Comment on Removal of Sanger’s Name from Her Clinic

Tags

birth control, clinic, eugenics, New York City, race

To the Editor:

Re “Planned Parenthood in N.Y. Disavows Margaret Sanger Over Eugenics” (Washington Post, July 22):

Sanger’s 1st clinic at 17 West 16th Street, NYC

Margaret Sanger pushed her way into the (then) widely respected eugenics movement in order to win greater acceptance for birth control, which was illegal and associated with promiscuity and prostitution. Yet she vehemently opposed the eugenics movement’s principal goal: increasing middle- and upper-class childbearing.

Sanger believed that every woman, regardless of class, religion, or race, should be able to decide when and if to have children. The exception she made, which was broadly supported, was for those who were incapable of caring for a child or were at risk of passing on a disease or defect. Today we see a troubling disconnect between Sanger’s lifelong fight for women’s reproductive freedom and her inability to extend rights and liberties to the mentally and physically disabled.

But it’s important not to let the decision by Planned Parenthood of Greater N.Y. legitimize the accusation made by many on the right that Sanger was a racist intent on limiting the reproduction of people of color. Sanger never defined fitness for parenthood in racial terms and worked closely with Black leaders and in Black communities to improve access to contraception.

Peter Engelman

Conway, Mass.

Excavating a Footnote: Unpacking Margaret Sanger’s Views on Charity and the Unfit

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Allen M. Hornbuth, charity, Edwin Black, eugenics, Gregory J. Dober, Judith Lynn Newman

Complete with Comic Sans font sign

Here at the Margaret Sanger Papers Project, we’re no strangers to misquotes, misinterpretations, and all sorts of other misinformation about Sanger. It often originates from anti-abortion proponents deliberately attempting to discredit Sanger and, by extension, Planned Parenthood.

Just do a search through Twitter for Margaret Sanger, and you’ll likely find one particularly sloppy Photoshopped picture of her speaking to a group of KKK members. Deliberate misinformation is common–but it is also fairly easy to misunderstand or overly simplify Sanger’s intentions by relying highly interpretive secondary sources.

Recently brought to our attention was a book containing a section on eugenics that mentions Sanger—titled Against Their Will:The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America by Allen M. Hornblum, Judith Lynn Newman, and Gregory J. Dober (2013).  You would not expect to find Margaret Sanger mentioned in this sad history, but she does turn up in the overview of the eugenics movement that opens the book.

Its only coverage is a short, but fairly harsh mention of Sanger that appears to quote her:

Margaret Sanger, the great social activist and birth control proponent, was even more strident in her denunciation of society’s unfit elements, ‘vigorously oppos[ing] charitable efforts to uplift the downtrodden’ and arguing that ‘it was better that the cold and hungry be left without help’ so the eugenically fit would face less of a challenge from ‘the unfit.’ She often compared the poor and the great mass of dispossessed to ‘human waste’ and ‘weeds’ needing to be ‘exterminated.’

Now, it’s true that Margaret Sanger believed in eugenics, though she despised the eugenics of the Nazis and other extremists. But I found these quotes unlikely words of Sanger, so I dug through the notes to find the source. Sure enough, the quotes come from a secondary source—Edwin Black’s War Against The Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (2003). Black did read primary sources–chiefly Sanger’s 1922 The Pivot of Civilization, and determined that Sanger was so anti-charity that she encouraged leaving those in need to die.

But in reading Pivot myself, it seems far more likely that Sanger criticized charity for its approach–treating the problem rather than preventing it. Black quoted Sanger, who said that “organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease,” the disease being the “constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents” (Pivot of Civilization, 109). Her purpose here does not seem to be the end of charity towards the poor and mentally ill. But the larger point of the chapter was that it was perhaps more kind to—through the use of birth control—prevent the birth of people who would grow up poor and dependent on the state, rather than offering them meager charity after they were born. Sanger’s views on philanthropy can be summed up neatly:

The poor woman is taught how to have her seventh child, when what she wants to know is how to avoid bringing into the world her eighth. (Pivot of Civilization, 116).

As for the ugly terms attributed to Sanger, the story is more complex. For Sanger, the unfit referred to the mentally ill, physically disabled and otherwise “unfit.” The context of her discussion of them as “human waste”  was in terms of the cost to society of supporting those who
could not support themselves.

