Planned Parenthood

[itsbob (Premo)]

TIME 100: Margaret Sanger

It seems to me she should be regarded the equivalent to the female Martin Luther King..

But I can understand why you hate her..

[tommyjones]

Originally Posted by Radiant1

Look, if Bob says that the pro-lifers are quoting out of context then he must know differently by having read all of Sanger's stuff, correct? He accused Libby and myself of being ignorant and parroting out of context quotes, so he can be the one to enlighten us by printing out Sanger's quotes in their entirety. Until he does we have no real reason to believe that any of those quotes are out of context anyway. If he's right he will put up or shutup.

So far, Bob has shutup. Do you know why? I suspect it's because he's talking out of his azz, but he's more than welcome to prove me wrong on that suspicion.

So, since I have your attention Tommy, do you think Margaret Sanger was a racist and a proponent of eugenics?

well i guess its your turn now sweets......

please make sure to read ALL of bobs posts before responding since he went out of his way to do the homework for you.

[Radiant1]

Originally Posted by itsbob

Then by all means, post one of these articles in it's entirety.. and not snippets taken from anti-abortion sites.

That's what I was asking you to do instead of posting snippets as you did below.

Originally Posted by itsbob

It is our experience, as it was our aim, that as a result of child-spacing, and adequate care of mothers, death rates would be reduced. It is now a fact that as a result of birth control, the survival rate among mothers and children is higher. There is less suffering for all groups.

Originally Posted by itsbob

• A sickly race is a weak race. As long as Negro mothers die in childbirth at two and one-half times the rate of white mothers, as long as Negro babies are dying at twice the rate of white babies, colored homes will be unhappy.

Originally Posted by itsbob

What hangs over the South is that the Negro has been in servitude. The white southerner is slow to forget this. His attitude is the archaic in this age. Supremacist thinking belongs in the museum.

Originally Posted by itsbob

• No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

• Greater understanding and practice of planned parenthood, through the use of contraceptive measures prescribed by doctors and clinics, will mean that there will be more strong and healthy children and fewer defective and handicapped babies unable to find a useful or happy place in life.

• Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers -- and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.

• It is our experience, as it was our aim, that as a result of child-spacing, and adequate care of mothers, death rates would be reduced. It is now a fact that as a result of birth control, the survival rate among mothers and children is higher. There is less suffering for all groups.

Most of this is great and good for her! I'd like to think the woman wasn't a racist. However, the one that I bolded reeks of eugenics. Since when are handicapped children necessarily not useful or happy? Since when is it guaranteed that a pregnancy that is wanted doesn't result in a weak, unhealthy and "defective" child?

I was asking you to address the specific quotes that came from pro-life sites that you claim were taken out of context, but you didn't. Since you didn't, I now have what Tommy said I would, two sides of a propaganda quagmire. You also didn't reference where these quotes came from, you know citing your source/s. You didn't happen to pick them up from a pro-choice website did you?

It wasn't exactly what I was looking for but thanks for going to the trouble anyway.

[Radiant1]

Originally Posted by tommyjones

well i guess its your turn now sweets......

please make sure to read ALL of bobs posts before responding since he went out of his way to do the homework for you.

The homework was his, not mine. And thanks for calling me "sweets".

[tommyjones]

Originally Posted by Radiant1

The homework was his, not mine. And thanks for calling me "sweets".

and as i predicted, even when confronted with direct and full quotes, you refuse to accept that the anti-abortion propaganda you have swallowed is false.


you hone in on a perfectly benign passage and claim her desire for healthier women having healthier babies is somehow racist.

the prejudice is on your part, as you have judged BEFORE you have the information and refuse to become educated on the subject.

[Radiant1]

Originally Posted by tommyjones

and as i predicted, even when confronted with direct and full quotes, you refuse to accept that the anti-abortion propaganda you have swallowed is false.

I still don't have the full context of the quotes that Bob claims were out of context.

Originally Posted by tommyjones

you hone in on a perfectly benign passage and claim her desire for healthier women having healthier babies is somehow racist.

You call it benign, I call it "reeks of eugenics".

Originally Posted by tommyjones

the prejudice is on your part, as you have judged BEFORE you have the information and refuse to become educated on the subject.

I never refuse to be educated, and I'll retract my statements about Margaret Sanger being a racist and proponent of eugenics if it's proven wrong, but Bob didn't cite sources and did no more than what he accuses pro-life sites of doing, posting snippets.

I guess you're right, I'm just going to have to read the crap for myself in its entirety to make an educated judgment; however, I have a lot of other stuff on my list of things to do so it might take some time before I do so.

