{"id":247031,"date":"2021-06-23T12:53:03","date_gmt":"2021-06-23T17:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=247031"},"modified":"2021-07-14T21:44:59","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T02:44:59","slug":"planned-parenthood-cancel-sanger-save-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/planned-parenthood-cancel-sanger-save-face\/","title":{"rendered":"Planned Parenthood’s canceling of its founder is about saving face, not ‘reckoning’ with her legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Planned Parenthood’s latest and most creative marketing strategy seems to be ‘canceling’ its own founder, Margaret Sanger. Despite attempts to put distance between Sanger and the abortion conglomerate’s modern-day operations,\u00a0Planned Parenthood hasn’t really “reckoned” with racism; Sanger is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. After more than a century of accepting Sanger’s racist, eugenicist ideologies and lauding her as a hero, the\u00a0move to ‘cancel’ her appears to be in response to the pro-life movement’s relentless exposure of the truth \u2014\u00a0not genuine regret about the corporation’s past and present racism.<\/p>\n

This year, Planned Parenthood submitted an application to remove<\/a> Sanger’s name from Margaret Sanger Square, located in front of its flagship Manhattan Health Center (previously<\/a>\u00a0known as the\u00a0Margaret Sanger Center<\/a>). A May 2021 video conference meeting<\/a> discussing this application featured Merle McGee, the Chief Equity and Engagement Officer of Planned Parenthood Greater New York (PPGNY). McGee\u00a0exposed the real<\/em> reason for Planned Parenthood’s efforts to cancel Sanger in a time of racial tension: Sanger has been “weaponized<\/a> by the anti-abortion extremists.”<\/p>\n

“… [T]he removal of Margaret Sanger’s name from the intersection is a decision that we’ve made as a part of our reckoning with Sanger’s legacy,” McGee stated, noting that the “reckoning” is part of Planned Parenthood’s “reviving radical<\/a>” initiative,.<\/p>\n

But the question remains: Is Planned Parenthood truly “reckoning” with its heritage, or is this simply a marketing technique?<\/p>\n

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Margaret Sanger Center renamed Planned Parenthood Greater New York signage 26 Bleecker St (Image: Google Street view 2019)<\/p><\/div>\n

McGee acknowledged that Sanger’s philosophy of “eugenics” was “ableist and racist.”\u00a0Yet, instead of openly exposing this years ago, the organization embraced and lauded Sanger, whose eugenic philosophy led to her work establishing Planned Parenthood and becoming a stalwart of the birth control movement, as well as her lesser known\u00a0advocacy<\/a>\u00a0of euthanasia.\u00a0Sanger held such a strong belief in eugenics that she embedded<\/a> eugenics proponents\u00a0deeply within her American Birth Control League (ABCL) organization,<\/a>\u00a0which became Planned Parenthood in 1942.<\/p>\n

But McGee claimed that Sanger\u2019s “actions some hundred years on continue to be weaponized by the anti-abortion extremists and opponents that you see outside of our health center every day.”<\/p>\n

This remark makes it appear as if the \u201cweaponization\u201d of Sanger’s history is the real motivation behind the corporation’s move to suddenly make such a strident effort to\u00a0cancel<\/a> her. Before last year, her racist legacy didn’t seem to bother them very much.<\/p>\n

As McGee noted on the video meeting, Planned Parenthood made one previous attempt to address Sanger’s racism \u2014 in 2016 (not 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, or 2000).\u00a0“Planned Parenthood, beginning in 2016, began to attempt to reckon with Margaret Sanger’s legacy and folks were left feeling underwhelmed<\/em> by the effort at the time,”\u00a0she stated.<\/p>\n

That year, Planned Parenthood celebrated its 100-year existence, and instead of reckoning<\/em> with Sanger’s racist legacy as McGee claimed, Planned Parenthood boasted that the organization was founded on the “revolutionary idea that women should have the information and care they need to live strong, healthy lives and fulfill their dreams\u201d\u00a0\u2014 complete with a zoomed-in photo of Sanger’s face.<\/p>\n

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If Planned Parenthood was actually sincere in dealing with its racist past and present, why did the corporation keep<\/a> Sanger\u2019s name on its abortion facilities until very recently? And why did now-president Alexis McGill-Johnson attempt to defend<\/a> Sanger publicly?<\/p>\n

Even when the organization had begun to scrub<\/a> Sanger’s name from its website in 2019, there was no public reckoning of her racism. That did not occur until\u00a02020,\u00a0when accusations of\u00a0systemic racism<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0white supremacy<\/a>\u00a0from within the corporation surfaced publicly. At that point, Planned Parenthood\u00a0had to\u00a0admit<\/a>\u00a0the racist legacy of its founder. Planned Parenthood\u00a0corporate<\/a>, along with\u00a0at least 19 affiliates, also\u00a0acknowledged<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0present-day<\/em>\u00a0problem of\u00a0systemic racism\u00a0within the organization.<\/p>\n

Yet McGee claimed on the video,\u00a0“It is past time we reckon with our history as an institution, and we reckon as a nation with our legacy of institutional structural and systemic racism… and this is our place, and… our moment to step into that work and show up for communities of color in the way that this institution has not in its hundred plus years.”<\/p>\n

She also claimed<\/a>, “Margaret Sanger’s legacy… is documented in several records \u2014\u00a0including records by folks who are supportive of Margaret Sanger’s legacy \u2014 that, in fact, she was a proponent and spoke openly about her support of eugenics as part of her anti-immigrant and anti-disabled people views and opinions… [T]here are plenty of texts that actually clearly outline… the facts of Margaret Sanger’s participation and support for the eugenics movement,” she added.<\/p>\n

And yet it took all this time for the corporation to even consider<\/em> questioning Sanger’s beliefs, which it had excused, justified, and downplayed up to that point.<\/p>\n