteSince we are going to the source how might we interpret this quote from Sanger's book, The Pivot of Civilization (p. 112):
ReplyDeleteWhen we learn further that the total number of inmates in public and private institutions in the State of New York -- in alms-houses, reformatories, schools for the blind, deaf and mute, in insane asylums, in homes for the feeble-minded and epileptic ... our eyes should be opened to the terrific cost to the community of this dead weight of human waste.
So, outrageous viewpoints can be explained away contextually. Might this apply to Adolph Hitler as well?
Sanger was definitely a eugenicist. So was Hitler (Adolf, not Adolph, by the way). So were Harry Emerson Fosdick, Helen Keller, J.H. Kellogg, W.E.B. Du Bois, and a host of early 20th-century Christians. They were all wrong.
ReplyDeleteSome eugenicists advocated infanticide (actually, Helen Keller supported one such case) and abortion. They were even more wrong than Sanger, who opposed both practices. She did, however, advocate involuntary sterilization of the feeble-minded, as did a large percentage of people in her day.
Post-Hitler, people saw where eugenics could lead. Thank God it is no longer considered ethical. This has nothing to do with the topic of my blog post, however. Sanger was a eugenicist. I have not found evidence, however, that she favored abortion. To the contrary, she promoted contraception because she considered abortion to be wrong.
I'm not trying to make her into a saint or a demon. I'd just like it if people would read what she actually said, in both its literary and its historical context, and not distort her beliefs in order to support their own ideologies.
Adolph is an accepted Indo-European spelling derived from the Latin Adolphus. But I appreciate your correction.
ReplyDeleteOf course it is. It's just not the way he spelled his name. Actually, on his birth certificate it was Adolfus. Somehow the name is no longer popular in any of its permutations ...
ReplyDeleteWhether or not Sanger supported abortion or not is irrelevant to a "pro-lifer". What is relevant is the disgraceful, unethical, and immoral acts PP has been outed on and the sad fact so many people support abortion in general. It is a shame that some may be circulating misinformation about Sanger, but meanwhile fetuses are being murdered and their bodies sold for profit. It shocks me people spend time defending the honor of one woman, rather than the lives of millions of innocent children.
ReplyDeleteWhether or not Sanger supported abortion SHOULD be irrelevant to a pro-lifer. Unfortunately, pro-life websites abound in anti-Sanger propaganda that simply is not factual. The idea that PP is selling fetal parts for profit - which is strictly illegal - has likewise not been proven. Pro-life organizations should not base their conclusions on suppositions, misreadings, and lies. I am not saying that the pro-life position is wrong. In fact, I would like to support it - but not on the basis of misrepresentation.
ReplyDeleteIt's not only not proven that it's happening, it in fact ISN'T, which is why the group that made the videos showing that PP supposedly is selling body parts is rightly under investigation. This is a case where people are using the situation merely for political purposes but has been exposed as such.
ReplyDeleteThank you Ms. LeVonne for this wonder website. No one is perfect but what I do know is Margaret advocated for birth control not abortion. The only time she was involved with abortion was when giving nursing care to a woman that got a botched abortion.
ReplyDeleteThank you to the person that directed us to http://www.bartleby.com. where Margaret's book is. If you go to the chapter 10, paragraph 22 you will find this. "While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that hundreds of thousands of abortions performed each year are a disgrace to civilization.' She said DISGRACE.
Abortions were against the law back in those days and one could be jailed. It was Margaret's aim to have birth control for both the rich and poor.
She is demonized for trying to help the poor and yes the blacks were the poor back in those days. I suggest all to read that book to understand her, even if you don't believe in birth control.
As for the video that shows her looking in the camera saying no one should have babies, I noticed it cut off. She had more to say. That was done for effect she didn't stop there.
Margaret has been a scapegoat for the agenda of many organizations who are unwilling to print the truth. Prevention was Margaret's agenda.
Just for the record I graduated from a Catholic nursing school in 1968 and in 2006 I taught at a local college. I AM PRO LIFE! I also have an open mind.
P:s Daniella is my pen name.
Autobiography aside, since that wasn't Sanger's only writing, here are some other quotes that don't make her look so righteous - http://www.dianedew.com/sanger.htm
ReplyDeleteI'm not arguing that Sanger was righteous - just that it's a shame when people do not understand what she said in context. Both the context of the quotation and the historical context are necessary considerations if one wants to interpret her views accurately. The site Ms. French sent is a classic mash-up of out-of-context quotations. Some quotes are accurate representations of Sanger's belief in the lamentable and dangerous craze for eugenics (I'm old enough to remember when lots of good Christians, sadly, shared those beliefs). Some are completely misleading or even say the opposite of Sanger's beliefs, as anyone with reading skills who saw the entire context would understand, and as I tried to explain in this post. Some are obviously misinterpreted (to say I am more than a child-bearing machine in no way negates my delight in my children and grandchildren, and that text from Matthew is wildly misused). I am not at all impressed by arguments based on misunderstanding and faulty reasoning.
ReplyDeleteSome interesting reading, in follow-up - https://liveaction.org/research/margaret-sanger-quotes-history-and-biography
ReplyDeleteBlue Deacon - the videos were verified, but an 'unfortunate truth' for PP. There have been more since. Charges were pressed, eventually dismissed because there was no crime - just truth. It's similar to the WikiLeaks of Clinton, in that aspect.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/last-charges-dropped-against-abortion-opponents-in-planned-parenthood-case.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article
The charges were that they used false names, pretenses - not that the truth wasn't spoken by those being interviewed.
Just the opposite, frankly; the videos were shown to be fraudulent, and that hasn't changed.
ReplyDeleteIf we're sharing Planned Parenthood anecdotes, around 2009, I was desperately searching for a birth control method that would work with my health history. (I don't trust condoms; they break, which in all fairness did give me a wonderful sister.) My gyn was very old school and didn't think any further than the pill, which I cannot take. So as a last ditch effort, I went to PP. They did not lock me in the office and lecture me on the wonders of abortion. In fact, not only do they not perform them in this state, they wouldn't have given me a referral for one. I was not pregnant, I asked out of curiosity. Instead, they spent almost an hour going through various options, and made repeated comments about how I must be extremely careful to avoid pregnancy since I can't safely carry a child, and, I quote, "we want to keep any woman from ever having to make that choice; we want to prevent unwanted pregnancies, not end them."
ReplyDeleteThe plural of anecdote is not data.
LOL No kidding Anonymous, those videos are very telling.
ReplyDeleteThank you to the blog mistress for this excellent article. After doing my own research, I got the same impression about Sanger and did a search again just now to confirm, coming across this post. This is more conclusive than my first results and very useful; how shocking that Sanger would, in fact, be very sad if she saw what was happening today.
Thank you for writing this excellent article. As a pro-lifer, I was curious about the memes deriding Margret Sanger and, when I found out she had written an autobiography, read it to see what her thoughts were. I quickly realized that she was all about contraception and against abortion. The last sentence of your article is really a very good point. Pro-lifers need to spread the word that Margret Sanger would be aghast at the horrors that occur in Planned Parenthood clinics every day!
ReplyDelete