Sunday, March 30, 2014

Pro-life Resaerch Pages - Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life

The pro-life position has been characterized by opponents as lacking in rational arguments and relying solely on religious ideology. Here you will find powerful pro-life arguments based upon secularmedicallegal and scientific facts. However, since this site is Christian in nature, we refute any attempt to reinterpret the Bible's strong stance against abortion or to minimize its declaration of the sanctity of human life. We also take the pro-life position that any attempts to promote eugenics or restrict reproduction of minorities is evil.

Abortion


Stem Cell Research

Signs

  • Prolife Signs - Make people think about the "choices" they are making


EVERYONE who supported abortion was free...



http://www.godandscience.org/doctrine/abort.html

Bill Gates a Victim or Perp on Common Core?,: Anatomy of a Failure

When Bill and Melinda Gates go to Africa and see healthy people and sick people, they presumably have a single thought: what can we do to make everyone healthy?  The problems are easily understood; goals can be clearly stated.  Given a big commitment, there’s a high chance of success.
When Bill Gates looks at education in America and sees good students and bad students, he probably assumes that these variations are part of the human condition.  That’s not a promising problem to focus on.
What fascinates Bill Gates is something else entirely: namely, the variety and incoherence from school to school, city to city, and state to state.  It looks so messy and inefficient.  And he thinks: a guy with my money and managementskills should be able to organize all this disorder, turn it into an efficient machine, save the country, and make another fortune in the process.
Potentially all true. 
But at that moment he has lost the game.  Because he is no longer talking about educational goals, which must be our main concern.  He is talking about standardization.  He is talking about a tidier assembly line.  (But nobody ever said that democracy is supposed to be tidy.  Dictatorship is tidy.)
Bill Gates brought a programmer’s sensibility to education.  There is a maximally efficient way to design a piece of software.  So let’s do that, and stop all this other nonsense.  Bad plan, even with the best of intentions. 
As Bill Gates’s own experience with Vista proved, the problem lies is finding the perfect design.  You (a person or a society) would have to be a fool to put all your money on one solution.
There is also some willful deception or self-deception here.  If you state that henceforth all children should be able to do X, because that’s the new standard, does this mean that all children can do X?  Can even half the children do X?  Read some of the verbose standards, and you’ll probably conclude that virtually no kid can do X.

There seems to be a belief in magic.  Outline impressive goals (“internationally benchmarked,” no less) in a technical, officious way, and every kid will automatically soar to high levels.  But why would that happen?  Teachers still have to teach, and students still have to learn the information, fact by fact.  But our Education Establishment hates all those traditional practices.  It’s so much simpler to proclaim that henceforth all children will be college- and career-ready.  Presto!  That was easy. 
Bill Gates and Common Core are obsessed with arranging things in standardized patterns, coast to coast.  So we must have standards that will somehow apply to everyone.  Then we need identical curricula, and we’ll need identical tests.  All of these things will be aligned to each other and symmetrically arranged, like so many neat stacks of boxes in a shoe store’s warehouse.  And no one, from that point forward, will be able to think outside those boxes, try something new, or tell the Education Establishment to take a hike and stop annoying us.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/common_core_anatomy_of_a_failure.html
The fact of the matter is that many different kinds of schools use many different approaches to achieve excellent results.  Look at all the great private schools, classical academies, Montessori schools, and strong public schools.  The variety and differences are a sign of health.  Let them flourish!
The best plan is to have schools and cities in charge of their own education, so that parents have some control, their suggestions are listened to, and everybody involved is constantly aiming for improvement, not ruthlessly enforcing a top-down mandate. 
I suspected from the start that Common Core would be a fraud and a failure for a simple reason: it recycled all the bad theories and methods from the last 75 years.
If you want to let Bill Gates off the hook, say this: he trusted the wrong people and their bad ideas.  The very same people who had dumbed down the schools were now being asked to create a reform program.  Oh, really?  How could that possibly work?  Typically, these people were socialists.  They wanted leveling, and they worked relentlessly to get it.  They – people like Bill Ayers – call this leveling “social justice.”
I’m not sure whether they tricked Gates or he let himself be tricked.  But everybody knows by now that Common Core accepted all the worst nonsense in Reform Math.  (That’s why we see so many articles and stories about impossible math homework.)  Similarly, Constructivism is the official dogma throughout Common Core.  This quackery orders teachers not to teach; students must figure out everything for themselves.  Similarly again, Common Core embraced sophistries from Whole Word, those sophistries being the cause of our illiteracy problem.
If Bill Gates had turned away from the Education Establishment and its dysfunctional ideas, maybe he could’ve worked a miracle.  But the boss educators would never allow that.  So they made a sweet deal.  Gates would get a huge, tidy market for his wares.  The education professors would get more dictatorial power.
You can talk all you want about standards – for example, “children should learn to read in a timely manner.”  Of course.  But what if the people in charge undermine this goal by using inefficient methods?  That’s the way it’s beenthroughout the 20th century.  All that Common Core was going to do was give the same people more power so no one could get out from under their thumbs.
Bill Gates was seeing a world where every seventh-grade history class would be identical to all the others, as if that’s more efficient.  Ideally for him, they would use books and software created by his companies.  But never mind how much Gates makes.  We wouldn't mind if the children were being well-educated.  But he was in cahoots with people who had never been primarily interested in making children well-educated.  The goal, ever since the time of John Dewey, was to make children cooperative, largely incapable of independent thought, and easy to govern. 
According to Robin Eubanks:
In the American Common Core classroom any skill, concept, or activity must be accessible to all or most, including the disabled, disinterested, and those with poor English language skills. Or it is not permissible for anyone. Abstract thought is not an ability that has been fairly distributed so it is off limits for everyone in the Common Core classroom of the future. How convenient for anyone with aspirations toward gaining quiet control over masses of people.
Again, in fairness to Gates, I think he did what all the business leaders in the country have done for years when they want to improve education.  They call up the nearest school of education (that’s the fatal mistake) and say send over some experts.  The same “progressive” professors come over and lay out the same hack ideas.  Mediocrity is more or less inevitable.
Before, at least, there was still freedom to experiment and try to do better.  But with Common Core locked in legislatively, mediocrity would be the law of the land.
Forty-five states took the Race to the Top grants (i.e., bribes) and signed up for Common Core.  But Indiana just backed out, and most other states are restless and looking at their options.  Euthanasia is a good one. 

