Barack Obama is a well-spoken and well-educated man, and he also professes to be a student of history, which is why his affection for Planned Parenthood is so odd. During his campaign and more recently in his call to service, Obama repeatedly has supported and promoted the work of Planned Parenthood, and yet he seems unaware of or unconcerned with history of the organization.
Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, an outspoken racist, who supported eugenics and Hitler. Sanger endorsed coercive sterilization for certain groups of society that she deemed inferior and unfit to procreate, including the mentally ill and African-Americans. In her writings, she boasts about speaking at a KKK rally, and she even outlines a plan to exterminate the black population. In Sanger’s mind, abortion and contraception were not simply ways of liberating white women but tools of oppression. How can President Obama, who has called for healing the racial divide in the U.S., condone the work of an organization with such a racist past?
Like other Planned Parenthood proponents, I imagine that the president would dismiss this legacy and argue that it is part of the organization’s past that has been left behind. But has Planned Parenthood really moved away from Sanger’s vision?
In 2008, UCLA pro-life students published the results of their undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood. They found multiple employees of the organization more than willing to accept financial contributions from students posing as white racists. In one conversation, the student tells the Planned Parenthood representative that she wants her money to be used specifically to fund the abortion of black babies, so that her children will not be disadvantaged by black kids and affirmative action. Rather than refusing the contribution, the Planned Parenthood worker actually tells the woman that she can absolutely designate that her donation be used for that purpose.
(See http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/feb/08022802.html for a full transcript of the conversation).
Several statistics appear to support the findings of the UCLA students. According to L.E.A.R.N. a national pro-life organization, 78% of Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority communities, and a black fetus is 5 times more likely to be aborted than a white baby. In 2005, the CDC reported that 203,991 black Americans were aborted, while less than 200,000 African-Americans died from heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, homicide, and chronic respiratory disease combined. Sanger may have passed away, but her dream continues.
If President Obama truly wants to help the poor and the oppressed and if he really wants to make racism part of our past and not part of future, then he needs to divorce himself from Planned Parenthood. Perhaps the relationship was built on ignorance or convenience. Either way, it needs to end. The work of Planned Parenthood has no place in an administration that wants to build a future based on unity and hope. Yes we can end abortion! Yes we can overcome our racist past! Yes we can change!
- Christopher Gross – Mr. Gross is a doctoral candidate in moral theology/ethics at Catholic University of America, and also holds a B.A. in political science and religion from Hampden-Sydney and M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity.
