| The following is from Kairos Journal. I have come to believe that Planned Parenthood is one of the most dishonest, greedy, and destructive forces at work in our culture. Under the guise of helping women and families and with lots of warm and caring language, Planned Parenthood exerts a powerful influence toward ungodliness and is the principle voice for the continuation of abortion.
Those who work for Planned Parenthood, or for abortion in our culture must neither be demonized nor hated. They must be loved, prayed for AND fought against. Planned Parenthood must be fought. Part of that fight is knowing its history. Toward ending abortion in our lifetime, here’s part of that battle.
Enabling a “Liberated” Woman
 Margaret Sanger was a married woman with three children, but that was nothing to her in the summer of 1913. Adultery with Walter Roberts was on her mind, and he would become her first recorded extramarital lover.1 The setting was Provincetown, Massachusetts, where New York City’s cultural and artistic elite were prone to vacation. Husband Bill Sanger shuttled to and from New York, and Margaret found good occasion to put into practice the perspectives she had chosen back in the city. She and Bill had joined the Socialist Party Local 5 and found themselves in the company of radicals, including anarchist Emma Goldman, famous for “refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc.”2
These “liberated” folks would gather in the lower Fifth Avenue apartment of Mabel Dodge to toss around ideas. Many of those ideas were licentious. Bill Sanger called this Greenwich Village atmosphere a “hellhole of free love, promiscuity and prostitution masquerading under the mantle of revolution,”—“If Revolution means promiscuity, they can call me a conservative and make the most of it.”3
Margaret, though, was quite keen on promiscuity, and her life course was set. Though she was too cunning to campaign under the banner of free love and freedom from the burden of children, that was her heartbeat. She chose contraception as her cause and was heralded for efforts in “family planning,” even though her personal life betrayed her true contempt for the family.4
Margaret was little concerned for the well-being of her own children, Stuart, Grant, Margaret, and Peggy. In a 1911 letter, Bill urged Margaret to seek care for Peggy’s “little limb,” weakened and shortened by polio; even though Peggy was walking with a limp and needed a brace, Margaret was otherwise engaged in Provincetown. Four years later, Margaret, then in Paris, missed the last year of Peggy’s life, the little girl dying of pneumonia in the company of her Aunt Ethel.5
Her true love was the American Birth Control League, which became Planned Parenthood. Like the latter, the ABCL was no stranger to abortion. They simply kept things under wraps, fearing a public relations disaster. Staffers would secretly refer their counselees to doctors (such as a “Dr. Seigal”)6 who would do the dirty work. Eventually, “Christian” ministers joined her in promoting abortion.7
Margaret’s enthusiasm for ridding the world of “undesirables” was also reflected in her interest in eugenics. She was heard to bemoan “the burden of the ‘unfit’ on the productive members of the community,” to tie birth control to the creation of “a race of thoroughbreds,” and to promote a “bonus” or “incentive” program for sterilization directed at couples with “defective heredity.”8
Margaret had a penchant for the occult and frequently consulted psychics and astrologers.9 She rejected Christianity,10and late in life, suffering from heart disease, she enrolled in a Rosicrucian mail-order course for “spiritual insight and first-hand spiritual experience.”11 Nevertheless, when she died on September 6, 1966, she received a Christian burial, with pastoral eulogies, first from Rev. George Ferguson of St. Phillips-in-the-Hills Episcopal Church in Tucson12 and then, at a memorial service, from the rector at St. George’s Church on Stuyvesant Square in New York.13
One marvels at clergy who enable the schemes and honor of the legacy of those who, like Margaret Sanger, are clearly anti-Christian. They empty Church ceremony of gospel meaning and send dangerous signals to a world which has lost its way. Only when the Church refuses to be party to such delusion will the culture begin to understand its high calling on behalf of life—life protected, sanctified, abundant, and eternal.