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Friday, March 28, 2014

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN EXHIBIT CELEBRATES ABORTION AS ‘LIFE-SUSTAINING ACT’




Abortion – the “life-sustaining act” of the ages.
That’s the theme behind an exhibit currently on display at the University of Michigan dedicated to defending and glamorizing the history of abortion.
4000 Years for Choice is an exhibition of posters about the age-old practices of abortion and contraception as a means to reclaim reproductive freedom as a deeply personal and life-sustaining act existing throughout all of human history,” states a university webpage describing the exhibit.
The exhibit will be showcased through May 29 in the main lobby of the Lane Hall women’s studies building on campus. The exhibit consists of dozens of brightly colored posters with bold words, phrases and documentation meant to highlight and celebrate all the ways in which women over the millennia have performed abortions.
As for the exhibit’s posters, one offers an ancient text with an abortifacient recipe: “In 3000 BCE, ancient Egyptians contained a contraceptive recipe numbered Prescription Number 21. It was called Recipe Not To Become Pregnant and called for crocodile feces, mixed with fermented dough, and placed in the vagina.”
Similarly, another touts: “Soranus, an ancient Greek physician and medical writer, wrote about the silphium plant. He suggested that women drink the juice once a month because it not only prevents conception but also destroys anything existing.”postercampaign
One poster,named “Bless the Diaphragm,” notes it was a popular 19th century form of contraception. Another, called“Believe Crocodile Dung,” mentions it was a popular spermicidal item in the past.
The “Cheer Casanova” poster touts the infamous womanizer for never having children because he used condoms. “Empower the Douche” denotes what some women at the turn of the century did to try and prevent pregnancy.  And “Rejoice Fumigation” describes how “women have been fumigating their vaginas with contraceptive vapors for thousands of years.”
The exhibit has been described by feminist art exhibit reviewers as “bold, beautiful statements to celebrate choice,” with “fresh, vital strategies and tactics for those committed to social change.”
The images were created by Heather Ault, whom a University of Michigan webpage says is “a visual artist, pro-choice activist, and independent scholar creating artwork to shift conversations about reproductive rights and justice.”
“Her work has been exhibited throughout the country. In 2011 she won the Vision Award from the Abortion Care Network for her innovative work.”
Ault declined to comment to The College Fix for an interview on her art exhibit.
“Without knowledge of this history, we as Americans cannot fully understand women’s deeply ingrained desire to control pregnancies for the good of ourselves, our relationships, and our families,” Ault explains online.
Although not on display, Ault is also the creative mind behind the 4000 Years for Choicecorresponding “reproductive roots note cards,” which offer phrases and quotes from various pro-choice activists against colorful backdrops; expressions such as: “Abortion is a gift from God,” “Abortion is a blessing” and “anything 46 million women do every year can’t be immoral.”notecard
One notecard quotes Merle Hoffman at saying: “The act of abortion positions women at their most powerful…” Another quotes Soraya Chemaly: “ ‘Personhood’ for zygotes cruelly subverts the very idea of a culture of life and potentially criminalizes every pregnant woman.”
As for the display on campus, it is sponsored in part by the publicly funded Program for Sexual Rights and Reproductive Justice, an arm of the University of Michigan’s department of obstetrics and gynecology.
Inquiries by The College Fix into whether the Center for Sexual Rights and Reproductive Justice has an official position on the pro-choice vs. pro-life controversy, and whether an alternative viewpoint will also be addressed on campus, were met with referrals to the local Planned Parenthood.
Yet Ault’s website states that “anti-choice” comments add to the richness of the conversation and sharpen critical thinking skills.
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/16867/

