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Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger (1879 - 1966) was the founder of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). As an activist in the birth-control and population-control movements, she was one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. Many questions have been raised concerning her real views on eugenics, race, and human rights, and it is hard to separate the facts from fiction. The information presented here is drawn directly from her writings, with references.

 

Life and Organizations	Eugenics	Planned Parenthood's Connections to Eugenics
Race	Misattributed Quotes	Planned Parenthood's Claims and the Truth	Recommended Sources

 

Life and Organizations

 

Eugenics

 

Positive and Negative Eugenics	Politics	Persons with Disabilities	Racial Responsibility
Immigration	Human Horticulture	Birth Control Review	Charity
Forced Sterilization	Organizational Connections to the Eugenics Movement

 

What is most clear about Sanger, as will be shown from the excerpts that follow, is that she was an elitist bigot who believed in eugenics (which means, literally, "well born"), a popular pseudo-science that claimed to be able to blame societal ills on the heredity of the people who suffered those same ills. Eugenics designated some types of people "unfit" (generally, the poor and the disabled) and attempted to discourage or forcibly prevent those people from reproducing.

Originating in the late 19th century as a hybrid of evolutionary theory and Mendelian genetics by Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin, "eugenics" literally means "well born." It was popularized in the United States by Charles Davenport, who founded the Eugenic Records Office in Cold Springs Harbor, NY, with money from the Harriman railroad fortune.

Following other eugenicists, Sanger distinguished between "positive" and "negative" eugenics in her self-described "head book," The Pivot of Civilization (New York: Brentano's, 1922), p. 187. She disagreed with the former, which encouraged "fit" couples to have more children, but whole-heartedly supported the latter, which discouraged the "unfit" from reproducing, by force, if necessary. Sometimes Planned Parenthood claims she was not a eugenicist because she did not advocate positive eugenics, but this view overlooks her numerous statements in support of negative eugenics.

 

• "We should not minimize the great outstanding service of Eugenics for critical and diagnostic investigations. It demonstrates...that uncontrolled fertility is universally correlated with disease, poverty, overcrowding and the transmission of hereditable traits" (Pivot of Civilization, p. 174).
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• "This degeneration has already begun. Eugenists demonstrate that two-thirds of our manhood of military age are physically too unfit to shoulder a rifle; that the feeble-minded, the syphilitic, the irresponsible and the defective breed unhindered; ...that the vicious circle of mental and physical defect, delinquency and beggary is encouraged, by the unseeing and unthinking sentimentality of our age, to populate asylum, hospital and prison. All these things the Eugenist see and points out with a courage entirely admirable" (Ibid., p. 175).

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On the relation between eugenics and politics:

• "The danger of recruiting our numbers from the most ‘fertile stock’ is further emphasized when we recall that in a democracy like that of the United States every man and woman is permitted a vote in the government, and that it is the representatives of this grade of intelligence who may destroy our liberties, and who may thus be most far-reaching peril to the future of civilization" (Pivot of Civilization, p. 177).
  
  
• "On its [eugenics’] negative side it shows us that we are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all -- that the wealth of individuals and of state is being diverted from the development and the progress of human expression and civilization" (Ibid., p. 187).

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On the disabled:

• "Every single case of inherited defect, every malformed child, every congenitally tainted human being brought into this world is of infinite importance to that poor individual; but it is of scarcely less importance to the rest of us and to all of our children who must pay in one way or another for these biological and racial mistakes" (Pivot of Civilization, p. 274).
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• "No more children should be born when the parents, though healthy themselves, find that their children are physically or mentally defective" (Woman and the New Race [NY:Blue Ribbon Books, 1920], p.89).
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• Birth control "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" (Ibid., p. 229).

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On "racial responsibilty":

• "Feeble-mindedness perpetuates itself from the ranks of those who are blandly indifferent to their racial responsibilities. And it is largely this type of humanity we are now drawing upon to populate our world for generations to come. In this orgy of multiplying and replenishing the earth, this type is pari passu multiplying and perpetuation those direst evils which we must, if civilization is to survive, extirpate by the very roots" ("The Need of Birth Control in America, " in Birth Control: Facts and Responsibilities, edited by Adolf Meyer, 11-49 [Baltimore: The Williams and Wilkins Co., 1925]).

