A Woman's Choice, According to Sanger, Must be Relative to Class Nazi promotion of sterilization laws cites nations that had them enacted. Note the US flag, upper left. (click to enlarge) A Virginia state order for involuntary sterilization. Sanger was instrumental to their enactment here. (click to enlarge)

The Sanger Paradox- the Myth of Choice

The founder of Planned Parenthood in her own words

"The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective  offspring... represents the most humane act of mankind."   

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10

"We prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, of  making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded." 

 The Pivot of Civilization  Margaret Sanger, Brentano's Press, NY, 1922, p. 263

"Authorities tell us that 75% of the school-children are defective.  This means that no less than fifteen million schoolchildren, out of 22,000,000 in the United States, are physically or mentally below par."

Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, Chap 3 Get the Project Gutenburg version here. or get the PDF version here.

Planned Parenthood was known as the American Birth Control League until 1942.  (Backlash against the eugenics movement which the ABCL espoused, and its ties to Nazis here and abroad compelled the name change.)  That said, now for some little known facts regarding  Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and her stated aims from its conception...

The eugenics movement was a pseudo-science which advocated the forced sterilization of "feeble-minded" U.S. citizens in hopes of insuring racial purity; it was a doomed and tragic attempt to create what Sanger believed would be "a race of thoroughbreds."  Eugenics as a "science" fell apart with the discovery of DNA and new insights on chromosomes and genetic mutation. But thought the sterilization program which Sanger and supporters advocated most adversely affected poor whites and minorities, it was also aimed at all Americans of every color and creed who didn't fit into an insanely narrow and scientifically invalid notion of who was fit to conceive. This was only 1 in 4 Americans, in Sanger's most generous estimates.

"Confronted with these shocking truths about the menace of feeble-mindedness to the race, a menace acute because of the unceasing and unrestrained fertility of such defectives, we are apt to become the victims of a 'wild panic for instant action.' There is no occasion for hysterical, ill-considered action, specialists tell us.  They direct our attention to another phase of the problem, that of the so-called 'good feeble-minded.' We are informed that imbecility, in itself, is not synonymous with badness.  If it is fostered in a 'suitable environment,' it may express itself in terms of good citizenship and useful occupation.  It may thus be transmuted into a docile, tractable, and peaceable element of the community. The moron and the feeble-minded, thus protected, so we are assured, may even marry some brighter member of the community, and thus lessen the chances of procreating another generation of imbeciles.  We read further that some of our doctors believe that in our social scale, there is a place for the good feeble-minded.

"In such a reckless and thoughtless differentiation between the 'bad' and the 'good' feeble-minded, we find new evidence of the conventional middle-class bias that also finds expression among some of the eugenists.  We do not object to feeble-mindedness simply because it leads to immorality and criminality; nor can we approve of it when it expresses itself in docility, submissiveness and obedience.  We object because both are burdens and dangers to the intelligence of the community"

Sanger Chap 4, Pivot of Civilization

"As a matter of fact, there is sufficient evidence to lead us to believe that the so-called 'borderline cases' are a greater menace than the out-and-out 'defective delinquents' who can be supervised, controlled and prevented from procreating their kind. "

 Sanger Pivot of Civilization, Chap 4,

"Authorities tell us that 75% of the school-children are defective.  This means that no less than fifteen million schoolchildren, out of 22,000,000 in the United States, are physically or mentally below par."

Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, Chap 3

"Eugenics seems to me to be valuable in its critical and diagnostic aspects, in emphasizing the danger of irresponsible and uncontrolled fertility of the 'unfit'...establishing a progressive unbalance in human society and lowering the birth-rate among the 'fit.'"

Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, Chap 4

These American sterilization laws championed by Sanger soon became the model for Nazi eugenics legislation.  This pseudo-science sparked a powder-keg of legitimized dehumanization and ethnic persecution of blacks and immigrants at home.  In Germany, eugenic legislation and Jewish persecution went hand in hand. A review of Hitler's Nuremburg Laws (e.g. "The Law for the Protection of the Genetic Health of the German People"), provides a striking similarity to the eugenic agendas championed by the pseudo-intellectual elite in Sanger's ABCL. Not surprisingly, in April of 1933, Sanger's Birth Control Review published an article by Dr. Ernst Rubin, who was Hitler's director of genetic sterilization and a founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene.

"The danger to the community of the unsegregated feeble-minded woman is more evident. Most dangerous are the middle and high grades living at large who, despite the fact that their defect is not easily recognizable, should nevertheless be prevented from procreation. In my view we should act without delay."

 --Prof. Dr. Ernst Rudin, head of Nazi Germany's eugenics program. "Eugenics Sterilization: An Urgent Need."- Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 4 (April 1933), pp.102-4.

Compare Dr. Rudin's quote to this one from Sanger's book:

"The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately. Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period...we prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded."

Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, Chap 4

In Sanger's day, the American Birth Control League helped expand existing Jim Crow laws by stamping them with the seal of "scientific" credibility. They also brought forced sterilizations to almost every state.

At the forefront of the American eugenics movement, above all others, was Margaret Sanger. 

Download The Pivot of Civilization. This the full Project Gutenburg e-book version of Sanger's cross-eyed hymn to class segregation; a gutter-visioned manifesto of hate and pseudo-science which Planned Parenthood had long suppressed via copyright and publishing rights lest Americans realize that in vitriol, pedantry and hate it could literally compare to Mein Kampf.

For many years the book was almost impossible to find. That is, until it resurfaced in the public domain by 1990s. View the complete HTML version here. Get the Project Gutenburg version here. And finally, to share this book via email,  get the PDF version here.

Be forewarned, Sanger is verbose and tedious reading, and if she wasn't so jaw-droppingly stupid and pretentious, her book would at least be good for shits and giggles. 

Sanger has an annoying tendency to begin every other chapter with a sterling quotation, usually from a familiar a poet or writer, like Walt Whitman or William Blake... but then it all comes crashing down when she begins to write. It's like watching her put parsley or lemon wedges on a steaming plate of shit. An example:

See the Sanger Fact Sheet at Planned Parenthood's site. Although Sanger's book is mentioned in passing, you won't find it in their online store amongst the framed coathangers and buttons. You will find a nice litle Sanger bookmark, though, for only $15.00!

If reading Sanger's own book still doesn't convince you that Planned Parenthood has been dishonest about their founder's advocacy of forced sterilization and Nazi eugenics, email the impious digest. We will post your letter and send a free gift: one juice box and a diploma certifying your advancement to the  Sangarian moron class, suitable for framing (one per family please).

NOTE TO FEMINISTS: Hey, don't get insulted by the patronizing freebies; if I was Sanger, I'd try to sterilize you.