US appeals court upholds new Texas abortion rules

A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld Texas' tough abortion restrictions that have led to the closure of nearly 20 clinics around the state, saying the new rules don't jeopardize women's health.
A panel of judges at the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court judge who said the rules violate the U.S. Constitution and served no medical purpose. Despite the lower court's ruling, the appeals court already had allowed some rules to go into effect while it considered the case. The latest decision means more regulations will begin later this year, as scheduled, and sets the case up for a likely appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In its opinion, the appeals court said the law "on its face does not impose an undue burden on the life and health of a woman."
Gov. Rick Perry hailed the ruling in a statement released by his office.
"The people of Texas have spoken through their elected leaders and in support of protecting the culture of life in our state," he said. "Today's court decision is good news for Texas women and the unborn, and we will continue to fight for the protection of life and women's health in Texas."
Planned Parenthood, which sued to block the law, called the ruling "terrible" and said that "safe and legal abortion will continue to be virtually impossible for thousands of Texas women to access."
"The latest restrictions in Texas will force women to have abortions later in pregnancy, if they are able to get to a doctor at all," Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Votes, said in a statement. The American Civil Liberties Union said "The law is having a devastating impact on women in Texas, and the court should have struck it down."
Texas lawmakers last summer passed some of the toughest restrictions in the U.S. on when, where and how women may obtain an abortion. The Republican-controlled Legislature required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and placed strict limits on doctors prescribing abortion-inducing pills.
Debate of the law drew thousands of demonstrators on both sides of the issue to the state Capitol in Austin and sparked a 12-plus hour filibuster by state Sen. Wendy Davis, a Fort Worth Democrat who succeeded in temporarily blocking passage. Though the restrictions later passed overwhelmingly, Davis catapulted to political stardom and is now running for governor.
The office of Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is also running for governor, defended the law in court.
Republican leaders in Texas oppose abortion, except in cases where the life of the mother is at risk. In passing the new rules, they argued they were protecting the health of the woman.
But abortion-rights supporters called the measures an attempt to effectively ban abortion statewide through overregulation. Many abortion doctors do not have admitting privileges and limiting when and where they may prescribe abortion-inducing pills discourages women from choosing that option, they say.
Other aspects of the new rules, including a requirement that all procedures take place in a surgical facility, do not take effect until September.
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled in October that the provisions place an unconstitutional burden on women's access to abortion.
Three days after Yeakel's ruling, the 5th Circuit allowed Texas to enforce the law while the state appealed the decision. Some 19 clinics have shut down since, leaving 24 still open to serve a population of 26 million Texans. More closures could happen after the additional restrictions are in place.
Regardless, the Supreme Court probably will have the last word on the restrictions. The court's four liberal justices already have indicated they are inclined to hear an appeal.
In November, the four dissented from a high court ruling that upheld the 5th Circuit's decision to allow Texas to enforce the law while the appeal proceeded.
Justice Stephen Breyer called the issue of the law's constitutionality a difficult question. "It is a question, I believe, that at least four members of this court will wish to consider irrespective of the Fifth Circuit's ultimate decision," Breyer wrote in a brief opinion that was joined by Justices Rith Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
Five votes constitute a majority on the nine-justice court, but it takes only four to grant full review of a lower court ruling.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/03/27/us-appeals-court-upholds-new-texas-abortion-rules/

Thursday, March 27, 2014

An anti-Common Core group in Florida delivered a scathing message to the state’s former governor and potential 2016 Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush.

You, Jeb Bush and your corporate cronies, have decided what is good for the children of America and we — parents, educators and concerned taxpayers — were not invited,” Chris Quackenbush of Stop Common Core Florida wrote in an open letter to Bush, as reported by the Sunshine State News.
Bush has voiced support for Common Core, the controversial K-12 math and English standards adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia. The standards were developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.
“Three grandmas drove 12 hours each to see you, face to face, and you turned and scoured at us as though we were naval lint … pond scum,” the letter stated. “As I stated ‘Stop Common Core,’ your disparaging retort was ‘it is a good thing there’s only three of you.’”
Critics of Common Core are concerned that it amounts to a de facto national curriculum because states are encouraged to adopt the standards in order to get federal education grants.
Bush touted opposition to Common Core standards as “Alice in Wonderland logic” during an interview with National Public Radio in January, and said Common Core standards were the “right path.”
CNN poll released Sunday found Bush polling at 9 percent among Republican candidates, trailing behind Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Rasmussen Reports poll earlier this month shows that if Jeb Bush were the nominee, he gets just 33 percent of the vote against 47 percent for likely Democratic nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/03/17/three-grandamas-pen-scathing-open-letter-to-jeb-bush-after-his-alleged-disparaging-comments-to-them/

911 Call Warned Woman Dying from Botched Abortion 'Not Breathing At All', On March 21, a caller to 911 operators in Cleveland, Ohio pleaded for emergency services to save the life of a woman dying from a botched abortion SHE DEAD, GOOD JOB BABY KILLER.

but rescuers did not arrive in time and the woman soon died. 

LifeNews.com reports that public records show that a woman undergoing an abortion procedure at Cleveland's Preterm Clinic became non-responsive before clinic employees called paramedics. The records were obtained by Operation Rescue. 

Over the phone, the clinic worker told 911 operators that the woman was unconscious and was receiving CPR at the time of the call but efforts to resuscitate the woman were not working. 

Records of the incident show that it took emergency responders only three minutes to reach the clinic. The ambulance got the patient to a hospital just over 20 minutes later, but notes in the records say that the patient was "not breathing at all," indicating that the women never responded to attempts to revive her. 

Video from the hospital also indicated that the woman was dead before she reached the hospital. EMTs were not performing any treatment on the woman as they wheeled her into the ER. It also appeared that a towel had been placed over her face. 

