What pro-aborts can no longer deny: Margaret Sanger supported eugenics [more on eugenics]
January 10, 2011 (PublicDiscourse.com)
- Herman Cain’s remarks concerning Planned Parenthood’s promotion of
abortion to blacks thrust the organization and its founder once more
into the spotlight. Congressional attempts to defund Planned Parenthood
had already generated publicity. When Hillary Clinton received Planned
Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award in 2009, she was prompted to make an
apologia for accepting the award because of questions raised at a House
committee hearing. In each of these cases, the controversy centered on
the eugenic beliefs of Margaret Sanger (1879–1966), Planned Parenthood’s
founder.
To a Sanger supporter, the accusation of eugenics touches a nerve. To understand this, one must grasp the subconscious syllogism underlying the emotional reaction: Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood are progressive feminist institutions. Progressive feminism cannot coexist with eugenics, which is a malady of the right-wing. Therefore, Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood are free of eugenic contamination. QED.
Something new has happened over the last ten years, however, that challenges such easy assumptions, and both Cain’s and Clinton’s language reflected it. No one with any command of the facts can deny any more that Sanger was in some way a eugenicist.
First, scholars of women’s history have begun examining the feminist movement with more objectivity, producing a new literature that is less afraid to detail the unsavory aspects of feminist history.
To a Sanger supporter, the accusation of eugenics touches a nerve. To understand this, one must grasp the subconscious syllogism underlying the emotional reaction: Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood are progressive feminist institutions. Progressive feminism cannot coexist with eugenics, which is a malady of the right-wing. Therefore, Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood are free of eugenic contamination. QED.
Something new has happened over the last ten years, however, that challenges such easy assumptions, and both Cain’s and Clinton’s language reflected it. No one with any command of the facts can deny any more that Sanger was in some way a eugenicist.
First, scholars of women’s history have begun examining the feminist movement with more objectivity, producing a new literature that is less afraid to detail the unsavory aspects of feminist history.
