{"id":248148,"date":"2021-06-29T10:31:33","date_gmt":"2021-06-29T15:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=248148"},"modified":"2021-07-14T21:44:44","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T02:44:44","slug":"planned-parenthood-pretends-care-britney-spears-autonomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/planned-parenthood-pretends-care-britney-spears-autonomy\/","title":{"rendered":"Planned Parenthood pretends to care about Britney Spears’ bodily autonomy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pop star Britney Spears recently discussed the conservatorship she has been under for the past 13 years after suffering a mental health crisis in 2007. While a specific diagnosis has not been revealed<\/a>, she recently appeared before a judge asking for the conservatorship to be lifted,\u00a0alleging<\/a> numerous abuses against her, including the forced insertion of an IUD birth control device. Her testimony garnered support around the globe, including from one organization that has very little room to speak on the matter: Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n

Numerous Planned Parenthood affiliates posted on Twitter, saying they “stand with Britney<\/a>,” condemn “reproductive coercion<\/a>,” and believe that no one should make decisions about someone’s reproductive health<\/a> for them. Planned Parenthood president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson\u00a0released a statement<\/a> on the issue:<\/p>\n

It is incredibly distressing to hear the trauma that Britney Spears has been through \u2014 including the appalling news that she has not been able to remove her own IUD. We stand in solidarity with Britney and all women who face reproductive coercion. Your reproductive health is your own \u2014 and no one should make decisions about it for you. Every person should have the ability to make their own decisions about their bodies and exercise bodily autonomy.<\/em><\/p>\n

This statement is questionable in light of Planned Parenthood’s own past and present in the area of reproductive coercion.<\/p>\n

Forcible sterilization for the “unfit”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Margaret Sanger was the founder of the American Birth Control League (ABCL), which eventually became Planned Parenthood. Sanger and many others involved with Planned Parenthood were noted eugenicists who held the view that certain people should not be allowed to reproduce. Clarence Gamble<\/a>, heir to the Procter and Gamble fortune, served as director to both ABCL and Planned Parenthood’s boards. He, like Sanger, was a well-known eugenicist<\/a> who fought in favor of laws requiring the disabled and mentally ill to be sterilized against their will.<\/p>\n

Sanger herself supported\u00a0experimental birth control testing<\/a> on women in Puerto Rico without their knowledge or consent, and described people with disabilities or mental illness as “undesirables<\/a>” and “human weeds” who shouldn’t be allowed to breed. She also openly approved<\/a> of the 1927\u00a0Buck v. Bell<\/em> Supreme Court decision, which ruled that anyone deemed “unfit” could be sterilized without their consent.<\/p>\n

These weren’t just meaningless thoughts, kept only to philosophical discussions between Sanger and Gamble. Planned Parenthood actively participated in sterilization schemes in places like\u00a0North Carolina<\/a>. At Charlotte’s first Planned Parenthood facility, people were regularly sterilized \u2014 most of them minorities or low-income women<\/a>. Though Black Americans made up just 25% of the population in the area, between 1955 and 1966 they made up more than 80% of those who were sterilized. Planned Parenthood of Greater Charlotte would later award<\/a> Wallace Kuralt, the mastermind of the forcible sterilization scheme, its highest honor \u2014 the Margaret Sanger Award \u2014 in 1983, decades after eugenics had fallen from public favor.<\/p>\n