"The lack of a sense of urgency really struck me as I was listening to the 911 recording," said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. "A woman was dying or dead, and there just seemed to be no real hurry to respond to the dispatcher." 

Pastor Henkel, also of Operation Rescue, was on the scene as the ambulance left and alleged that after the vehicle left the clinic a car with who he claimed to appear to be abortionist Mohammad Rezaee inside followed along behind. 

In 2013, Rezaee was sued for malpractice by a patient from Akron's Medical Group, another clinic where Rezaee performs abortions. The woman charged that her abortion was botched. She later delivered a child she called her "miracle baby." 
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/26/911-Call-W...

Abortion Survivor Gianna Jessen - theDove.us (+playlist)

One of the best Pro-life speeches EVER! Gianna Jessen abortion survivor ...

Pro-life Commercial

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Birth control leader Margaret Sanger: Darwinist, racist and eugenicist

Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood, the leading organization advocating abortion in the United States today. Darwinism had a profound influence on her thinking, including her conversion to, and active support of, eugenics. She was specifically concerned with reducing the population of the ‘less fit’, including ‘inferior races’ such as ‘Negroes’. One major result of her lifelong work was to support the sexual revolution that has radically changed our society.

Grant and Stuart. Sanger did not like caring for her children and grossly neglected them
1916 photograph of Sanger and two of her children, Grant and Stuart. Sanger did not like caring for her children and grossly neglected them. (From Sanger63).
Margaret Sanger (14 Sept. 1879–6 Sept. 1966) was the most prominent leader of the modern birth control and ‘free love’ movements.1 Sanger’s mother was a devout Irish Catholic; her father, Michael Higgins, was an unstable man unable to provide adequately for his large family. Although a skilled stonemason and tombstone carver, Mr Higgins was unable to properly care for his family because he alienated many of his customers with his radical politics.2 He drank heavily when he had the money while his 11 children ‘suffered bitterly from cold, privation, and hunger.’3 He was so anti-Christian that when Margaret was baptized at
St. Mary’s Catholic church on March 23, 1893, the event ‘had to be kept secret, as her father would have been furious.’4
Sanger left her unhappy home as a teen, never to return—except briefly to study nursing at a co-educational boarding school called ‘Claverack College’.5 She was reportedly a poor student, skipped classes and neglected her part-time job. She dropped out of school and, after a brief stay at home to help care for her dying mother, moved in with her older sister and worked as a first grade teacher. She taught the children of immigrants but left after only two terms. This unhappy experience may have contributed to her later enthusiastic embrace of eugenics.
About this time she married William Sanger, an architect and painter, in 1902 and soon had three children. Her husband tried everything within his power to please his wife, but she turned out to be very difficult to satisfy. Margaret was also a distracted mother who did not like caring for children, including her own.6 She detested domestic life and grossly neglected her children to the point that neighbours had to step in to care for them.7 The letters her children wrote to their mother vividly reveal this neglect.
Margaret Sanger’s second husband, oil magnate and founder of the 3-in-1 Oil Company James Noah H. Slee, was also very wealthy.8 She wrote to her secretary, ‘I don’t want to marry anyone, particularly a stodgy churchgoer … Yet … how often am I going to meet a man with nine million dollars?’9 In the first issue of her journal titled The Woman Rebel, she wrote that marriage is ‘a degenerate institution’ and that modesty is an ‘obscene prudery’.
Following her father’s footsteps, Sanger became involved in radical politics. When she was formally introduced to Marxism, anarchism, secular humanism, free love and Darwinism, she found her passion in life. Sanger used her husbands’ wealth to support her activities. Her sexual passion, though, resulted in free-love behaviour that neither of her two husbands could cope with.10

Sanger’s writings

Sanger wrote extensively, leaving ample documentation of her life. She founded Birth Control Review, published from 1917 until the early 1940s, and was either an editor or contributor to this publication during most of its existence. Sanger’s relationship with eugenicists was clearly expressed in the pages of Birth Control Review from its inception. Eugenics also ‘soon became a constant, even a dominant, theme at birth-control conferences’.11
Sanger believed she was ‘working in accord with the universal law of evolution’. She maintained that the brains of Australian Aborigines were only one step more evolved than chimpanzees and just under blacks, Jews and Italians.
Sanger believed she was ‘working in accord with the universal law of evolution’.12 She maintained that the brains of Australian Aborigines were only one step more evolved than chimpanzees and just under blacks, Jews and Italians.13 When arguing for eugenics, Sanger quoted Darwin as an authority when discussing ‘natural checks’ of the population, such as war, which helped to reduce the population.14 Her magazine even argued for ‘state-sponsored sterilization programs’, forcibly sterilizing the ‘less capable’.15 She won many academics and scientists to her cause, including Harvard University sociologists E. M. East, University of Michigan President Clarence C. Little and Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Alfred Meyer.16
Sanger also made her eugenic views clear in her many publications, such as The Pivot of Civilization andWoman Rebel, stressing that birth control was not only ‘important with respect to controlling the numbers of unfit in the population’, but was the ‘only viable means to improve the human race’.17 For example, she wrote: ‘Birth control itself … is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives.’18She boldly proclaimed that birth control was the only viable way to improve the human race.19 And while in her later years Sanger redefined what she meant by the unfit, ‘she increasingly saw feeblemindedness, the bogey of all hereditarians, as antecedent to poverty and social organization in the genesis of social problems.’20
She also opposed charity because it allowed the less fit to survive and propagate more unfit children.21The influence of Darwin on Sanger’s racism ideas is obvious from her writings. For example she wrote,
The lower down in the scale of human development we go the less sexual control we find. It is said the aboriginal Australian, the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets.—Margaret Sanger
‘The lower down in the scale of human development we go the less sexual control we find. It is said the aboriginal Australian, the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets. According to one writer, the rapist has just enough brain development to raise him above the animal, but like the animal, when in heat, knows no law except nature, which impels him to procreate, whatever the result.’22