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On immigration and parenthood:

• "Anybody in this vast country is at perfect liberty to become a father or a mother! You may be diseased, you may be a mental defective, a moron, a pauper, a habitual criminal; you may be insane, irresponsible, with no knowledge of the laws of health, hygiene, or common decency; yet you may bring not merely one child into these United States. You are encouraged to bring a dozen....I, for one, believe that it is high time to recognize that if it is not right to import into our country individuals from whom we must later protect ourselves, it is even more imperative to protect ourselves and to protect American society today and tomorrow from the procreation of such individuals within our gates" (Ibid., p. 27-28).

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On human horticulture:

• "Birth Control is not merely an individual problem; it is not merely a national question, it concerns the whole wide world, the ultimate destiny of the human race. In his last book, Mr. [H.G.] Wells speaks of the meaningless, aimless lives which cram this world of ours, hordes of people who are born, who live, yet who have done absolutely nothing to advance the race one iota. Their lives are hopeless repetitions. All that they have said has been said before; all that they have done has been done better before. Such human weeds clog up the path, drain up the energies and the resources of this little earth. We must clear the way for a better world; we must cultivate our garden" (Ibid., p. 47-48).

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Birth Control Review (BCR)

Sanger founded and edited the Birth Control Review (BCR) from 1917 to 1929. Many eugenicists were published in it, and she made many eugenic comments in her own articles. Be aware that Sanger did not edit the journal after January 1929, so any articles published after that time cannot be attributed to her editorial work. (There were, for example, articles by Nazis in the Birth Control Review in the 1930's, but Sanger would not have had anything to do with their presence in the journal.) The following are just a few examples:

 

• "But is is well to emphasize that we advocates of birth control are not so much disturbed by the stationary birth rate of the thinking classes, as by the reckless propagation of the ignorant" ("An Answer to Mr. Roosevelt," Birth Control Review, vol. 1, no. 5 (Dec. 1917), p. 14.
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• "From the lips of the mother of handicapped children, from the bearers of the unfit, comes up the cry for Birth Control....Did this birth help the race?" ("The Cry for Deliverance," Birth Control Review, Feb. 1919, p. 5, editorial comment and heading)
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• "Like the advocates of Birth Control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit. Both are seeking a single end but they lay emphasis upon different methods... Eugenics without Birth Control seems to us a house builded upon the sands. It is at the mercy of the rising stream of the unfit" ("Birth Control and Racial Betterment," op. cit., p. 11-12.
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• "...the campaign for Birth Control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal with the final aims of Eugenics....the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the overfertility of the mentally and physically defective....Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon society if it continue complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupidly cruel sentimentalism" ("The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda," Birth Control Review, Oct. 1921, p. 5).

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Sanger on Charity

A recurrent theme in Sanger's and in all eugenicists' writings was the perceived burden which the "unfit" put on them, the self-proclaimed "fit." They deeply resented the fertility of the poor and felt that they had to pay for the poor's reproductive "mistakes."

In a chapter in her book The Pivot of Civilization entitled "The Cruelty of Charity," Sanger accuses charities of perpetuating the very problems that they try to solve by enabling the poor to reproduce more.

• "Organized charity is itself the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those vast complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents. My criticism therefore, is not directed at the ‘failure’ of philanthropy, but rather at its success" (The Pivot of Civilization [NY: Brentano's, 1922], p. 108).

Sanger's strongest objection is that she is expected to help these people:

• "Such philanthropy...encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant" (Ibid., pp. 116-117).

Those who would help the poor and unfortunate through charity suffer from excessive sentimentalism:

• "let us not close our eyes to one of the greatest dangers inherent in such warm-hearted humanitarianism. For it is a curious but neglected fact that the very types which in all kindness should be obliterated from the human stock, have been permitted to reproduce themselves and to perpetuate their group, succored by the policy of indiscriminate charity of warm hearts uncontrolled by cool heads" ("The Need of Birth Control in America," Birth Control: Facts and Responsibilities, Adolf Meyer, editor [Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins Co., 1925], p. 15).

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Sanger on Forced Sterilization

Instead of charity, Sanger believed that one of the only ways to control the alleged over- reproduction of the "unfit" was to sterilize them, through incentives or through force. She was not alone. In 1927, in the Buck v. Bell case, the Supreme Court determined that the state of Virginia's law allowing the forced sterilization of the inhabitants of its state mental institutions was constitutional. Representing the seven other justices who assented, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, wrote in the majority opinion, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." A friend of Holmes, British socialist and jurist Professor Harold Laski, wrote him jovially after the decision, "My love to you both. Get that stomach better, please. Sterilise all the unfit, among whom I include all fundamentalists." From 1907 through 1963, over 63,000 sterilizations in over 30 states occurred in accordance with state eugenic sterilization laws (see Jonas Robitscher, editor, Eugenic Sterilization [Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas Publisher, 1973]).

