Margaret Sanger: I was taught to hold Margaret Sanger in high regard for the work she did to make birth control available. Occasionally, the charges of her eugenics involvement come up...

jelun

I was taught to hold Margaret Sanger in high regard for the work she did to make birth control available.
Occasionally, the charges of her eugenics involvement come up in order to denigrate the work done by Planned Parenthood.
I thought that if there is a thread with information on her background and positions that would simplify debating the misinformation and hyperbole about her activities.
Please feel free to do this with any subject that comes up on a recurring basis and to add anything to Margaret ...
The more resources at our disposal the better, right?

Sangers eagerness to mainstream her movement explains her engagement with eugenics, a then widely popular intellectual movement that addressed the manner in which human intelligence and opportunity is determined by biological as well as environmental factors. Hard as it is to believe, eugenics was considered far more respectable than birth control. Like many well-intentioned reformers of this era, Sanger took away from Charles Darwin the essentially optimistic lesson that humanitys evolution within the animal kingdom makes us all capable of improvement if only we apply the right tools. University presidents, physicians, scientists, and public officials all embraced eugenics, in part because it held the promise that merit would replace fateor birthright and social statusas the standard for mobility in a democratic society.
But eugenics also has some damning and today unfathomable legacies, such as a series of state laws upheld in 1927 by an eight-to-one progressive majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, including Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis. Their landmark decision in Buck v. Bell authorized the compulsory sterilization of a poor young white woman with an illegitimate child on grounds of feeble mindedness that were never clearly established. This decision, incidentally, was endorsed by civil libertarians such as Roger Baldwin of the ACLU and W.E.B. Dubois of the NAACP, both of whom Sanger counted among her supporters and friends.
For Sanger, eugenics was meant to begin with the voluntary use of birth control, which many still opposed on the grounds that the middle class should be encouraged to have more babies. She countered by disdaining what she called a cradle competition of class, race or ethnicity. She publicly opposed immigration restrictions and framed poverty as a matter of differential access to resources like birth control, not as the immutable consequence of low inherent ability or character.
As a nurse, Sanger also understood the adverse impacts of poor nutrition, drugs, and alcohol on fetal development and encouraged government support of maternal and infant health. She argued for broad social safety nets and proudly marshaled clinical data to demonstrate that most women, even among the poorest and least educated populations, eagerly embraced and used birth control successfully when it is was provided.
At the same time, Sanger did on many occasions engage in shrill rhetoric about the growing burden of large families of low intelligence and defective hereditylanguage with no intended racial or ethnic content. She always argued that all women are better off with fewer children, but unfortunate language about creating a race of thoroughbreds and other such phrases have in recent years been lifted out of context and used to sully her reputation. Moreover, in endorsing Buck v. Bell and on several occasions the payment of pensions or bonuses to poor women who agreed to limit their childbearing (many of whom enjoyed no other health care coverage), Sanger quite clearly failed to consider fundamental human rights questions raised by such practices. Living in an era indifferent to the obligation to respect and protect individuals whose behaviors do not always conform to prevailing mores, she did not always fulfill it.
The challenge as Sangers biographer has been to reconcile apparent contradictions in her beliefs. She actually held unusually advanced views on race relations for her day and on many occasions condemned discrimination and encouraged reconciliation between blacks and whites. Though most birth control facilities conformed to the segregation mores of the day, she opened an integrated clinic in Harlem in the early 1930s. Later, she facilitated birth control and maternal health programs for rural black women in the south, when local white health officials there denied them access to any New Deal-funded services.
Sanger worked on this last project with the behind-the-scenes support of Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council for Negro Women and then a Roosevelt administration official. Their progressive views on race were well known, if controversial, but their support for birth control was silenced by Franklins political handlersat least until he was safely ensconced in the White House for a third term, when the government rushed to provide condoms to World War II soldiers.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2011/11/02/the-real-story-of-margaret-sanger/

jelun

And more...