Her conversion to eugenics

Early in her career, Sanger became a follower of Thomas Malthus, the same man that inspired Darwin. Malthus’s disciples—then called Malthusians and Neo-Malthusians—taught that ‘if Western civilization were to survive, the physically unfit, the materially poor, the spiritually diseased, the racially inferior, and the mentally incompetent had to somehow be suppressed and isolated—or perhaps even eliminated.’23
As Sanger stressed in a talk given at the Fifth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, the end goal of her movement was to produce a superior race: ‘To-day the average reliance of civilization is based upon iron and steel, bricks and mortar, and we must change this to the construction and evolution of humanity itself 24 ’.
To do this she advocated euthanasia, segregation in work camps, sterilization and abortion.25 She was very successful in achieving this goal—more than half of the American states launched programs that sterilized their ‘unfit … with Virginia, California, and Kansas leading the way’.25 Sanger was also very influenced by Havelock Ellis,
‘ … the influential sociologist, “sexologist,” and eugenicist. Ellis’s position on eugenics is summed up by his own statement that appeared in the “Havelock Ellis Number” of Birth Control Review February 1919 issue: “We desire no parents who are not both competent and willing parents. Only such parents are fit to father and mother a future race worthy to rule the world.”’26
Ellis frequently published articles in Birth Control Review, and Ellis had major influence on Sanger’s ideas. Chesler wrote that Ellis, who ‘always considered himself both a eugenicist and a socialist’, converted Sanger to his views. Furthermore,
‘Ellis made his most important contribution to the eugenics doctrine … when he assigned women to act as its chief enforcers. Women are critical agents of civilization’s progress … because … they alone have the power to produce and nurture … fitter babies. … Increased sex expression and wider use of birth control were thus significant tools in the eugenic program, and accordingly, he condemned eugenicists who refused to endorse birth control.’27
Sanger wrote that her concern was not just that feeble-mindedness leads to criminality but
‘ … there is sufficient evidence to lead us to believe that the so-called “borderline cases” are a greater menace than the out-and-out “defective delinquents” who can be supervised, controlled and prevented from procreating their kind. … the mental defective who is glib and plausible, bright looking and attractive, but with a mental vision of seven, eight or nine years, may not merely lower the whole level of intelligence in a school or in a society, but may be encouraged by church and state to increase and multiply until he dominates … an entire community. The presence in the public schools of the mentally defective children of men and women who should never have been parents is a problem that is becoming more and more difficult.’28
As early as 1917 Sanger was openly giving ‘public support to the eugenics movement’ and to ‘race betterment’ programs.29 The eugenicists on her board believed that ‘birth control would eliminate disease and deformity as well as empty the jails and orphanages’.8 Sanger ‘supported sterilization for the incarcerated and considered birth control a necessary component of racial improvement’.30 Her eugenics crusade, although toned down later in her life, was to consume her until she died in 1966.5 According to Roche, Sanger’s end goal was the same as Hitler’s: to ‘create a race of thoroughbreds’, a pure and superior race and her journal even ‘eerily’ foretold the ‘horrors of the Nazi “final solution”.’31
Sanger’s openly eugenic books
Left, the cover of one of Sanger’s openly eugenic books. First published in 1922, it became one of the ‘text books’ of the movement for years and is still in print. Centre, one volume of papers presented at the International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference and published in 1926. The papers published in these proceedings make it clear that Sanger and many of her closest followers were foremost concerned with applying Darwinism to produce a superior race and improve the lot of humankind by eugenics. Right, the cover of one of the many books that Sanger wrote to teach sex-education to young people. This book was written to instruct mothers to teach ‘sex education’ to their young children. It was published in New York by Max N. Maisel, 1916. This set of books openly advocated immoral behaviour such as sex outside of marriage.

