And Now, Margaret Sanger

I suppose it was inevitable, although I didn’t expect it. Yesterday, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York removed the name of Margaret Sanger, “founder of the organization,” from its Manhattan clinic because of her “harmful connection to the eugenics movement.”

Eugenics was the noxious philosophy, championed by Nazi Germany, that held that only a “fit” mother, assumed to be white and intelligent, should be allowed to give birth to a member of what Hitler called “The Master Race.” People of color and people with many kinds of disability, including what was called “idiots,” would be forcibly sterilized, possibly at the government’s expense.

Yes, Margaret Sanger did express these views, as did at the same time NACCP founder W.E.B. Dubois and other African-American leaders and believers in “social betterment.” In this moment, this long-forgotten set of opinions has a new power to enrage and hurt those already at the mercy of the patriarchy.

Yet nothing so complicated as the founder of the birth control movement can be dismissed so quickly. Sanger was an impassioned leader who, early in her career, inspired Doris Duke to make essential gifts, numbering over time in the millions, that allowed the birth control movement not only to survive at a time when sending any form of contraceptive information through the mail could lead to a prison sentence, but to spread in countries like India. As Sanger wrote Duke in 1956, only her foundation’s support and enabled “the colored (so-called minority) group people to learn of Birth Control.”

Yes, she wrote “colored,” almost as offensive now as the “N word.” But we are obliged to remember that this was considered a polite form of address long before and through the 1950’s—and beyond.

By removing Sanger’s name from the Planned Parenthood Clinic, Karen Seltzer, chairwoman of the board, hopes to “acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s contribution to historical reproductive harm within communities of color.”

This is certainly appropriate and, as Seltzer says, long overdue. Yet is it also appropriate to ignore the vital role contraception and abortion has played in the lives and welfare of all women, including women of color?

As far as I know, Doris Duke’s name has never been mentioned as its founding and essential donor, without which the movement might have been hindered in its development for thirty years, resulting in dozens of unplanned pregnancies. Not has her originality and daring, as a member of the white upper-class, in championing a movement derided for years. I sometimes wonder if the attack on the U.S. Postal service doesn’t have a long root into Postmaster General Jim Farley’s determination to keep birth control information out of the mail. The essential, everyday nature of the Postal Service did have its radical time.

So to me there is an element of sadness in the fact that the Doris Duke Foundation in 1952 turned down Sanger’s appeal for a five thousand dollar grant to continue her work in India. Sanger wrote that she was “quite heartbroken” at the news. Knowing that Doris operated independently from her increasingly conservative foundation, Sanger than appealed directly to her. Doris agreed to pay for one of the “colored nurses you have long supported” to go to Bombay for the upcoming population conference.

How quickly we forget the complexities of our history.

[For more on Doris Duke’s philanthropy, including the early support of Margaret Sanger, please see my video “Doris Duke’s Legacy” (transcript and audio also available).]

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