Sangers so-called Negro Project has been a source of controversy first raised by black nationalists and some feminist scholars in the 1970s and later by anti-abortion foes. Respecting the importance of self-determination among users of contraception, she recruited prominent black leaders to endorse the goal, especially ministers who held sway over the faithful. In that context, she wrote an unfortunate sentence in a private letter about needing to clarify the ideals and goals of the birth control movement because we do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. The sentence may have been thoughtlessly composed, but it is perfectly clear that she was not endorsing genocide.
Americas intensely complicated politics of race and gender has long ensnarled Sanger and all others who have sought to discipline reproduction. As many scholars of the subject in recent years have observed, much of the controversy proceeds from the plain fact that reproduction is by its very nature experienced individually and socially at the same time. In claiming womens fundamental right to control their own bodies, Sanger remained mindful of the dense fabric of cultural, political, and economic relationships in which those rights are exercised.
In most instances the policies Sanger advocated were intended to observe the necessary obligation of social policy to balance individual rights of self-expression with the sometimes contrary desire to promulgate and enforce common mores and laws. She may have failed to get the balance quite right, but there is nothing in the record to poison her reputation or discredit her noble cause. Quite the contrary.
The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. may have put it best in 1966, when he accepted Planned Parenthoods prestigious Margaret Sanger Award and spoke eloquently of the kinship between the civil rights and family planning movements. Here is what he said, since it bears repeating:
There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sangers early efforts. She, like we, saw the horrifying conditions of ghetto life. Like we, she knew that all of society is poisoned by cancerous slums. Like we, she was a direct actionist a nonviolent resister She launched a movement which is obeying a higher law to preserve human life under humane conditions. Margaret Sanger had to commit what was then called a crime in order to enrich humanity, and today we honor her courage and vision; for without them there would have been no beginning.
This piece originally appeared at New Deal 2.o.

America Only Loc: From the right hand of God

jelun wrote:

I was taught to hold Margaret Sanger in high regard for the work she did to make birth control available.
Occasionally, the charges of her eugenics involvement come up in order to denigrate the work done by Planned Parenthood.
I thought that if there is a thread with information on her background and positions that would simplify debating the misinformation and hyperbole about her activities.
Please feel free to do this with any subject that comes up on a recurring basis and to add anything to Margaret ...
The more resources at our disposal the better, right?
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/06/poll_would_you_vote_for_donald_trump_for_president.html

Sangers eagerness to mainstream her movement explains her engagement with eugenics, a then widely popular intellectual movement that addressed the manner in which human intelligence and opportunity is determined by biological as well as environmental factors. Hard as it is to believe, eugenics was considered far more respectable than birth control. Like many well-intentioned reformers of this era, Sanger took away from Charles Darwin the essentially optimistic lesson that humanitys evolution within the animal kingdom makes us all capable of improvement if only we apply the right tools. University presidents, physicians, scientists, and public officials all embraced eugenics, in part because it held the promise that merit would replace fateor birthright and social statusas the standard for mobility in a democratic society.
But eugenics also has some damning and today unfathomable legacies, such as a series of state laws upheld in 1927 by an eight-to-one progressive majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, including Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis. Their landmark decision in Buck v. Bell authorized the compulsory sterilization of a poor young white woman with an illegitimate child on grounds of feeble mindedness that were never clearly established. This decision, incidentally, was endorsed by civil libertarians such as Roger Baldwin of the ACLU and W.E.B. Dubois of the NAACP, both of whom Sanger counted among her supporters and friends.
For Sanger, eugenics was meant to begin with the voluntary use of birth control, which many still opposed on the grounds that the middle class should be encouraged to have more babies. She countered by disdaining what she called a cradle competition of class, race or ethnicity. She publicly opposed immigration restrictions and framed poverty as a matter of differential access to resources like birth control, not as the immutable consequence of low inherent ability or character.
As a nurse, Sanger also understood the adverse impacts of poor nutrition, drugs, and alcohol on fetal development and encouraged government support of maternal and infant health. She argued for broad social safety nets and proudly marshaled clinical data to demonstrate that most women, even among the poorest and least educated populations, eagerly embraced and used birth control successfully when it is was provided.
At the same time, Sanger did on many occasions engage in shrill rhetoric about the growing burden of large families of low intelligence and defective hereditylanguage with no intended racial or ethnic content. She always argued that all women are better off with fewer children, but unfortunate language about creating a race of thoroughbreds and other such phrases have in recent years been lifted out of context and used to sully her reputation. Moreover, in endorsing Buck v. Bell and on several occasions the payment of pensions or bonuses to poor women who agreed to limit their childbearing (many of whom enjoyed no other health care coverage), Sanger quite clearly failed to consider fundamental human rights questions raised by such practices. Living in an era indifferent to the obligation to respect and protect individuals whose behaviors do not always conform to prevailing mores, she did not always fulfill it.
The challenge as Sangers biographer has been to reconcile apparent contradictions in her beliefs. She actually held unusually advanced views on race relations for her day and on many occasions condemned discrimination and encouraged reconciliation between blacks and whites. Though most birth control facilities conformed to the segregation mores of the day, she opened an integrated clinic in Harlem in the early 1930s. Later, she facilitated birth control and maternal health programs for rural black women in the south, when local white health officials there denied them access to any New Deal-funded services.
Sanger worked on this last project with the behind-the-scenes support of Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council for Negro Women and then a Roosevelt administration official. Their progressive views on race were well known, if controversial, but their support for birth control was silenced by Franklins political handlersat least until he was safely ensconced in the White House for a third term, when the government rushed to provide condoms to World War II soldiers.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2011/11/02/the-real-story-of-margaret-sanger/