[tommyjones]

Originally Posted by Radiant1

I still don't have the full context of the quotes that Bob claims were out of context.

the difference between what bob posted and the quotes on the site you posted is that his are all full sentences, while the ones from you had only a few words attributed to her with a lenghthy "explanation" (read slant) of what she meant.

Originally Posted by radiant

You call it benign, I call it "reeks of eugenics".

there is a difference between "have fewer kids and be healthier when you do and you will have healthier kids" and "Kill any baby that isn't going to further the master race"
[/quote]

Originally Posted by radiant

I never refuse to be educated, and I'll retract my statements about Margaret Sanger being a racist and proponent of eugenics if it's proven wrong, but Bob didn't cite sources and did no more than what he accuses pro-life sites of doing, posting snippets.

I guess you're right, I'm just going to have to read the crap for myself in its entirety to make an educated judgment; however, I have a lot of other stuff on my list of things to do so it might take some time before I do so.

now who would have freaking thought.....

[Radiant1]

Originally Posted by tommyjones

the difference between what bob posted and the quotes on the site you posted is that his are all full sentences, while the ones from you had only a few words attributed to her with a lenghthy "explanation" (read slant) of what she meant.

As I said before the site I posted isn't the only one, and in fact wasn't the site that Bob was fussin' about to begin with, not to mention the site I posted actually cites its sources, so at least when I do get around to reading Sanger's material I'll know where to look.

Originally Posted by tommyjones

there is a difference between "have fewer kids and be healthier when you do and you will have healthier kids" and "Kill any baby that isn't going to further the master race"

"Greater understanding and practice of planned parenthood, through the use of contraceptive measures prescribed by doctors and clinics, will mean that there will be more strong and healthy children and fewer defective and handicapped babies unable to find a useful or happy place in life."

I'll still call it as I see it. It reeks.

Originally Posted by tommyjones

now who would have freaking thought.....

[libby]

RACIST AND EUGENICIST STATEMENTS
BY MARGARET SANGER, THE FOUNDER OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD
"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with
social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most
successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal.
We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro
population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if
it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
-- Margaret Sanger's December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255
Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith
Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in
Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth
Control in America . New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
"Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying
... demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism ...
[Philanthropists] encourage 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 ... 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."
-- Margaret Sanger. The Pivot of Civilization , 1922. Chapter on "The
Cruelty of Charity," pages 116, 122, and 189. Swarthmore College Library
edition.
"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.
"I think you must agree ... that the campaign for birth control is not
merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims
of eugenics ... Birth control propaganda is thus the entering wedge for the
eugenic educator.
"As an advocate of birth control I wish ... 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 feebleminded,
the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be
held up for emulation.
"On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and
discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective."
-- Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda."
Birth Control Review , October 1921, page 5.
"Give dysgenic groups [people with 'bad genes'] in our population
their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization."
-- Margaret Sanger, April 1932 Birth Control Review .
"The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless
ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose
religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers.
Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper
element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their
support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the
procreation of this group should be stopped."
-- Margaret Sanger. Speech quoted in Birth Control: What It Is, How It
Works, What It Will Do. The Proceedings of the First American Birth
Control Conference . Held at the Hotel Plaza, New York City, November 11-
12, 1921. Published by the Birth Control Review , Gothic Press, pages 172
and 174.
"In passing, we should here recognize the difficulties presented by the
idea of 'fit' and 'unfit.' Who is to decide this question? The grosser,
the more obvious, the undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be
discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. But among the
writings of the representative Eugenists [sic], one cannot ignore the
distinct middle-class bias that prevails."
-- Margaret Sanger, quoted in Charles Valenza. "Was Margaret Sanger a
Racist?" Family Planning Perspectives , January-February 1985, page 44.
"Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race."
-- Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control . New York: New
York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.
"There is only one reply to a request for a higher birthrate among the
intelligent, and that is to ask the government to first take the burden of
the insane and feeble-minded from your back. [Mandatory] sterilization for
these is the answer."
-- Margaret Sanger, October 1926 Birth Control Review .
"[Slavs, Latin, and Hebrew immigrants are] human weeds ... a
deadweight of human waste ... [Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a] menace to
the race."
"Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent
Multiplication of this bad stock."
-- Margaret Sanger, April 1933 Birth Control Review .
"[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden
of unwanted children ... [Women must have the right] to live ... to love
... to be lazy ... to be an unmarried mother ... to create ... to destroy
... The marriage bed is the most degenerative influence in the social order
... The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members
is to kill it."

[libby]

Sources cited.