Footnotes
| 1 |
Over the next four decades, Roberts would be followed by Lorenzo Portet, Havelock Ellis, Billy Williams, Hugh de Selincourt, Harold Child, H.G. Wells, Noah Slee, Angus McDonald, and Hobson Pittman. These are documented in Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 92, 108, 118, 173, 183, 184, 186, 244, 349, 406.
|
| 2 |
Ibid., 85-86.
|
| 3 |
Ibid., 91-92.
|
| 4 |
Janet de Selincourt, Catherine Wells, and Mary Slee, whose husbands Margaret bedded, could testify to this.
|
| 5 |
Ibid., 93, 133.
|
| 6 |
Ibid., 301.
|
| 7 |
“Between 1967 and 1970, in the final years before New York’s restrictive abortion law was repealed, the clinic would cooperate with the New York Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, founded at the nearby Judson Memorial Baptist Church in Greenwich Village.” Ibid., 302.
|
| 8 |
Ibid., 216, 417.
|
| 9 |
Ibid., 221.
|
| 10 |
“I have outgrown the need of church by my interest in philosophy, psychology & humanity. Very often I find the church narrows & limits the mental horizon of a person when in reality it should broaden and deepen . . .” Ibid., 252-53.
|
| 11 |
Chesler, 418.
|
| 12 |
“[H]e did not ignore Margaret’s achievements on behalf of humanity but remembered her more for the marvelous sense of fun she brought to Tucson . . . with her lively interests, festive parties, and essential joy in living.” Ibid., 467.
|
| 13 |
Ibid.
|
|
ChosenRebel's Blog 
So basically, you think that anyone who doesn’t abide by your exact interpretation of the Bible is horrible and wicked? Can you not see how hateful that is? Just because someone lives their life in a way that the Bible says is wrong doesn’t mean that they’re bad people. I mean, whatever happened to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39)? Jesus never said “love your neighbor, unless they happen to have different beliefs than you do, in which case, you can hate them as much as you want.” No, he wanted his followers to love all of their neighbors, and to love them unconditionally. So why aren’t you even trying to follow his commands?
LikeLike
In the second paragraph of the post, it says, “Those who work for Planned Parenthood, or for abortion in our culture must NEITHER be DEMONIZED NOR HATED. THEY MUST BE LOVED, PRAYED FOR and fought against.” That is the exact opposite of being hateful, and one has the freedom to oppose an idea without being thought of as hateful.
To love your neighbor and love unconditionally doesn’t mean you have to approve and support every person beliefs and actions either. A good parent wouldn’t allow their children to jump off the roof of the house, even if the kid thinks he can fly. A good parent might punish his child for stealing something that isn’t hers or hitting a sibling or peer. Does a parent hate his child because he set rules and follows through with punishments? Not at all. A good parent does these things because he loves his children and wants what is best for them and wants them to grow up to be good individuals. — In connection, a person doesn’t have to condone every action every person makes in order to exemplify his/her love for people.
Now, this post tells about Margaret Sanger. We could candy coat her story and say that she was a woman standing up for other women because she loved her neighbors and wanted what was best for them. However, this is like saying Hitler did everything he did for the betterment of the German people. Sure, he brought them up out of depression, but at what expense? I wouldn’t normally compare anybody to Hitler, but the paragraph between footnotes 7 and 8 have persuaded me otherwise. Hitler used these methods on top of murdering millions of people (Jews, Roma (Gypsies), people with disabilities, and Afro-Germans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, etc. . .)
Now Sanger may not have been as radical, however, the ideas were the same. And, she was willing to betray her husband and children to satisfy her own, self-centered desires and promote these ideas. There is nothing loving about that.
LikeLike
No, definitely not what I said. I do love those who disagree with the Bible and I will not demonize or hate them. I am just as (probably more) deserving of judgment by a holy God than those who work for or support, endorse or admire Planned Parenthood. I need a Savior. I am no better than anyone else.
But the Bible is still an objective standard and what the Bible teaches is 180 degrees different than what Planned Parenthood advocates for. So I will love my neighbor, even when he or she goes against the Bible but I will continue to hold up the objective standard of Biblical morality as the greatest hope for mankind and teach that everything contrary to God of the Bible is in the end, unhealthy, injust, and deserving of his judgment. That’s why we need a Savior, because “we all sin and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
I visited your BLOG and was glad to see that we at least can find common ground on combating the sex-trafficking trade. The International Justice Mission is a great Christian organization working to end the horrors of so many caught in the web of abusive men (largely) in that “industry.”