I was taught to hold Margaret Sanger in high regar... (show quote)

no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun

jelun wrote:

And more...

Sangers so-called Negro Project has been a source of controversy first raised by black nationalists and some feminist scholars in the 1970s and later by anti-abortion foes. Respecting the importance of self-determination among users of contraception, she recruited prominent black leaders to endorse the goal, especially ministers who held sway over the faithful. In that context, she wrote an unfortunate sentence in a private letter about needing to clarify the ideals and goals of the birth control movement because we do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. The sentence may have been thoughtlessly composed, but it is perfectly clear that she was not endorsing genocide.
Americas intensely complicated politics of race and gender has long ensnarled Sanger and all others who have sought to discipline reproduction. As many scholars of the subject in recent years have observed, much of the controversy proceeds from the plain fact that reproduction is by its very nature experienced individually and socially at the same time. In claiming womens fundamental right to control their own bodies, Sanger remained mindful of the dense fabric of cultural, political, and economic relationships in which those rights are exercised.
In most instances the policies Sanger advocated were intended to observe the necessary obligation of social policy to balance individual rights of self-expression with the sometimes contrary desire to promulgate and enforce common mores and laws. She may have failed to get the balance quite right, but there is nothing in the record to poison her reputation or discredit her noble cause. Quite the contrary.
The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. may have put it best in 1966, when he accepted Planned Parenthoods prestigious Margaret Sanger Award and spoke eloquently of the kinship between the civil rights and family planning movements. Here is what he said, since it bears repeating:
There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sangers early efforts. She, like we, saw the horrifying conditions of ghetto life. Like we, she knew that all of society is poisoned by cancerous slums. Like we, she was a direct actionist a nonviolent resister She launched a movement which is obeying a higher law to preserve human life under humane conditions. Margaret Sanger had to commit what was then called a crime in order to enrich humanity, and today we honor her courage and vision; for without them there would have been no beginning.
This piece originally appeared at New Deal 2.o.

And more... br br Sangers so-called Negro Projec... (show quote)

perhaps you should read this article, one of many I could site on Margaret Sanger This one is called Black Genocide a Negro Project and is five pages long so I did not post the article.
http://www.blackgenocide.org/negro.html

just by looking at Google I found a list of others that you should look at before giving a crown or a halo to Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger's birth control movement and quest for the Pill intersected the ...
The Public Papers of Margaret Sanger: Web Edition
https://www.nyu.edu/.../sanger/.../show.php?sanger...
New York University
Margaret Sanger, "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda," Oct 1921. Published Article. Source: Birth Control Review, Oct. 1921, p. 5 , Margaret Sanger ...
You've visited this page 2 times. Last visit: 7/18/15
10-Eye-Opening Quotes From Planned Parenthood Founder
www.lifenews.com/.../10-eye-opening-quotes-from-plann...
LifeNews.com
Mar 11, 2013 - Margaret Sanger has been lauded by some as a woman of valor, but a ... Here, Margaret Sanger speaks on her eugenic philosophy that only ...
Margaret Sanger - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger
Wikipedia
Jump to Eugenics - Eugenics[edit]. An advertisement for a book entitled "Woman and the New Race". At the. Sanger's 1920 book endorsed eugenics.
The Truth About Margaret Sanger - Page Five
www.blackgenocide.org/sanger05.html
While one cannot blame Margaret Sanger for the actions of these physician, one ... If Sanger were as anti-eugenics as Planned Parenthood says she was, she ...
BlackGenocide.org | The Negro Project
www.blackgenocide.org/negro.html
The Negro Project is a devastating eugenic stain on the history of Planned parenthood. ... Margaret Sanger aligned herself with the eugenicists whose ideology ...
7 shocking quotes by Planned Parenthood's founder
liveactionnews.org/7-shocking-quotes-by-planned-parenthoods-founder/
Feb 21, 2015 - As the founder of America's largest abortion chain, Margaret Sanger's ideology for Planned Parenthood was cemented in eugenics, the belief ...
[PDF]Opposition Claims About Margaret Sanger - Planned ...
www.plannedparenthood.org/download_file/.../1725...
Planned Parenthood
Margaret Sanger gained worldwide renown, respect, .... established by Margaret Sanger and people like ... convince the leaders of the eugenics movement to.
Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood, In Her ...
www.dianedew.com/sanger.htm