The term “human weeds” comes from botanist Luther Burbank,

“America . . . is like a garden in which the gardener pays no attention to the weeds. Our criminals are our weeds, and weeds breed fast and are intensely hardy. They must be eliminated. Stop permitting criminals and weaklings to reproduce. All over the country to-day we have enormous insane asylums and similar institutions where we nourish the unfit and criminal instead of exterminating them. Nature eliminates the weeds, but we turn them into parasites and allow them to reproduce.”-Burbank, quoted by Sanger in “Is Race Suicide Possible?” (1925)

In her 1923 article “A Better Race Through Birth Control,” Sanger herself points out the dangers of

The object of civilization is to obtain the highest and most splendid culture of which humanity is capable. But such attainment is unthinkable if we continue to breed from the present race stock that yields us our largest amount of progeny. Some method must be devised to eliminate the degenerate and the defective; for these act constantly to impede progress and ever increasingly drag down the human race.–A Better Race Through Birth Control” (Nov. 1923)

but the method Sanger suggested was birth control:

Give the women of the poorer classes a chance also to limit and control their families, and it will be found that in very many cases the material is equally good. The difference is that, like plants crowded too close together on poor soil, there is no chance to develop and the whole families are left impoverished in mind and body. Give room for each [to] grow and all may become fine and healthy American citizens.–“A Better Race Through Birth Control” (Nov. 1923)

Sanger’s writings were certainly eugenic and not always particularly kind towards those she referred to as “unfit”. However, that she called for the end of philanthropy, thought “it was better that the cold and hungry be left without help”, and was a supporter of “extermination” of the poor and disabled are definitely Black’s interpretation of her work and not quotes from Sanger. The authors of Against Their Will—rather than using Sanger’s words—make assumptions based on a secondary source, one with an interpretation of Sanger that not everyone agrees with. Don’t believe me? I highly encourage you to create your own analysis by skipping the secondary sources, and reading Sanger’s writings for yourself.

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For a more comprehensive look at Sanger’s complicated relationship with eugenics, search the Speeches and Articles of Margaret Sanger.

What Did Sanger See in Nietzsche?

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birth control, eugenics, morality, Nietzsche

Sanger was an avid reader of Nietzsche [1844-1900], a German philosopher known for his work on religion, morality and mass culture. He was perhaps best known for his insistence that “God is dead”, suggesting that modern secular society had ‘killed’ the Christian God.

“No Gods No Masters” was Sanger’s interpretation of a French saying Nietzsche quoted, “Ni dieu ni maître!” (‘Neither God nor master’)

Sanger found this fascinating because Nietzsche proposed that the Christian God was the basis for moral thinking for centuries. This meant that the figurative death of God placed traditional morality in question. Sanger was not a supporter of traditional morality in any sense; it seemed to only hinder her goals. She believed that “Nietzsche philosophy not only calls in question the moral law itself it challenges & attacks the foundation of all moral law.” (Frederick Nietzsche).

Nietzsche called for the defeat of traditional religious morals, seeing no need for people to be restrained by them in a post-Christian world. He rejected the idea of a universal moral law, offering instead the individual ability to recreate a system of values. Nietzsche’s philosophy, for Sanger, represented the break from the traditional morality that imposed itself against her work. Birth control was often considered immoral in its potential for “abuse” by unmarried couples. Sanger’s concerns fell elsewhere; she saw herself acting morally by educating adults in the best methods of protecting themselves and offering control over family size. She was then able to allow people to create the best lives for themselves and their families that they could—she placed value on individual choice.

Margaret Sanger in 1914.

Perhaps important for Sanger was Nietzsche’s claim that those who are in power determine the morality of the masses. Nietzsche did not promote the elimination of a structured morality, rather, he suggested that it was good for the masses. He did, however, encourage anyone able to create their own ethics by following their own “inner law”. Sanger likely supported his individualistic morality, and she certainly recognized the imposition of morality on the people. Particularly notable was the burden of upper-class values on the working class. Large families, for example, were very difficult to maintain for working-class parents, who may not have had the money to support them. These imposed values were problematic because they did not represent the realities of people’s lives.

Supporters of traditional morality, very often opponents of birth control, also sought to preserve values like “purity”. Sanger saw instead that this opposition was propagating the poverty that lead to prostitution, criminal behavior, and suffering. She strived to abandon these imposed values of conventional morality.

Let us turn a deaf ear to the trumpet-tongued liars clamoring for Protection, Patriotism, Prisons, Police, Workhouses and Large Families. (No Gods)

Frederich Nietzsche, 1869

This is where Nietzsche’s other famous idea, the “Übermensch” (overman, superman, or super-human) comes into play. The overman is a beyond-human figure who creates new values, rising above notions of good and evil and the morality of the masses. The overman is an ideal human, someone who has developed his or her own ability to determine moral issues. While the overman served as the “goal” for humanity within Nietzsche, it seems to be an ideal he presented for the sake of encouraging new cultural values. Christian morality focused on Heaven—the world beyond this world—whereas Nietzsche sought to emphasize love for the current world and mortal life.

