{"id":243660,"date":"2021-04-22T07:34:22","date_gmt":"2021-04-22T12:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=243660"},"modified":"2021-07-14T21:46:24","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T02:46:24","slug":"planned-parenthood-ceo-condemnation-sanger-hollow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/planned-parenthood-ceo-condemnation-sanger-hollow\/","title":{"rendered":"Planned Parenthood CEO’s condemnation of founder Margaret Sanger’s ideals rings hollow"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This week, Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson wrote an op-ed<\/a> for the New York Times, saying that the nation’s most profitable abortion chain would no longer make excuses for the racist, eugenicist beliefs of its founder, Margaret Sanger. The pro-life movement has long criticized Sanger’s beliefs, while Planned Parenthood not only made excuses for Sanger, but lauded her as a “trailblazer,” a “true visionary,” and a women’s rights hero<\/a>. Fact-checking websites like Politico even ran interference<\/a>, claiming that Sanger’s ideas weren’t all that bad, and she was a hero of “choice.”<\/p>\n

Though Johnson claimed in her op-ed that Planned Parenthood is done making excuses for Sanger’s unacceptable views, Planned Parenthood’s very reason for existence<\/em> is based on Sanger’s views and those of her questionable cohorts who played an undeniably large part in the corporation’s history.\u00a0In other words, for Planned Parenthood to disassociate entirely from Sanger’s views would mean Planned Parenthood would cease to exist.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0One every 89 seconds: Newest Planned Parenthood report shows record number of abortions<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

McGill Johnson wrote, “Until recently, we have hidden behind the assertion that her beliefs were the norm for people of her class and era, always being sure to name her work alongside that of W.E.B. Dubois and other Black freedom fighters. But the facts are complicated.”<\/p>\n

The facts, as McGill Johnson admitted, are that Sanger accepted a speaking invitation<\/a> from the Ku Klux Klan, approved experimental testing of the birth control pill on Puerto Rican women<\/a> without their knowledge or consent, and endorsed the Buck v. Bell<\/em>\u00a0Supreme Court decision<\/a>\u00a0allowing anyone deemed “unfit” to be sterilized against their will.<\/p>\n

Yet even though McGill Johnson claimed to be done making excuses for Sanger, her condemnation was rather mild.<\/p>\n

“We don\u2019t know what was in Sanger\u2019s heart, and we don\u2019t need to in order to condemn her harmful choices,” she wrote. “What we have is a history of focusing on white womanhood relentlessly. Whether our founder was a racist is not a simple yes or no question. Our reckoning is understanding her full legacy, and its impact. Our reckoning is the work that comes next.”<\/p>\n

Yet Planned Parenthood seems to be completely unwilling to fully abandon<\/em> Sanger’s harmful foundation.<\/p>\n