jelun

no propaganda please wrote:

perhaps you should read this article, one of many I could site on Margaret Sanger This one is called Black Genocide a Negro Project and is five pages long so I did not post the article.

www.dianedew.com/sanger.htm

Edited for taste...

I know that all of those accusations exist. I have read a number of allegations and articles that you apparently accept and that I don't.
This is exactly the sort of discourse that wikipedia cannot be considered a good resource as too much that is propaganda and a matter of contention is left to stand.
And I know that you have to understand that the use of some false projection of caring attitude connected to black babies and genocide by the anti-abortion cause is so dishonest that it makes anyone but an ideologue cringe.
If black babies matter to anti-abortionists they should be working on increased education opportunity, they should be working on a minimum wage of $18./hour, they should be working on #BlackLivesMatter, they should be fighting with their elected representatives against the reduction of housing and other benefits for ALL people living in or near poverty.
So get back to me when you can provide actual caring about our fellow citizens who have skin of a darker hue.

no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun

jelun wrote:

Edited for taste...

I know that all of those accusations exist. I have read a number of allegations and articles that you apparently accept and that I don't.
This is exactly the sort of discourse that wikipedia cannot be considered a good resource as too much that is propaganda and a matter of contention is left to stand.

I started reading about Sanger over twenty years ago. This is not a new idea. I know that you are so concerned that women be able to have abortions that nothing should ever get in the way from that ability. I hope you have also read the other sources that came up. what do you think of the other sources? I know that wikipedia has limited value. for instance they list the Southern Poverty Law Center as a reliable non biased source as far as the research on same sex parents as compared to married heterosexual parents as far as producing well balanced children and the much more likely chance of children in same sex household to be molested, usually by a temporary partner of either person in the arrangement. So I know they are like to be less than reliable, but the other sources should assist your research, since I am sure that you read them before replying.

jelun

no propaganda please wrote:

I started reading about Sanger over twenty years a... (show quote)

I spoke to one of the other sources you used.
It is based not on interest in our fellow citizens but on general anti-abortion stands.
In other words, as I see so often the extreme conservative position, any lie and any effort is considered legitimate in the resistance to the law of the land.
It is more shrill screeching from those who want to be involved in women's medical choices.

no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun

jelun wrote:

I spoke to one of the other sources you used.
It is based not on interest in our fellow citizens but on general anti-abortion stands.
In other words, as I see so often the extreme conservative position, any lie and any effort is considered legitimate in the resistance to the law of the land.
It is more shrill screeching from those who want to be involved in women's medical choices.

Margaret Sanger, "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda," Oct 1921.

Published Article. Source: Birth Control Review, Oct. 1921, p. 5 , Margaret Sanger Microfilm S70:913 .

For a draft version of this article, see Library of Congress Microfilm 129:164. For related documents, see "Limitations of Eugenics," Sept. 1921 and Chapter VIII of "The Pivot of Civilization," 1922. An editorial introduction mentions the timeliness of this article in light of the recently held Second International Congress on Eugenics. Sanger submitted this paper to the Congress, but was rejected.
The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda
By Margaret Sanger

Seemingly every new approach to the great problem of the human race must manifest its vitality by running the gauntlet of prejudice, ridicule and misinterpretation. Eugenists may remember that not many years ago this program for race regeneration was subjected to the cruel ridicule of stupidity and ignorance. Today Eugenics is suggested by the most diverse minds as the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems. The most intransigent and daring teachers and scientists have lent their support to this great biological interpretation of the human race. The war has emphasized its necessity.