LikeLike
There are a great many figures in history who held views that we would condemn today – Martin Luther was violently anti-Semitic. Ghandi thought the Indian caste system was fine. Henry Ford thought fascism was great. It’s their lasting achievements that count – and Sanger’s was that she recognised women flourished when they had reproductive control of their bodies. Something we should all be grateful for.
LikeLike
The fact that Sanger loved the idea of promiscuity, but decided to guise it as her support for other things makes me wonder how right she really thought she was in her beliefs. If a person really believes something is right and true, should they have to pretend they are fighting for a different cause? It sounds like she was ( a little ) ashamed of cheating on her husband. And, if she was trying to hide her faithlessness, why wouldn’t she support “planned parenthood”? What better way to resolve an issue that may arise from utter lack of self-control?
I don’t hate those who support “planned parenthood” and I don’t hate those who call me an idiot for believing Biblical Doctrine. I don’t hate people because I know where all the confusion, mutilated truth, and false teachings come from, and it’s not from them. Many people who are willing to kill or support the killing of innocent children do because they are under the impression that it is okay (for whatever reason that might be) and are grasping at ways to make their lives better, fuller and more complete. They may feel like it is the only way out of situation or into a better one. How can one hate a person for just trying to make it in this world of imperfection and sin? I don’t hate, and the author of this blog doesn’t hate. Trying to deliver truth into peoples’ lives, no matter how hard it may be to say or hear, is not a hateful or self-centered thing. It is the most loving thing a person can do.
Love is what Jesus was/is about. That doesn’t mean he didn’t turn over a few tables to get his point across. He called people out on their wrong-doings all the time, but it was/is because He loved them, and wanted them to be truly happy and eternally secure.
LikeLike
That’s a very skewed idea of Sanger’s legacy, though. She may personally have been promiscuous and wanted contraception for herself, but she always went nursing among very poor neighbourhoods and watched women die in childbirth and die from back alley abortions. She realised that if women could have access to contraception and could space their children out in a way that made sense for their own families, they would be better off. And, frankly, who would want to go back to a world where married women had to face 6, 7, 8, 14 pregnancies, always in maternity, always in poor health from too many pregnancies, their families perpetually in poverty with no way of rising above it? Today, far more people have children because they actually WANT them, and that’s part of Sanger’s legacy too.
We’ve all done things in our lives that we’re ashamed of – or at least, I certainly have. That doesn’t mean I support charities or do whatever good deeds I do simply as a way of covering up or justifying the things I’ve done. Humans are more complex than that. We can do bad things in our lives AND be fired up by injustice as well.
LikeLike
Bodycrimes,
I love and completely agree with your last paragraph. But your first paragraph needs a history check.
The article that began this thread is filled with footnotes for every assertion. Can you document Margaret Sanger’s love for the poor from any non-planned parenthood propaganda? The evidence that she was more interested in helping the well to do live better than she was in the interests of the poor. She was more of an elitist than a Florence Nightengale.
And what world are you talking about, “going back to”? Even in that time very few women had 14 pregnancies. On the other hand, large families are not always a bane. I for one, am from a large family, (5 boys, 2 girls) and we loved and continue to love one another. My mother and father sacrificed and loved us and cared for us while loving one another for over 50 years.
They loved their grandchildren and great grandchildren and did not see any of them as a burden or as inhibiting their growth potential. But the shift brought about by Margaret Sanger has caused an increase rather than a decrease of child abuse. It seems that as the endorsed option of abortion has risen in the culture, the door has opened to consider all children, even those outside the womb as disposable.
So children in the womb are disposable for the interests and desires of their mothers. Why wouldn’t they be disposable later? Why wouldn’t they be viewed simply as commodities to be bought and sold by others? The Sanger distopia is a nightmare. The exploding sex-trafficking trade is a sickening bi-product, an unforeseen consequence, and yet, a natural devolution of her denial of biblical values. Did she intend it? No. But look at our world and look at the charts on violent crime against women, sex and other physical abuse of children, since her dream of easy abortion came to fruition.
