The spirit of Sanger lives. Now, it has set up shop in East Knoxville.

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/johnson


But at least one pro-choice liberal hasn't completely let go of Sanger's ideas.


In a 2009 interview with the New York Times, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked about the court decision that led to the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of taxpayer funds for abortion. Ginsburg said, "Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe (v. Wade) was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of."

The message of the advertisement was ominous, one that should send shivers down the spine of a civilized nation. "More than 2,000,000 babies will be born in America this year," the ad read. "Within 15 years, 738,386 will be dead, crippled, tubercular, mentally deficient, delinquent, maladjusted 'problem children'… The First Key to Strong National Health [is] BIRTH CONTROL."

This call to pre-emptively rid America of the diseased and maladjusted, according to the March 31, 1941, issue of Time magazine, was sponsored by the National Committee of Planned Parenthood on behalf of Margaret Sanger's Birth Control Federation of America. Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood in 1916, was a proponent of eugenics, the belief that humankind would benefit if the "unfit" didn't reproduce while the "fit" procreated profusely.

Sanger's philosophy and the foundations of Planned Parenthood matter now that the pro-abortion organization has located a clinic in East Knoxville, an area with a heavy concentration of African-Americans. Pastor Cecil Clark of True Vine Baptist Church, a black congregation, summed up the suspicions of many: "I think (Planned Parenthood) target(s) black neighborhoods and black women, Hispanics and poor people."

Statistics from the Tennessee Department of Health support Clark's concerns. In 2008, nonwhite babies were aborted nearly four times more often than white children in Tennessee. In fact, more abortions were performed on nonwhites than whites - 6,986 vs. 6,876 - even though white females between the ages of 10 and 44 outnumbered nonwhites by more than 830,000. In Knox County, nonwhites suffered abortion at twice the rate of whites.

With signs cropping up that call black children an "endangered species" and Web sites decrying a "black genocide," Planned Parenthood continues Sanger's practice of locating clinics in nonwhite neighborhoods. As Pastor Johnny Watson of Bethel AME Church said, "Seventy percent of their clinics are in minority neighborhoods, and that alone should tell you something."


Though Planned Parenthood President Jeff Teague often notes that his clinic doesn't perform abortions, he doesn't tell the whole story: Planned Parenthood freely refers clients to clinics that do.

Planned Parenthood doesn't tell the complete truth about its founder either. Economist Julianne Malveaux, who writes commentary for USA Today, wrote approvingly of Sanger's work to give women "reproductive freedom" in a 2001 piece for womensenews.org. But Malveaux, an African-American, saw Sanger as "a tarnished heroine whose embrace of the eugenics movement showed racial insensitivity."
Malveaux quoted Sanger's writings. "Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying ... demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism," Sanger wrote in 1922 in "The Pivot of Civilization." Sanger wrote in a 1921 article, "The most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective."
Malveaux posits that Sanger may have changed her views later in life, and Planned Parenthood goes to great lengths to beat back accusations that Sanger was racist and distance itself from Sanger's embrace of eugenics. But at least one pro-choice liberal hasn't completely let go of Sanger's ideas.
In a 2009 interview with the New York Times, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked about the court decision that led to the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of taxpayer funds for abortion. Ginsburg said, "Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe (v. Wade) was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of."

Apparently the spirit of Sanger lives. Now, it has set up shop in East Knoxville.