Where did Sanger stand on Nietzsche’s philosophy? She certainly appreciated a re-examination of traditional morality, and recognized that it would require a shift in values. She interpreted from her readings of Nietzsche that the individual is the creator of his or her own values. If we create our own values, then the standards we hold ourselves to in relation to those values (morality) are also created by us. In her notes on Nietzsche, she suggested that “the individual is the original source & constituent of all value. No other standard of obligations for you or for me than that set by our personal ends & ideals” (Frederick Nietzsche).

The “overman” that Sanger appreciated is one of Nietzsche’s more controversial ideas due to its appropriation at times by eugenics supporters. Speaking of Nietzsche, she stated “we have a right to extract from this or any philosophy that which we can use for our own purpose” (Frederick Nietzsche).  She picked out whatever peices of Nietzsche she found suitable to support her cause. Sanger’s interpretation of the overman emphasized the “human ideal” not as a biological goal, but for its potential to recreate cultural values.

To our society apologists, and to their plausible excuses for modern oppression, the only adequate answer is–we have done with your civilization and your gods. We will organize society in such a way as to make it certain for all to live in comfort and leisure without bartering their affections or their convictions. (No Gods)

Sanger argued for elimination of those values she so despises—including large families—which stood in opposition to her stance on birth control. What she seemed to extract from Nietzsche’s philosophy was the potential for humanity it held—freedom from traditional morality and the creation of a new morality, perhaps more along the lines of what she observed within the world.

Birth Control and Eugenics: Uneasy Bedfellows?

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document, eugenics, Historical Legacy, history, margaret sanger, New York Historical Society, reproductive rights

Margaret Sanger blurb in New York Historical Society Exhibit

Recently on a visit to the New York Historical Society (NYHS), we noticed a small exhibit in the front hall on the history of reform movements in New York that featured Margaret Sanger. The blurb read: “Though best known for her role in promoting women’s access to legal birth control (for which she was indicted for obscenity in 1914) Margaret Sanger was also a proponent of eugenics, suggesting that the fertility of the “unfit” ought to be restricted.” At the Sanger Papers we spend our time going over the entirety of Sanger’s life, so it strikes us as curious (and particularly presentist) that this stage of her career has come to define her so extensively.

In the wake of media attention following the 1917 Brownsville Clinic trial, Margaret Sanger broadened her arguments for birth control in an effort to appeal to a wider audience that included wealthy women, doctors and academics. Sanger added eugenic and public health reasons to support birth control, which essentially overshadowed her earlier feminist and socialist rationales. These conservative arguments had far more widely spread support. Eugenics, in particular, was a respectable scientific field,  widely advocated by leading intellectuals, scientists and politicians. Students were taught eugenics in college courses; state fairs had booths educating visitors on “racial hygiene,” and proponents of eugenics populated the faculty of schools like Yale, Stanford and Harvard. Sanger believed that if she could secure the support of the eugenics movement, she could win legitimacy and gain prestige for the birth control movement. Sanger, like many others of her time, was swayed by the arguments of eugenics, though she did not adopt them wholesale. Her 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilization, offers the most detailed explication of her views on eugenics, and shows where she differed with so-called positive eugenics. Her efforts to win the acceptance of the eugenics movement did not succeed, as Sanger and the birth control movement remained at the fringe of the mainstream eugenics movement.

The differences between Sanger and the birth control movement and the academics who lead the eugenics movement have been summarized by the Eugenics Archive site, in part:

Margaret Sanger and leaders of the birth control movement, predominantly women, believed that people should be empowered, by education, to make choices to limit their own reproduction. In a society that frowned on open discussion of sexuality and where physicians knew little about the biology of reproduction, Sanger advocated that mothers be given access to the scientific information needed to thoughtfully plan conception.

Davenport and other eugenic leaders, predominantly men, believed that the state should be empowered, by statute, to control reproduction by whole classes of people they deemed genetically inferior. Eugenicists focused on segregating the “feebly inherited” in mental institutions, ultimately seeking the legal remedy of compulsory sterilization. (They also employed immigration restriction to limit the growth of certain population groups.)

Evidence of the distrust and antipathy that some eugenicists felt for Sanger and her colleagues can be seen in the following excerpts from a 1928 letter from Paul Popenoe to Madison Grant, in which Popenoe bemoans the possibility of an alliance with Sanger’s American Birth Control League. The original can be found in the Charles B. Davenport Papers, at the American Philosophical Society Library.

“Dear Mr. Grant,

I have been considerably disquieted by the letter you showed me yesterday, suggesting a working alliance between the American Eugenics Society and the American Birth Control League. In my judgement we have everything to lose nothing to gain to such an arrangement.

