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Margaret Sanger never advocated for or promoted abortion.

weaver2

weaver2

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This thread is not a poll. It is not a question to be discussed. It is a statement of fact posted to refute and expose the anti-abortion lie that Margaret Sanger promoted abortion.

Margaret Sanger spent her life advocating for birth control and setting up clinics to provide poor women with contraceptives. In 1920 she wrote a book called "Women and the New Race". Chapter X dealt with abortion.

Some word definitions are needed. Starting in 1900 there was a tremendos emphasis on the improvement of the human condition; when people spoke of race in 1920 they were talking about the race of human beings and when Sanger speaks of women wanting freedom she is talking specifically about the freedom from pregnancy year after year.
.....and a few statistics also: The population of the US in 1920 was 106,021,537. 60% of that population lived in deep poverty and the number of abortions was estimated to be between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000/ year. Today there are 350,000,000 people in the US the poverty rate is 15% and the number of abortions is about 1,000,000/year.

Contraceptives were available to the wealthy but for the staggering population of poor women contraceptives were illegal. In fact just talking about controlling family size was illegal. Poor women most of whom worked long hours for low wages or doing farm work were condemned to almost yearly pregnancies. Serial pregnancies lead to increasingly unhealthy babies. Many of which died in childbirth or early childhood. Sanger received thousands of letters each year from desperate women whose only alternative to the debilitating pregnancy cycle was abortion.

She wrote, "While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician. I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization. "

Sanger advocated tirelessly for birth control in her writings, in her speeches and in the clinics she established. She never advocated for abortion.
 
You say some word definitions are needed, but you never provided any word definitions except what you assert was Sanger's contextual meaning of the word 'freedom' in a specific quote of hers and a second assertion that 'race' in 1920 should be translated into 'race of humans' whatever that means!

So lets be specific. What does 'race of humans' mean and can you offer us any links or evidence for your definition of 'race' in 1920? Its your op, and you have some duty to offer evidence.
 
Sanger opposed abortion in general, however she was a racist and eugenicist who believed in abortion for blacks.

www.americamagazine.org

Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist. Why are we still celebrating her?

Sanger argued for compulsory sterilization and segregation for people with disabilities.
www.americamagazine.org www.americamagazine.org

"Covertly invest into non-White areas, invest in ghetto abortion clinics. Help to raise
money for free abortions, in primarily non-White areas. Perhaps abortion
clinic syndicates throughout North America, that primarily operate in
non-White areas and receive tax support, should be promoted." - Margaret Sanger

www.usatoday.com

Remove statues of Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood founder tied to eugenics and racism

How a woman who advocated for selective breeding of her fellow citizens came to be memorialized with those who built a country is hard to understand.
www.usatoday.com
 
EdwinWillers said:
Sanger opposed abortion in general, however she was a racist and eugenicist who believed in abortion for blacks.
Click to expand...
Eugenics was a popular social concept back in those days. And Ms Sanger has been dead for around 60 years. So what's the point?
 
Yes, I can do that. But it should be unnecessary. The abuses of the Gilded Age in America that led to the progressive politics and regulations of the early to mid 1900s in the US were all thoroughly discussed in American History which is a required course in all high schools.
 
Gordy327 said:
Eugenics was a popular social concept back in those days. And Ms Sanger has been dead for around 60 years. So what's the point?
Click to expand...
"Covertly invest into non-White areas, invest in ghetto abortion clinics. Help to raise
money for free abortions, in primarily non-White areas. Perhaps abortion
clinic syndicates throughout North America, that primarily operate in
non-White areas and receive tax support, should be promoted." - Margaret Sanger
 
Post #4.
 
My support for women's bodily autonomy has zero to do with whatever Margaret Sanger did or did not to in her life, and everything to do with my philosophical opposition to the idea that the government should have the power to compel women to give birth.
 

"This sentiment is appalling. However, Sanger didn’t say it. Those words were written by Tom Metzger, founder of White Aryan Resistance (WAR) and a former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Metzger included them in an essay titled “What We Believe as White Racists,” which can be found reprinted in the edited volume Extreme Deviance."

Link

I hate when a publication isn't satisfied with the material that's available and so makes up its own. Perhaps its just carelessness, but still, no excuse.
 

And Thomas Jefferson had slaves and raped them. Should we tear up the Constitution? Take down all his statues, take his name off buildings, etc?

Organization, institutions, agendas, etc evolve over time. Should they be erased because of the actions of their originators?
 
Hey you were the guy who said some definitions were needed. Which ones were they, and why did you just change your story and refused a reasonable request for same? I think I asked you for something you were completely unprepared to actually provide. All you need to do is show ANY of your work with a link, especially the one and only point you claim to actually provide for us. Give us evidence of that your preferred definition of 'race' is one she meant in that context you discussed, and the definition 'race of humans' you claim was most prevalent in those years actually was most prevalent.

Soo many things you decided were not up for discussion in your OP. Definitions of terms are one thing we both agree are important and its definitions that you committed to provide and failed to. If the evidence sitting in all these history texts, you won't have any problem providing a quote from one or two. Well pony up and no excuses!
 