According to Sanger, who should be sterilized:

• "But modern society, which has respected the personal liberty of the individual only in regard to the unrestricted and irresponsible bringing into the world of filth and poverty an overcrowding procession of infants foredoomed to death or hereditable disease, is now confronted with the problem of protecting itself and its future generations against the inevitable consequences of this long-practised policy of laiser-faire. The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately....Moreover, when we realize that each feeble-minded person is a potential source of an endless progeny of defect, we prefer the policy of immediate sterilization..." (The Pivot of Civilization, pp. 101-102).

Her only objection to sterilization was its limited efficacy:

• "While I personally believe in the sterilization of the feeble-minded, the insane and the syphiletic [sic], I have not been able to discover that these measures are more than superficial deterrents when applied to the constantly growing stream of the unfit. They are excellent means of meeting a certain phase of the situation, but I believe in regard to these, as in regard to other eugenic means, that they do not go to the bottom of the matter" ("Birth Control and Racial Betterment," Birth Control Review, Feb. 1919, p. 12).

The role of the federal government:

• "It now remains for the United States government to set a sensible example to the world by offering a bonus or a yearly pension to all obviously unfit parents who allow themselves to be sterilized by harmless and scientific means. In this way the moron and the diseased would have no posterity to inherit their unhappy condition.... [A]sk the government to first take off the burdens of the insane and feebleminded from your backs. Sterilization for these is the remedy" ("The Function of Sterilization,"Birth Control Review, Oct. 1926, p. 299).
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• She called for Congress to set up a " Parliament of Population," among whose tasks would include: " to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring....[and] to give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization" ("A Plan for Peace," Birth Control Review, April 1932, p. 107).
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• Harry H. Laughlin wrote the "Model Sterilization" law for eugenic sterilization, the law on which the Nazis later based their 1933 sterilization law. Laughlin was on Sanger's American Birth Control League Board.
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Organizational Connections to the Eugenics Movement

Sanger worked with the American Eugenics Society (AES). This was the major eugenics organization in America; its name was changed in 1974 to the Society for the Study of Social Biology. Sanger had many organizational connections to the AES, among other eugenic groups.

• Of the clergymen, scientists, and physicians listed on the National Council of her American Birth Control League (ABCL) in the 1920s, at least 23 of the 50 people were involved at a prominent level in eugenics, either as members of the Board of Directors of the AES or by otherwise publicly supporting her eugenics agenda.
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• The first issue of The Birth Control Review(Feb. 1917, p. 15) contains a "Working Bibliography on Birth Control" which lists half a dozen eugenics books as recommended reading.
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• Sanger was a dues-paying member of the AES (see the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Margaret Sanger Papers Collection, letter, AES to Margaret Sanger, 9/29/63).
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• The AES officially endorsed her group (Ibid., note, 5/32).
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• The AES testified for birth control bills which Sanger's National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control (NCFLBC, a forerunner of Planned Parenthood) supported, and they pledged their complete support of her efforts (Ibid., AES Board Meeting minutes, 1/9/35).
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• Sanger and her birth control clinic's main doctor, Dr. Hannah Stone, wrote several times on eugenic topics for Eugenics, the journal of the American Eugenics Society. See, for example, "Symposium on Genius and Birth Control, " featuring both Stone and Sanger, vol. 2, no. 3 (March 1929), pp. 22-24; and Stone, "The Birth Control Clinic of Today and Tomorrow," vol.2, no. 5 (May 1929), pp. 9-11.
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• Sanger friend and colleague Dorothy Brush was on the board of the Brush Foundation, specifically founded for the purpose of pursuing eugenic goals (see Dorothy Brush, "The Brush Foundation (Eugenical Institutions 5)," Eugenics, vol. 2, no. 2 [Feb. 1929], pp. 17-19). The Brush Foundation funded Sanger and her groups often, and it provided the start-up money for the International Planned Parenthood Federation (Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America [NY: Simon and Schuster, 1992], p. 410).

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