Racism and birth control clinics

Margaret Sanger opened her first birth control clinic in 1916 in the impoverished Brownsville section of Brooklyn to help control the problem of ‘over breeding’. The two-room storefront clinic was a great contrast to Margaret’s plush Greenwich Village home, but
‘ … since the clientele she wished to attract—“immigrant Southern Europeans, Slavs, Latins, and Jews”—could only be found “in the coarser neighborhoods and tenements,” she was forced to venture out of her comfortable confines.’32
Sanger once addressed the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey, and received a ‘dozen invitations to speak to similar groups’.
As her organization grew, Sanger set up more clinics in the communities of other ‘dysgenic races’—such as Blacks and Hispanics. Sanger turned her attention to ‘Negroes’ in 1929 and opened another clinic in Harlem in 1930. Sanger, ‘in alliance with eugenicists, and through initiatives such as the Negro Project … exploited black stereotypes in order to reduce the fertility of African Americans.’33 The all-white staff and the sign identifying the clinic as a ‘research bureau’ raised the suspicions of the black community. They feared that the clinic’s actual goal was to ‘experiment on and sterilize black people’.34 Their fears were not unfounded: Sanger once addressed the women’s branch of the Klu Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey, and received a ‘dozen invitations to speak to similar groups’.35 Flynn claims that she was on good terms with other racist organizations.36
Sanger believed the ‘Negro district’ was the ‘headquarters for the criminal element’ and concluded that, as the title of a book by a member of her board proclaimed, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy, was a rise that had to be stemmed.33 To deal with the problem of resistance among the black population, Sanger recruited black doctors, nurses, ministers and social workers ‘in order to gain black patients’ trust’ in order ‘to limit or even erase the black presence in America’.37
Margaret Sanger around 1938. All authorized published
        photographs, including this one, were staged in an attempt to show Mrs Sanger as
        a conservative, serious, middle class and very respectable lady.
Margaret Sanger around 1938 (From Sanger35). All authorized published photographs, including this one, were staged in an attempt to show Mrs Sanger as a conservative, serious, middle class and very respectable lady.
Her Birth Control League board was ‘made up almost exclusively of sociologists and eugenicists’, insuring that her eugenic goals were implemented.38 Margaret and the Malthusian Eugenicists she worked with did not discriminate narrowly, but targeted every ‘non-Aryan’ ethnic group, whether red, black, yellow or white. They placed clinics wherever they judged ‘feeble-minded, syphilitic, irresponsible, and defective’ persons ‘bred unhindered’.32 Since, by their estimation, as many as 70% of the population fell into this ‘undesirable’ category, Margaret and her cohorts had their work cut out for them. Much of the early grass-roots work in her movement was done by ‘radicals’, mostly socialists and communists.39 Birth control colleague, Mrs. Besant, told a court:
‘I have no doubt that if natural checks were allowed to operate right through the human as they do in the animal world, a better result would follow. Among the brutes, the weaker are driven to the wall, the diseased fall out in the race of life. The old brutes, when feeble or sickly, are killed. If men insisted that those who were sickly should be allowed to die without help of medicine or science, if those who are weak were put upon one side and crushed, if those who were old and useless were killed, if those who were not capable of providing food for themselves were allowed to starve, if all this were done, the struggle for existence among men would be as real as it is among brutes and would doubtless result in the production of a higher race of men.’40
Sanger eventually recognized that this solution to the problems of crime, poverty and other social problems would never happen, at least in America. She then proposed a realistic solution that would prevent bringing the ‘weak, the helpless and the unwanted children into the world. We can refuse to overcrowd families, nations and the earth.’41 The solution was positive eugenics by encouraging selective population control, and a means of achieving this more realistic goal was birth control.

Sanger’s war against the Church

Many churches opposed Sanger because she championed ‘sex without consequences’, eugenics, abortion and concentration camps for the unfit—all practices that Christianity has historically opposed.42 She stressed that she was against especially the Catholic Church because they opposed ‘science’, evolution, eugenics and race improvement.43 Sanger sought out allegiances with eugenicists to help blunt the opposition to her from the religious community.44 The church’s view that the handicapped, diseased and deformed were all equals in the eyes of God ‘struck Sanger as anathema to the dictates of the Brave New World’ that she wanted to create.45 She even argued that persons ‘whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers’ were ‘irresponsible and reckless’ and that the ‘procreation of this group should be stopped’.46
Sanger ‘attributed insanity, epilepsy, criminality, prostitution, pauperism, mental defectiveness’, and ‘everything from child labor to world war’, to ‘unchecked breeding’.47 The church taught these were sins that could be overcome and had many success stories to support this claim—and followed up on these successes with activities like Catholic charities. Until Hitler was defeated, Sanger did little to support positive eugenics (ie: encouraging the fit to have large families), which may have been supported by the church, but rather until later in her career advocated negative eugenics, the prevention of procreation of the unfit by law and sterilization.

Exporting eugenics and sterilization

Sanger also worked hard to spread her eugenic ideas about ‘human weeds’ to the rest of the world.
Sanger also worked hard to spread her eugenic ideas about ‘human weeds’ to the rest of the world. Trombley claimed that eugenics, sterilization and birth control projects on a large scale were an Anglo-American export.48 He notes that Sanger’s birth control movement was the most powerful in the world, and in England its head offices were based at the London Eugenics Society. Sanger’s movement became a ‘truly international organization with the bulk of its multi-million annual budget coming from the United States.’49 Most of the money came from taxes; the rest was donated by large corporations such as General Motors.
Sanger’s movement had an impact in many nations, including India, Singapore, Japan, China, Korea and much of Europe. Her programs involving sterilization of the unfit were adopted by Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and, most infamously, by Nazi Germany.50 Planned Parenthood today boasts three-quarters of a billion dollars in annual revenue, most paid for by taxpayers, and is active throughout the world.51

