Meet Margaret Sanger - pioneer and mother of the modern reproductive pharmaceutical and abortion industries in the western world.  Any discussion of medical ethics in the modern age is incomplete without her.   Often cited as a heroine by pro abortion groups, and as a monster by pro life groups, her life story is more complex and conflicted than either narrow perspective would suggest.  Born in New York in 1879, Sanger grew up in a large family – the size of which she blamed on her mother’s death from cervical cancer.  Yet it was her older sisters her paid her tuition when she went to college.  She believed in marital fidelity and motherly responsibility, and even railed against the evils of masturbation, yet abandoned her husband and toddlers for Europe in 1915 – soon after which her 5 year old daughter died from tuberculosis.  She was rumored to have had numerous affairs, and traveled the world extensively as founder of a few organizations that first employed her coined term of “birth control.”  The organizations she founded and was involved with eventually became the Planned Parenthood of today.

Central to Sanger’s activism was her belief in eugenics, which was popular in the period between the world wars.  Although she was a socialist, she was against charity for the poor - prefering to eliminate them via preventing their reproduction. Also an avowed atheist, Sanger was not squeamish about expressing her white supremacist views regarding who should and should not be allowed to reproduce.  A Social Darwinist, Sanger sought to reduce and eventually eliminate those populations which she saw as “dysgenic,” among them blacks and other races she considered less evolved. Eugenics was very popular in Virgina at the time, in large part due to its popularity at the University of Virginia. Thus, Virginia became infamous for its Racial Purity Act as well as winning the Buck vs. Bell decision in the Supreme Court enabling thousands of forced sterilizations thereafter.  During this period, Sanger became a popular speaker at Ku Klux Klan rallies.

A few of many notable Sanger quotes:

“The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through Religious appeal. We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out the idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

“The Masses of Negroes… particularly from the south, still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among whites is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.”

“Keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.”

“Apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.”

“It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things.”

But while these racist beliefs usually get the most attention, perhaps the most obvious fallacy was and is her idea that science could come up with a method of this “birth control” that could prevent conception exclusively and not cause abortions afterward.  Back in her day, Sanger advocated for the distribution of organic condoms that didn’t work, dangerous spermicides that also didn’t work, and even advocated douching with boric acid and taking quinine.  Throughout her life, Sanger hoped – in vain - that a drug could be developed that would prevent conception only and not work after conception.  To her credit, Sanger was not an abortionist.

Sanger in 1916:  "To each group we explained what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun."

While she may not have been able to forecast the future, Sanger’s activism eventually gave rise to the widespread use of the “birth control” pill, and with it the “sexual revolution.”  And while that  may have seemed like a good thing to her upon her death in 1966, she could not have known what a total failure the pill would be in preventing abortions.  Indeed, the change in culture it brought made the demand for surgical abortions skyrocket in addition to the early chemical abortions it caused.  Sanger’s hope that abortions would become unnecessary due to birth control proved to be very naïve.  The exact opposite happened all over the northern world, giving rise to countless millions of abortions.  For women, breast cancer rates skyrocketed.  What was an obscure disease in 1960 affecting 1 in 25 US women now affects 1 in 8, and these catastrophic raises in incidence have been seen in most all of the countries that embraced steroids as a method of preventing pregnancies.  In a tragic and ironic twist, Sanger also died promoting steroids that cause the very same cervical cancer that killed her mother, whose death Sanger credited for beginning her activism to begin with.

Sadly, some Sanger traditions do live on in today’s Planned Parenthood clinics, almost 70% of which are located in minority and poor neighborhoods across America, and cater to a disproportionately high percentage of African American women - who in turn suffer from double the premature birth rate as other women in the US.  Lila Rose and Live Action Films recently caught Planned Parenthood continuing in the tradition and the wishes of their founder. 

You can hear this for yourself below:

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