Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Love, Joy, Feminism

Home
Nonreligious
Is Abortion an African-American Genocide? The Problem with Conservatives Citing Margaret Sanger

Is Abortion an African-American Genocide? The Problem with Conservatives Citing Margaret Sanger

Last updated on: July 15, 2015 at 1:42 pm by Libby Anne

Is Abortion an African-American Genocide? The Problem with Conservatives Citing Margaret Sanger 2015-07-15T13:42:43-04:00 Libby Anne

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Conservatives want to have it both ways. They argue that progressive support of welfare and affirmative action is racist in that it assumes that blacks need these things to succeed. Welfare and affirmative action take away from black agency and get in the way of black progress, they say, and are based in the racist assumption that African Americans are by nature dependent. Conservatives are, they say, all about restoring black agency and removing the chains of dependency—except, of course, when it comes to abortion. When it comes to abortion, African Americans’ agency and ability to make their own choices goes out the window as conservatives paint women of color as dupes participating in their own genocide.

As an example, in 2013 Doug Wilson wrote the following:

The death toll from abortion is approaching 100 times the death toll of the Civil War. And in this, future black generations have been heavily and disproportionately targeted. Does anybody deny that? If you allow Margaret Sanger to speak for herself, this targeting of blacks was a design feature. We know what that white woman thought of her “human weeds.” Where are the black prophets?

I have seen this same argument again, and again, and again. Abortion opponents argue that Margaret Sanger (who died in 1966, by the way) was intent on carrying out a genocide against African Americans and that modern day Planned Parenthood clinics are continuing that effort, as evidenced by the fact that disproportionately high numbers of black women obtain abortions.

But you know what? No one forces women of color to have abortions. In fact, Planned Parenthood personnel are required to make sure that women who come to their facility for abortions are doing so through their own free will. When conservatives argue abortion is a plan dreamed up by Margaret Sanger to carry out genocide against African Americans, and that that is why higher rates of African American women have abortions, they are suggesting that black women should not have the ability to freely make their own reproductive choices.

Who is trying to invalidate African Americans’ agency now?

Let’s imagine for a moment that Margaret Sanger is everything conservatives claim she is. Let’s imagine that she pioneered abortion in an effort to decrease the nation’s African American population with a view toward eventual elimination. Even if that were true, it would have no relevance to the form abortion takes today. No one forces African American women to have abortions. There is no coercion. Indeed, African American women have on average more children than white women, which suggests that Sanger’s (imagined) plan is working out very badly.

To the extent that there is any coercion—i.e. to the extent that women feel that they have no other option than abortion—it is conservative policies that are to blame. Conservatives favor cutting welfare and oppose government subsidies for childcare. Conservatives oppose better maternity leave policies and oppose raising the minimum wage. Conservatives are against providing effective birth control free of charge and against comprehensive sex education. The net result of these policies is that poor women, and especially women of color, will find themselves both unintentionally pregnant and unable to financially afford raising another child. To the extent that coercion exists vis a vis abortion today, this is what it looks like.

But what of Margaret Sanger? If you ask conservatives to demonstrate that Margaret Sanger is racist, they will give you this quote:

We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.

Yes, Sanger wrote that. Here is the full context:

It seems to me from my experience . . . in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas, that while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors, they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table. . . . They do not do this with the white people, and if we can train the Negro doctor at the clinic, he can go among them with enthusiasm and with knowledge, which, I believe, will have far-reaching results. . . . His work, in my opinion, should be entirely with the Negro profession and the nurses, hospital, social workers, as well as the County’s white doctors. His success will depend upon his personality and his training by us.

The minister’s work is also important, and also he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation, as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want 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.

In other words, the whole point was that Sanger didn’t want to “exterminate the Negro population.” Sanger was simply worried that some African Americans might think that was what she was trying to do, and she wanted to reach out to African American ministers and community members to ensure them that that was not the case, in order to ward off any rumors.

It’s true that Sanger was a supporter of eugenics. This was reprehensible, and Planned Parenthood has repudiated these views without qualification. However, conservatives err when they use Sanger’s support of eugenics to argue that she wanted to eliminate nonwhite races. Eugenics, as practiced in the U.S., was primarily about improving the human race by removing “feeble mindedness” and criminality from the gene pool through forced sterilization (for a look at what this entailed, see the 1934 movie Tomorrow’s Children, especially starting at 25:15). While eugenics had racial undertones for many, Sanger rejected efforts to apply eugenics to race. Sanger also disagreed with many eugenicists in arguing that women should be allowed to make their own reproductive choices, and in being opposed to forcible sterilization.

But honestly, Margaret Sanger is a bad target for conservatives in their battle against abortion in general. In 1922, she wrote the following:

It is apparent that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide.

Sanger was all about birth control, not abortion. Sanger lived at a time when abortion was both illegal and dangerous. Indeed, she became a birth control pioneer after watching women in her care die of self-inflicted abortions—women who had multiple children already, and could not afford to feed another mouth. Her goal was to place reproductive freedom in women’s hands so that they could make their own choices and avoid the need for desperate self-inflicted abortions.

In 1919, Sanger wrote the following:

Eugenists imply or insist that a woman’s first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother. … Only upon a free, self- determining motherhood can rest any unshakable structure of racial betterment.

And in 1942, Sanger wrote that:

I think it is magnificent that we are in on the ground floor, helping Negroes to control their birth rate, to reduce their high infant and maternal death rate, to maintain better standards of health and living for those already born, and to create better opportunities for those who will be born.

Sanger won the support of such civil rights luminaries as Martin Luther King Jr.

You can read this Fact Sheet if you’re interested in learning more.

But with this all said, let me bring this back to where we started. Even if Margaret Sanger were interested in eliminating the African American population, that would be irrelevant to abortion access in the present. When they have abortions, women of color do so of their own volition. No one is forcing them. Presenting them as victims at the hands of white designs to eliminate their race robs them of agency and makes them complicit in their own genocide. If this isn’t offensive—and racist—I don’t know what is.

Here’s an idea. Instead of arguing that African American women who have abortions are complicit in the elimination of their own race, how about improving their options through better social welfare programs, paid maternity leave and subsidized childcare, more education funding for low income schools and more support for African American teens to attend college? But then, I suppose decrying an African American genocide vis a vis abortion is easier than actually getting your hands dirty.

Politics

abortion

Margaret Sanger

Previous Post

July 14, 2015

Doug Wilson: Have His Views on Slavery Changed?

Next Post

July 16, 2015 When Love Is Abuse

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Atheism Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism Family Feminism Homeschool Meta Parenting Patriarchy Politics Purity Quiverfull Social Justice Uncategorized Worthwhile reads

Select a Month February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How many men did Joshua initially send to Ai?

Select your answer to see how you score.

5,000 4,000 2,000 3,000