Her role as an icon

Margaret Sanger is still widely admired for her work in the birth control movement. She was listed as one of the most influential persons of the twentieth century by Time-Life52 and was given many honours during her lifetime including an Honorary Doctorate of Law by Smith College.53 Paul and Anne Ehrlich wrote that
‘America’s heroine in the family planning movement was Margaret Sanger, a nurse. … Sanger and others who joined her rapidly growing birth control movement (then known as the Birth Control League) led the fight for … legal changes and for support from medical, educational, health, and religious organizations.’54
Gloria Steinem wrote a laudatory chapter on Sanger in the Time volume listing the 100 most important Americans. Steinem falsely implied Sanger opposed eugenics and what it stood for and lionized her as a heroine of the women’s movement.55

Rewriting history

Although Sanger’s involvement in eugenics and radical politics is well documented, many people today are attempting to whitewash her past eugenics involvement. Her ‘hagiographers, and her most devoted followers in the abortion rights movement, deny and gloss over the eugenicist nature of her program.’50 Reasons for rewriting (or ignoring) history include the fear that ‘exposing birth control’s political history to hostile lawmakers and anti-choice lobbyists’ could affect their political goals.56 Other persons hid her past because they were concerned about tarnishing her ‘perceived labors on behalf of gender equity, self-determination, and redress of economic and personal privation’.56Even many reprints of Sanger’s writings select sections that give a very distorted picture of her beliefs and goals.57
Today Planned Parenthood stresses ‘family planning’, but the fact is ‘Sanger sold birth control as the crypto-eugenicist Marie Stopes had, as offering “freedom from fear” … which in aggregate would contribute to the wider social good. The reasoning was straightforwardly eugenic.’49 To the end of her life she supported eugenics. In one of her last speeches she ‘attacked welfare programs for not eliminating the “feeble minded and unfit” and proposed “incentive sterilization”’, a program to bribe the ‘unfit’ to be sterilized.58

Reasons for her enormous success

A major reason for Sanger’s success was that she met a genuine need of the poor, many of whom had large families they could not adequately support. America, at that time, was changing from an agricultural to an industrial society. Large families could be supported on farms that needed the low-cost labour provided by many children, but large families could not be properly supported by most factory work. This motivated a drive to limit family size, a need that Sanger exploited to further her eugenic goals. The problem is ‘Sanger’s zeal blinded her to the reality that her actions occasionally worked against her desired purposes.’59
It was only after World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust that Sanger abandoned her dream of producing a socialist, perfected eugenic society. She then played down her eugenic and socialist ideals and increasingly stressed the goals now advocated by Planned Parenthood. In Trombley’s words, ‘after the Nazi atrocities’ she clothed her movement in the words that Planned Parenthood advocates use today because the ‘Nazi’s eugenics became a word to strike fear in the hearts of ordinary people. Thus eugenics re-emerged from the doldrums of the post-Nazi period to exert an influence on a much larger scale than had ever been previously imagined.’60 Partly because of her past association with known racists and a history of several decades of racist and eugenic rhetoric, the name of the American Birth Control League was changed to Planned Parenthood during World War II.11 Unfortunately, despite the name change, the racism of her movement lingered.43

Summary

Sanger was openly influenced by Darwinists and various radicals in her highly successful campaign against Judeo-Christian morality and in support of eugenics. She worked hard to produce a socialist state based on eugenics, and her movement thrived because it partly fulfilled a real need in the early 1900s. Her movement played a major role in loosening sexual morality, contributing to the current high rate of illegitimacy and sexual immorality. Her goals for society may not have worked in her own life: Flynn claims Sanger died an alcoholic addicted to painkillers, a bitter woman feeling both abandoned and alone, a victim of her youthful, selfish hedonism.61 She lived and died by her credo published in the Woman Rebel, namely ‘The Right to be Lazy. The Right to be an Unmarried Mother. The Right to Destroy. The Right to Create. The Right to Live and the Right to Love.’62

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Clifford Lillo, Eric Blievernicht and Jody Allen, for their help.