[The American Birth Control League] is controlled by a group that has be brought up on agitation and emotional appeal instead of on research and education… With this group, we would take on a large quantity of ready-made enemies which it has accumulated, and we would gain allies who, while believing that they are eugenics, really have no conception of what eugenics is and are actually opposed to it.

[At a recent international birth control conference] two members of our advisory council … put through a resolution at the final meeting, urging that people whose children gave promise of being of exceptional value to the race should have as many children, properly spaced, as they felt that they feasibly could. This is eugenics. It is not the policy of the American Birth Control League leaders, who in the next issue of their monthly magazine came out with an editorial denouncing this resolution as contrary to all the principles and sentiments of their organization.

If it is desirable for us to make a campaign in favor of contraception, we are abundantly able to do so on our own account, without enrolling a lot of sob sisters, grand stand players, and anarchists to help us. We had a lunatic fringe in the eugenics movement in the early days; we have been trying for 20 years to get rid of it and have finally done so. Let’s not take on another fringe of any kind as an ornament.

Sincerely,

Paul Popenoe

In 1928, at the height of the popularity of the eugenics movement, this letter makes clear how peripheral Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement were to eugenics, and how much at odds she was with many of its central tenants. Fast forward to 2012, where the dominant interpretation of Sanger’s work is her critical role in the eugenics movement.  It is rather ironic that her legacy today has been yoked to a discredited ideological movement that hardly accepted her at the time.

So why did the NYHS accept a portrayal of Sanger that depicts her eugenics period as definitive of her life time of advocacy? In today’s popular discourse, Sanger’s historical legacy has been appropriated by opponents of reproductive rights and used as an easy target to defame and discredit the work that has continued in the almost 50 years since Sanger’s death. Embellishing her role within the eugenics movement is a key feature of this agenda. With a single sentence, the NYHS lent its institutional authority to legitimizing this problematic interpretation.  When we asked them, via Twitter, about their curatorial choices, they responded that their exhibit “reveals history’s complexity”. Certainly, history is complex; yet this exhibition piece reveals more about the complexity of the present than that of the past.

Margaret Sanger Papers in the national spotlight

Tags

eugenics, Herman Cain, Racism, Sanger Project

Although Margaret Sanger died in 1966, debates about her legacy still shape how politicians talk about the important issue of abortion rights. On Sunday, October 30, Republican candidate for president Herman Cain gave an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation”. He claimed that if voters wanted to understand the real meaning of abortion in America, they needed to “go back and look at the history and look at Margaret Sanger’s own words.” But Cain’s knowledge of Sanger seems more rooted in convenient myth than in historical fact. The phone has been ringing off the hook today at the Margaret Sanger Papers with journalists and commentators calling to find out the real history.

Cain claimed that early Planned Parenthood clinics were build predominately in black neighborhoods as part of a plan of racial extermination. He said, “So if you go back and look up the history–secondly, look at where most of them were build, 75 percent of those facilities were built in the black community– and Margaret Sanger’s own words, she didn’t use the word ‘genocide’ but she did talk about preventing the increasing numbers of poor blacks in this country by preventing black babies from being born.”

Although Sanger allied birth control with the eugenics movement that was popular in her era, Planned Parenthood in no way encouraged abortion among black communities. In fact, none of Sanger’s clinics performed abortions before Roe v. Wade in 1973.  Racism in the world of family planning tended to express itself in the reverse: blacks were often excluded from clinics offering birth control services. Here at the Sanger Papers, we frequently write about the issue of race in our newsletters and publications. Cathy Moran Hajo, associate editor of the Margaret Sanger Papers, has recently addressed this in her book, Birth Control on Main Street (2010). There were a handful of clinics that serviced specifically black communities, but these received little assistance from white activists. Cain’s suggestion that 75% of clinics were in black neighborhoods is completely unfounded. “Whatever the activists’ personal beliefs about race may have been,” writes Hajo, “there was no grand program to exterminate nonwhites or the poor.”

This is not the first time Cain has distorted the history of birth control in order to advance his political views. In April of 2010, Cain made claims about Planned Parenthood’s alleged genocide plan that earned PolitiFact’s “Pants on Fire” status, meaning that they found no truth to the claim whatsoever. In fact, PolitiFact said, “Cain’s claim is a ridiculous, cynical play of the race card.”

Sunday’s interview is no different. In the Washington Post today, Glenn Kessler decries Cain’s rewriting of birth control history, relying on the research of Hajo and others to discredit this misuse of the past for politically expedient ends. CNN and Factcheck.org have also called the Sanger Papers looking for more information, and we expected to see pieces from them soon.