Margaret Sanger is
NO HERO to Black America

by Mike Green
Guest Columnist

NBC�s Today Show recently brought tears to my eyes. In disbelief, I watched our nation�s mainstream media honor Margaret Sanger, the woman who single-handedly gave birth to Planned Parenthood and the abortion movement � the movement that is responsible for literally millions of terminated souls, including more than 1,200 abortions of Black children each day!

As Katie Couric heralded this bigoted, racist woman as a heroine for the millennium, my jaw hit the floor. Sanger was described as vivacious, warm, healing and powerfully driven. Ellen Chesler, a Sanger biographer, said Sanger wanted simply to liberate "women to experience their sexuality free of consequence."

While noting Sanger wrote for a socialist weekly and published her own newsletter, called "The Woman Rebel," NBC failed to mention that she proposed in some writings that Negroes like my parents and grandparents be given the choice of segregation or sterilization. NBC told of Sanger�s battles with the Catholic Church, her arrests and self-imposed exile to escape further imprisonment. It was further revealed that she abandoned her husband and three small children "for the cause."

Sanger�s grandson said she was so devoted to her "cause" that she was seldom home to care for her own children. One daughter died of pneumonia at the age of four. The report claimed Sanger never recovered from the loss even though they already said "her children were neglected" and "her marriage fell apart" and "she remarried and went on." Is this the behavior of an American hero?

NBC said some of Sanger�s supporters objected to her more controversial beliefs regarding population control. But that�s all they said. After it was over, I saw blood red through a veil of tears and uncontrollable emotion.

"The Negro Project," which Sanger established to ensure that the Black American population did not outgrow the white population, was never mentioned. To add insult to injury, the segment implied that Sanger should have been honored by this country but never was.

NBC mentioned Sanger�s founding of Planned Parent-hood and her legacy in the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion as well as her role in the development of the birth control pill. But they failed to mention her writings concerning the creation of, in her words, "government-run farms and homesteads" for "illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends, morons, mental defectives and epileptics." Witness the misery and anguish massed in the communities we now call ghettos and government housing�where a Planned Parenthood office is readily accessible to encourage abortion and sexual freedom. Compare those communities to non-minority suburbs and tell me that Sanger�s undermining of the minority family structure has not been achieved. Why was this not covered?

According to NBC, Sanger "improved the lives of billions of people." I suspect they weren�t referring to all the dead and neglected babies. But, then again, babies were dispensable to Sanger�even her own.

Nancy Stevenson, Sanger�s great-granddaughter, claimed Sanger made it so that "women today can have it all." I wonder if she is referring to the cold callousness by which women and young girls choose to terminate life in their wombs? Or perhaps they have it all by tossing away their virtue, dignity and innocence on the altar of sexual freedom? Maybe it is because they can now leave their kids with strangers to challenge men to a duel on the battlefield of money, sex and power?

Whatever Stevenson means, there is no question Sanger�s efforts changed our society. She succeeded in keeping the population of the Negro down. And she succeeded in influencing both white and Black leaders and their followers to adopt philosophies that directly oppose their own religious beliefs.

Sanger also succeeded in corralling the human misery she wanted to isolate. She succeeded in persuading the government to assist her Planned Parenthood clinics in the murder of millions by legalizing and sanctioning a woman�s "choice" to determine the fate of her unborn baby. Sanger achieved success by convincing society that being both a career woman and mother was a noble cause, despite her inability to do both. She successfully divided our nation over the issues of birth control, abortion, religion and family.

America�s mainstream media has crowned Margaret Sanger a hero to women. I am asking you to make your own stand. Will you ignore the facts and pretend you don�t know the truth? Or will you act?

Will you use your own influence and stature and power to combat the evil that has been held up and honored by others? We observed the 27th anniversary of legal abortion on Jan. 22. Will you stand with me and others as we speak out fervently and frequently regarding the humiliation and shame brought upon this country by Margaret Sanger? Will you stand up for what you believe or deny having the knowledge?

(This New Visions Commentary by Mike Green is published courtesy of the the Washington-based National Center for Public Policy Research.)