You are mistaken. Not evil, but wrong and misguided.
Women have so much to give the world, inside and outside the home and with or without children, but abortion and the planned parenthood worldview are overall destructive and unhelpful to the full thriving of women. The “true war on women” is being waged ironically by the those who cry most loudly about others war on women.
LikeLike
Look up Wikipedia. That will give you information on Margaret Sanger, complete with footnotes.
But let’s assume that Margaret Sanger was as one-sidedly evil as you are trying to portray her. What is her legacy? Not just readily available contraception, but good levels of sex education. You personally may have enjoyed growing up in a family of seven kids. I’m glad you had a happy experience. Unfortunately, your personal family experience cannot be extrapolated to humanity at large. For generations of women – throughout history – enforced maternity has been a scourge. Because here’s MY family history: my mother starting nursing at a time before abortion was legal and her stories about women dying from knitting needle abortions were harrowing. Absolutely harrowing. Or her stories about Catholic women producing five, six, seven babies and hating every pregnancy, hoping that this time it would be the last.
I totally fail to see how sex trafficking etc have exploded since women had access to contraception. Look at Victorian London, where they had an estimated 80,000 prostitutes and where we have very good reports of how girls were lured and tricked into the sex trade and what happened to them – all of that happened without contraception. Contraception conversely didn’t cause the sex trade.
Safe and readily available contraception is a miracle, that has alleviated incredible amounts of misery and disease. Women don’t die from unsafe abortions any more. The children that come along are wanted. That’s miraculous. I’m so glad that Margaret Sanger lived and had the courage of her convictions.
LikeLike
Victorian England was a cesspool. But the numbers in our own time in the underground sex trafficking around the world and even here in the US are staggering. Every death of every women via attempted abortion is a horror, no matter if it occurs in “back alley”, an antiseptic clinic, a hospital, or the factory of nightmares that Dr. Gosnell ran in Philadelphia.
Abortion is simply not the solution. Period. There is a baby in the womb of a mother. Innocent, vulnerable, and helpless. God will judge the society that does not protect them.
LikeLike
Well, nobody has ever changed anybody’s mind on abortion, so I won’t argue about that, though I don’t agree with you. And I think the idea that Planned Parenthood and sex trafficking are linked is so out of left field I wouldn’t know where to start.
So I’ll stick with Sanger and contraception – it’s thanks to her that we have safe, readily available contraception and for that she should be thanked profusely. She showed enormous courage in insisting on women’s rights to their own bodies.
LikeLike
Again, not true. I have changed several people’s minds on abortion and not by using talking points for my side as you are doing. I know real people who have had abortions and those who have performed abortions. It’s a sad legacy and not one to be celebrated, and these people would be the first to concur with that. Why is it? Perhaps because years of pain and guilt about the life they had snuffed out, looking at those bits of dead baby day after day, or maybe (hopefully) Jesus just changed them.
Planned Parenthood is a medical disaster and a greedy, taxpayer-money hungry business. Abortion is not, never has been, nor ever will be safe or good for women. What is more, it’s never medically needed to save a woman’s life. Maybe back in the day it was thought of as the only solution, but that was only because we didn’t know any better. Medical science has brought us so many life-saving techniques, it’s unnecessary to end a life to save one. So abortion is actually a step back for women. I think we deserve better than that and so do babies.
It’s hard to change your thinking when it’s all you’ve ever known but believe me, people can and do. That is my prayer for you and all who support abortion and PP.
LikeLike
I find it interesting that you start out saying how immoral Margaret Sanger was and when I talk about the very wonderful things she did, in making sure that contraceptive knowledge was disseminated, freeing women from the burden of relentless pregnancy, you simply focus on abortion.
Yes, I support Planned Parenthood. They do wonderful work.
LikeLike
Two years later, the evidence grows that Planned Parenthood, no matter what its supporters would like it to be, should be renamed MONSTERS INC for the horrors that go on there. $60,000 an hour every hour of every day of the year is collected from taxpayers pockets to fund this killing machine. Defund it completely today.
LikeLike