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I have not refused to give additional information on the definitions. I said I would do it and I will. I apologize for having scheduled a doctors and inconvienced your immeiate need for links and quotes. I will get to this now but proving, with links, that the word race commonly meant the human race in 1920 requires looking up the articles and historical documents. It is possible that getting supper may delay posting the information somewhat.
 
I apologize for my impatience. Post 25 in reply to me, might lead a long term DP cynic to believe there was a difference between what you can do, and what you actually willing to do. It read to me more like a probable dodge from responsibility. I do apologize for my wariness. I fully intend to read what you offer with an complete open mind. I have no strong opinions on Margaret Sanger or your position in the OP regarding her views on abortion. You could very well be right. I do have a strong opinion on lapses in the evidence provided in an OP.
 
To understand word meanings your have to know the environment in which they were used. To do that it is necessary to start with the Gilded Age and what it did to America

The Gilded Age was a time of tremendous wealth accumulation among a very few.
"From 1860 to 1900, the wealthiest 2% of American households owned more than a third of the nation's wealth, while the top 10% owned roughly three-quarters of it. The bottom 40% had no wealth at all. In terms of property, the wealthiest 1% owned 51%, while the bottom 44% claimed 1.1%."

Gilded Age - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

60% of Americans lived in poverty
Rural Americans and new immigrants ( mostly Eastern European and Mediterranean peasants) crowded into cities looking for any work they could find. Tenements spread across city landscapes, teeming with crime and filth.

excerpted from:

The Gilded Age | American Experience | PBS

During the "Gilded Age," every man was a potential Andrew Carnegie, and Americans who achieved wealth celebrated it as never before.
www.pbs.org


Birth control was unavailable to working families. Illegal abortion was the only way women had to end debilitating serial pregnancies. Corporations exploited this population of poor children
The 1870 census lists '"more than 750,000 workers younger than 15. This does not include children who worked for their families in businesses or on farms. By 1900, more than 1.75 million American children younger than 15 were employed many as young as 8.




People appalled at the vast poverty, ill-health, illiteracy, serial pregnancies, infant and maternal deaths, unemployment, alcoholism, physical and mental handicaps in the Gilded Age looked to Mendal's 1866 discovery and manipulation of genetic inheritance in pea plants to both explain and improve the degraded lives of the poor.
 
Actually I read this very material about a month ago. There is an HBO series with that title and I wanted the refresher for context in which to understand the series. Its always valuable context in which understand the evidence you will provide... It looks like we may be headed back there.
just to keep our eye on the ball, we are looking for evidence of Sangers use of 'race' in her writings, and the definition of 'race' including its replacement for the phrase 'race of humans' in the gilded age.
 
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"Ponying up"

Mendal's experiments with what he called genetic inheritance let to the popularity of eugenics to cure societies ills of which there were many during the Gilded Age of Robber Barons.

''Eugenics is broadly defined as the use of selective breeding to improve the human race. The main principle behind the early eugenics movement was the assumption that all human characteristics are borne of simple inheritance. ...... the idea of eugenics was largely developed and popularized in the late 1800s by Sir Francis Galton who applied the principles of natural selection to the human race. His ideas took root in America in the early 1900s ...... The assumption that all characteristics are genetically determined led to the widespread belief that desirable traits should be selected for. This was encouraged and celebrated through “fitter family” and “better baby” competitions, where judges rated families and children like people would rate livestock or pets at shows today.

Unfit to Breed: America’s Dark Tale of Eugenics | NIH Intramural Research Program

irp.nih.gov


Margaret Sanger believed in the eugenic idea of improving the human race but she also believed that birth control was the primary road which would lead to that improvement.
Quote: page 80 "The Pivot of Civilization" by M. Sanger
"So to-day we are not to meet the great problems of defect and delinquency in any merely sentimental or superficial manner, but with the firmest and most unflinching attitude toward the true interest of our fellow beings. It is from no mere feeling of brotherly love or sentimental philanthropy that we women must insist upon enhancing the value of child life. It is because we know that, if our children are to develop to their full capabilities, all children must be assured a similar opportunity. ......... They shall be called into a world enhanced and made beautiful by the spirit of freedom and romance—into a world wherein the creatures of our new day, unhampered and unbound by the sinister forces of prejudice and immovable habit, may work out their own destinies. ........To-day our task is greater; for we realize that no section of humanity can be reclaimed without the regeneration of the whole.

Page 93,ChapterX, "Women and the New Race"
A high percentage of women in comfortable circumstances escape overbreeding by the use of contraceptives. A similarly high percentage of women not in comfortable circumstances are forced to submit to forced maternity, because their only alternative at present is abortion. ....... The question, then, is not whether family limitation should be practiced. It is being practiced; it has been practiced for ages and it will always be practiced. The question that society must answer is this: Shall family limitation be achieved through birth control or abortion? Shall normal, safe, effective contraceptives be employed, or shall we continue to force women to the abnormal, often dangerous surgical operation?
Another useful eugenics link

Eugenics - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

By the 1930s the eugenics movement had degenerated into racism and Sanger dis-owned the movement.
 