Related Articles

Further Reading

References

  1. Engs, R.C., The Eugenics Movement: An Encyclopedia, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, p. 198, 2005. Return to text.
  2. De Marco, D. and Wiker, B.D., Architects of the Culture of Death, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, CA, p. 287, 2004. Return to text.
  3. Grant, G., Killer Angel: A Short Biography of Planned Parenthood’s Founder, Margaret Sanger, Highland Books, Nashville, TN, p. 30, 2001. Return to text.
  4. Gray, M., Margaret Sanger: A Biography of the Champion of Birth Control, Richard Marek Publishers, New York, p. 17, 1979. Return to text.
  5. Douglas, E.T., Margaret Sanger: Pioneer of the Future, Garrett Park Press, Garret Park, MD, 1975. Return to text.
  6. Gray, ref. 4, pp. 36, 40 and 47. Return to text.
  7. Cox, V., Margaret Sanger: Rebel for Women’s Rights, Chelsa House, Philadelphia, PA, p. 18, 2005. Return to text.
  8. Gray, ref. 4, p. 253. Return to text.
  9. Gray, ref. 4, p. 167. Return to text.
  10. Grant, ref. 3, p. 52. Return to text.
  11. Gordon, L., Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, Grossman Publishers, New York, p. 282, 1976. Return to text.
  12. Douglas, ref. 5, p. 130. Return to text.
  13. Flynn, D.J., Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas, Crown Forum, New York, 2004. Return to text.
  14. Sanger, M.H., Women and the New Race, Blue Ribbon Books, New York, p. 159, 1920. Return to text.
  15. Roche, C.M., Reproducing the working class: Tillie Olsen, Margaret Sanger, and American eugenics; in: Cuddy, L.A. and Roche, C.M. (Eds.), Evolution and Eugenics in American Literature and Culture, 1880–1940: Essays on Ideological Conflict and Complicity, Rosemont Publishing, Danvers, MA, pp. 259–275, 2003; p. 264. Return to text.
  16. Chesler, E., Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, Simon and Schuster, New York, p. 217, 1992. Return to text.
  17. Roche, ref. 15, p. 263. Return to text.
  18. Sanger, ref. 14, p. 229. Return to text.
  19. Engelman, P., Foreword to Margaret Sanger’s The Pivot of Civilization, Humanity Books, Amherst, NY, pp. 9–29, 2003; p. 9. Return to text.
  20. Kennedy, D., Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, p. 115, 1970. Return to text.
  21. Sanger, M.H., The Pivot of Civilization, Humanity Books, Amherst, NY, chapter 5, 2003. Reprint of original. Return to text.
  22. Sanger, M.H., What Every Girl Should Know, Belvedere Publishers, New York, p. 40, 1980. A reprint of the original 1920 edition. Return to text.
  23. Grant, ref. 3, p. 67. Return to text.
  24. Sanger, M.H., Individual and family aspects of birth control; in: Pierpoint, R. (Ed.), Report of the Fifth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, Given on July 11–14, 1922 at Kingsway Hall, London, William Henemann, London, pp. 30–32, 1922; p. 31. Return to text.
  25. Flynn, ref. 13, p. 150. Return to text.
  26. Roche, ref. 15, p. 262. Return to text.
  27. Chesler, ref. 16, p. 123. Return to text.
  28. Sanger, ref. 21, p. 115. Return to text.
  29. Engs, ref. 1, pp. 199–200. Return to text.
  30. Tone, A., Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America, Hill and Wang, New York, p. 145, 2002. Return to text.
  31. Roche, ref. 15, p. 265. Return to text.
  32. Grant, G., Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood, Wolgemuth and Hyatt, Brentwood, TN, p. 92, 1988. Return to text.
  33. Washington, H.A., Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, Doubleday, New York, p. 196, 2006. Return to text.
  34. Tone, ref. 30, p. 147. Return to text.
  35. Sanger, M.H., Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography, Norton, New York, pp. 366–367, 1938. Return to text.
  36. Flynn, ref. 13, p. 153. Return to text.
  37. Washington, ref. 33, pp. 197–198. Return to text.
  38. Gray, ref. 4, pp. 240, 287. Return to text.
  39. Gordon, ref. 11, p. 228. Return to text.
  40. Sanger, ref 14, p. 160. Return to text.
  41. http://creation.com/margaret-sanger-darwinian-eugenicist
  42. Sanger, ref. 14, p. 161. Return to text.
  43. Flynn, ref. 13, pp. 6, 154. Return to text.
  44. Marshall, R. and Donovan, C., Blessed are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood, Ignatius, San Francisco, CA, 1991. Return to text.
  45. Ordover, N., American Eugenics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, p. 138, 2003. Return to text.
  46. Flynn, ref. 13, p. 155. Return to text.
  47. Marshall and Donovan, ref. 43, p. 1. Return to text.
  48. Ordover, ref. 44, p. 140. Return to text.
  49. Trombley, S., The Right to Reproduce: A History of Coercive Sterilization, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, p. 214, 1988. Return to text.
  50. Trombley, ref. 48, p. 215. Return to text.
  51. Flynn, ref. 13, p. 151. Return to text.
  52. Flynn, ref. 13, p. 162. Return to text.
  53. Knauer, K. (Ed.), Great People of the 20th Century, Time Books, New York, p. 72–73, 1996. Return to text.
  54. Cox, ref. 7, p. 100. Return to text.
  55. Ehrlich, P.R. and Ehrlich, A.H., Population Resources Environment: Issues in Human Ecology, W.H. Freeman, San Francisco, CA, p. 234, 1970. Return to text.
  56. Steinem, G., Margaret Sanger: her crusade to legalize birth control spurred the movement toward women’s liberation, Time 100: Leaders & Revolutionaries/Artists and Entertainers, Time Books, New York, pp. 14–15, 1998. Return to text.
  57. Ordover, ref. 44, p. 137. Return to text.
  58. For example, see Andrews, P., Margaret Sanger: women and the new race; in: Andrews, P. (Ed.), Voices of Diversity: Perspectives on American Political Ideals and Institutions, Dushkin Publishing Group, Guilford, CT, pp. 100–102, 1995, and Ravitch, D. (Ed.), Margaret Sanger: the right to one’s body; in: The American Reader: Words that Moved a Nation, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, pp. 249–252, 1990. Return to text.
  59. Cox, ref. 7, p. 101. Return to text.
  60. Flynn, ref. 13, p. 149. Return to text.
  61. Trombley, ref. 48, p. 215–216. Return to text.
  62. Flynn, ref. 13, p. 161. Return to text.
  63. Gray, ref. 4, p. 72. Return to text.
  64. Sanger, M.H., My Fight for Birth Control, Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1931. Return to text.

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