The Smithsonian Honors a Racist

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery is currently exhibiting its “Women of Our Time: Twentieth Century Photographs” exhibit. The collection includes a broad range of ninety history-making women, including First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and runner Marion Jones. The exhibition runs until February 2009. One of the photographs included in the Smithsonian's exhibition is that of Margaret Sanger, the founder of “non-profit” abortion giant Planned Parenthood. Sanger is described on the virtual tour of the exhibit as a “reformer” who faced “stiff opposition” with the “courage of a wounded tiger.” Planned Parenthood's website also describes Ms. Sanger as a great American hero...

"Planned Parenthood is rooted in the courage and tenacity of American women and men willing to fight for women's health, rights, and equality. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, is one of the movement's great heroes. Sanger's early efforts remain the hallmark of Planned Parenthood's mission: providing contraception and other health services to women and men funding research on birth control and educating specialists and the public about the results advancing access to family planning in the United States and around the world Women's progress in recent decades — in education, in the workplace, in political and economic power — can be directly linked to Sanger's crusade and women's ability to control their own fertility."

The liberal left in this country is, not surprisingly, enamored with Planned Parenthood and even President Elect Barack Obama is a staunch supporter of the organization. On July 17, 2007, Barack Obama said the following before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund:

"Thank You, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! Thanks to all of you at Planned Parenthood for all the work that you are doing for women all across the country and for families all across the country-and for men who have enough sense to realize you are helping them, all across the country."

If you have read this far, you are now probably wondering where am I going with all of this. Well, here are a few things about Planned Parenthood's founder that you will not read about in the liberal mainstream media.

"The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."

Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race

That quote struck me as odd as Ms. Sanger was describing the murder of an infant as a mercy killing. After doing a little more research on the founder of Planned Parenthood I discovered that Ms. Sanger was not the "Saint" that everyone attempts to portray her as.

The National Leadership Network of Conservative African-Americans cites the following regarding Ms. Sanger.

"In the late 1930s, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, came up with the idea for the infamous "Negro Project." Sanger, despite the rosy and saint-like portrait the organization presents of her, was a frank racist. Judging by her public statements and private letters, the woman thought that blacks - southern blacks in particular - were simple, child-like brutes whose fertility needed managing the same way a farmer needs to tend to his breeding stock of sheep or cows.

Alarmed by the numbers of southern blacks who were migrating to northern cities, Sanger and her associates created the Negro Project. They believed that, by convincing black people to limit the size of their families, they would prevent the black population's numbers from overwhelming those of the white population. It was assumed that blacks - they especially worried about the men - would look suspiciously on any white effort to meddle with their fertility, so a clever fiction was created.

Black elites - doctors, educators and even ministers - were enlisted to preach contraception and, later, abortion. Black people were told that, if they just learned to limit the size of their families, whites would come to respect them for their self-control. One day, this fiction said, this respect would lead to greater civil rights for blacks. In other words, fewer black children would equal more freedom."

Ms. Sanger's own words and writings lend credence to the fact that her visionary policies for our nation were far from altruistic and, in fact, entered the realm of hateful bigotry and racism.

On blacks, immigrants and indigents:

"...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born." Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, referring to immigrants and poor people.

On the purpose of birth control:

The purpose in promoting birth control was "to create a race of thoroughbreds," she wrote in the Birth Control Review, Nov. 1921 (p. 2)

On the rights of the handicapped and mentally ill, and racial minorities:

"More children from the fit, less from the unfit -- that is the chief aim of birth control." Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12

On the extermination of blacks:

"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, by Linda Gordon

On respecting the rights of the mentally ill:

In her "Plan for Peace," Sanger outlined her strategy for eradication of those she deemed "feeble minded." Among the steps included in her evil scheme were immigration restrictions; compulsory sterilization; segregation to a lifetime of farm work; etc. Birth Control Review, April 1932, p. 107

I certainly do not intend to imply that Ms. Sanger's warped societal views and policies are embraced by the present day Planned Parenthood's organization but I certainly take exception to that organization's false depiction of its founder as an American hero!

Additionally, I have serious questions about the expenditure of taxpayer dollars to include Ms. Sanger in a Smithsonian Institute exhibition of extraordinary American Women of the Twentieth Century which describes her as a "reformer" with the "courage of a wounded tiger" and failing to provide due diligence about this woman's background.

Finally, until such time as Planned Parenthood actually acknowledges the truthful past of its own founder, I also have reservations about Senator Obama's acceptance of PAC funds from their organization and his vociferous support of Planned Parenthood.