More ponying up.



Sanger quotes on freedom from serial pregnancy and the use of the word "race"
Chapter II, page 13, "Women and the new Race" by M. Sanger
"So, too, with woman's struggle for emancipation. Women in all lands and all ages have instinctively desired family limitation. Usually this desire has been laid to economic pressure. Frequently that pressure has existed, but the driving force behind woman's aspiration toward freedom has lain deeper. It has asserted itself among the rich and among the poor, among the intelligent and the unintelligent. It has been manifested in such horrors as infanticide, child abandonment and abortion."

Chapter III, page 31, "Women and the New Race"
That these foreigners who have come in hordes have brought with them their ignorance of hygiene and modern ways of living and that they are handicapped by religious superstitions is only too true. But they also bring in their hearts a desire for freedom from all the tyrannies that afflict the earth. They would not be here if they did not bear within them the hardihood of pioneers, a courage of no mean order. They have the simple faith that in America they will find equality, liberty and an opportunity for a decent livelihood. And they have something else. The cell plasms (genes) of these peoples are freighted with the potentialities of the best in Old World civilization. They come from lands rich in the traditions of courage, of art, music, letters, science and philosophy. Americans no longer consider themselves cultured unless they have journeyed to these lands to find access to the treasures created by men and women of this same blood. The immigrant brings the possibilities of all these things to our shores"

Page 38, Chapter III, "Women and the New Race"
"Motherhood, when free to choose the father, free to choose the time and the number of children who shall result from the union, automatically works in wondrous ways. It refuses to bring forth weaklings; refuses to bring forth slaves; refuses to bear children who must live under the conditions described. It withholds the unfit, brings forth the fit; brings few children into homes where there is not sufficient to provide for them. Instinctively it avoids all those things which multiply racial handicaps. Under such circumstances we can hope that the "melting pot" will refine. We shall see that it will save the precious metals of racial culture, fused into an amalgam of physical perfection, mental strength and spiritual progress. Such an American race, containing the best of all racial elements, could give to the world a vision and a leadership beyond our present imagination."

I hope this helps people in seeing Sanger as a pragmatic idealist not some fiend advocating racism, abortion, elimination of non-whites and immoral women. Most regrettably she did think that the sterilization of the "mentally deficient" was acceptable. In her support for her advocacy this program there existed during the time a very high incidence of alcoholism which created a huge population of children with the low IQ characteristic of fetal alcoholism syndrome. The cause of this mental deficiency was mostly unknown at the time.
 
There is a quote where Sanger makes it very explicit that "race" refers to the human race. I thought it was in her book "Women and the New Race" but I can't find it. It must be in one of her editorialsor articles. You could probably access it through the online Margaret Sanger Papers Project.
 
, I think I 'pick up' what she is trying valiantly to 'put down', and she is trying passionately to get contraception and education on its use in the hands of the immigrant women concentrated our port cities like New York Boston etc, most in need of it for economic reasons, and but I'm still not sure these quotes are quite as broad on the' issue as you are describing. It depends on who is and who is not included among the hoards of foreigners she is describing as having 'racial handicaps', and who she sees as her audience, when she writes it. My gut says this is some generalization going on here, based on countries of origin and language spoken, rather than what we now think of African, Asian or Caucasian. There is an extra language barrier for Italians, or Poles, or Chinese that the Irish, English and Welsh do not have, preventing easy cultural acclimation and upper mobility in employment opportunities, as it is about anything else.

I think she's really focused on an immigrant subset who can't read write and speak our language.
 
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EdwinWillers said:
Sanger opposed abortion in general, however she was a racist and eugenicist who believed in abortion for blacks.
Click to expand...
She was neither a racist or a eugenicist after eugenics became a racist program for white racial purity. She did not believe in abortion for blacks. She set up the first contraceptive clinic in Haarlem. She also worked with Black pastors andFrederick Douglss to open contraceptive clinics for southern Blacks.
That is not a quote written by Margaret Sanger. It was written by the writer of the article: Kristan Hawkins who is is president of Students for Life of America. She writes a podcasr called Explicitly Pro-Life. Her article is almost entirely falsehoods about Sanger. Why do you read such trashy lies. Read Margaret Sanger's own writing. .................. Oh you don't want to do that? I see, why not? Afraid what Sanger actually said, wrote and worked for isn't racist and hateful.
 
This whole thread reminds me of debates about Mahatma Gandhi and his 'sexism'. The Greatest of people and minds still exist in their time, and will carry at least some common baggage that their class, their education, religious upbringing, and cultural heritage pack up for them.

When I see Sanger, I see a reformer with a vision and great courage. I don't let these issues fog things up too much.
 
I picked out Sanger's quotes on immigrants to show that she was unbiased about who she helped. Her focus was on the poor no matter who they were. She believed that you had to improve the lives of all women if one's goal was improving humanity. If you would read any one of her books I becomes apparent that her efforts included all women.
 

Her mother conceived 18 times, gave birth to 11 live babies and was dead by age 50.
 
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