{"id":203338,"date":"2020-02-06T16:38:46","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T22:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=203338"},"modified":"2021-07-14T22:07:56","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T03:07:56","slug":"black-community-wary-planned-parenthood-clarence-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/black-community-wary-planned-parenthood-clarence-thomas\/","title":{"rendered":"Why should the Black community be wary of Planned Parenthood? Justice Clarence Thomas explains."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Race-based abortion is 20th-century eugenics, according to United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In a multi-page summary opinion written last year, Thomas stated, “Enshrining a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement.”<\/p>\n

The\u00a0case<\/a>\u00a0for which Thomas wrote his opinion was\u00a0Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc<\/em>., which centered on two provisions of Indiana\u2019s abortion law regarding the disposal of fetal remains by abortion providers (which was ultimately upheld by the Court) as well as regarding discriminatory abortions (which was struck down by the Court). Read more details on the Supreme Court case here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Eugenics Tree (Image: Courtesy of the APS)<\/p><\/div>\n

Justice Thomas wrote a lengthy opinion<\/a>\u00a0in the case, in which he linked eugenics ideology to Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger<\/a>. But he also mentioned upon one of Sanger’s notorious American Birth Control League directors, Lothrop Stoddard, writing:<\/p>\n

[…E]ugenicist Lothrop Stoddard argued that the “prodigious birth-rate” of the nonwhite races was bringing the world to a racial tipping point…. Stoddard feared that without “artificial barriers,” the races “will increasingly mingle, and the inevitable result will be the supplanting or absorption of the higher by the lower types….” Eugenic arguments like these helped precipitate the Immigration Act of 1924, which significantly reduced immigration from outside of Western and Northern Europe….<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more about Stoddard’s views here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Justice Clarence Thomas, who is Black, addressed the suspicions that the Black leaders of Sanger’s time had about “family planning<\/a>” and abortion being used as a tool for Black genocide. Thomas wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Avoiding the word \u201ceugenics\u201d did not assuage everyone\u2019s fears. Some black groups saw \u201c\u2018family planning\u2019 as a euphemism for race genocide\u201d and believed that \u201cblack people [were] taking the brunt of the \u2018planning\u2019\u201d under Planned Parenthood\u2019s \u201cghetto approach\u201d to distributing its services.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Thomas was absolutely correct; Live Action News\u00a0has published several examples of how the Black community was opposed to population control measures:<\/p>\n