The doctrine of Birth Control is now passing through the stage of ridicule, prejudice and misunderstanding. A few years ago this new weapon of civilization and freedom was condemned as immoral, destructive, obscene. Gradually the criticisms are lessening-understanding is taking the place of misunderstanding. The eugenic and civilizational value of Birth Control is becoming apparent to the enlightened and the intelligent.

In the limited space of the present paper, I have time only to touch upon some of the fundamental convictions that form the basis of our Birth Control propaganda, and which, as I think you must agree, indicate that the campaign for Birth Control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal, with the final aims of Eugenics.

First: we are convinced that racial regeneration like individual regeneration, must come "from within." That is, it must be autonomous, self-directive, and not imposed from without. In other words, every potential parent, and especially every potential mother, must be brought to an acute realization of the primary and central importance of bringing children into this world.

Secondly: Not until the parents of the world are thus given control over their reproductive faculties will it ever be possible not alone to improve the quality of the generations of the future, but even to maintain civilization even at its present level. Only by self-control of this type, only by intelligent mastery of the procreative powers can the great mass of humanity be awakened to the great responsibility of parenthood.

Thirdly: we have come to the conclusion, based on widespread investigation and experience, that this education for parenthood and of parenthood must be based upon the needs and demands of the people themselves. An idealistic code of sexual ethics, imposed from above, a set of rules devised by high-minded theorists who fail to take into account the living conditions and desires of the submerged masses, can never be of the slightest value in effecting any changes in the mores of the people. Such systems have in the past revealed their woeful inability to prevent the sexual and racial chaos into which the world has today drifted.

The almost universal demand for practical education in Birth Control is one of the most hopeful signs that the masses themselves today possess the divine spark of regeneration. It remains for the courageous and the enlightened to answer this demand, to kindle the spark, to direct a thorough education in Eugenics based upon this intense interest.

Birth Control propaganda is thus the entering wedge for the Eugenic educator. In answering the needs of these thousands upon thousands of submerged mothers, it is possible to use this interest as the foundation for education in prophylaxis, sexual hygiene, and infant welfare. The potential mother is to be shown that maternity need not be slavery but the most effective avenue toward self-development and self-realization. Upon this basis only may we improve the quality of the race.

As an advocate of Birth Control, I wish to take advantage of the present opportunity to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the "unfit" and the "fit", admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and physically fit though less fertile parents of the educated and well-to-do classes. On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.

Birth Control is not advanced as a panacea by which past and present evils of dysgenic breeding can be magically eliminated. Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupidly cruel sentimentalism.

But to prevent the repetition, to effect the salvation of the generations of the futurenay of the generations of todayour greatest need is first of all the ability to face the situation without flinching, and to cooperate in the formation of a code of sexual ethics based upon a thorough biological and psychological understanding of human nature; and then to answer the questions and the needs of the people with all the intelligence and honesty at our command. If we can summon the bravery to do this, we shall best be serving the true interests of Eugenics, because our work will then have a practical and pragmatic value.

Subject Terms:

"unfit" to reproduce, MS on
birth control, movement
eugenics, birth control and
eugenics, MS on
eugenics, positive
International Congress of Eugenics, in 1921 (2nd, New York)
men, reproductive choices and decisions
parenthood, MS on
sexuality, working class
women, reproductive choices and decisions

Copyright 2003. Margaret Sanger Project

and you are telling me that even those Sanger wrote this and other papers extolling the selective abortion of the unfit physically, mentally or racially, she was not involved in eugenics to purify the human race. You have an interesting take on the subject then.

jelun

no propaganda please wrote:

Margaret Sanger, "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda," Oct 1921.

Published Article. Source: Birth Control Review, Oct. 1921, p. 5 , Margaret Sanger Microfilm S70:913 .

sting take on the subject then.

Edited due to raging BS.

It seems that you missed the point of this thread.
I will REPOST what you were unable to decipher.

I was taught to hold Margaret Sanger in high regard for the work she did to make birth control available.
Occasionally, the charges of her eugenics involvement come up in order to denigrate the work done by Planned Parenthood.
I thought that if there is a thread with information on her background and positions that would simplify debating the misinformation and hyperbole about her activities.
Please feel free to do this with any subject that comes up on a recurring basis and to add anything to Margaret ...
The more resources at our disposal the better, right?

One of these days you may understand.
There is a reason for this section to be titled LEANING LEFT.
If you really feel the need to go over the right wing lies about Margaret Sanger you can post that in other sections AGAIN and regurgitate the information 20, 30, or 50 times.
Just not here.