Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen kicked off the week in celebration of her organization’s founding, seemingly unaware of the fact that the founder, Margaret Sanger, was a eugenicist who supported governmental effort to “restrain, either by force or persuasion, the moron and the imbecile from producing his large family of feeble-minded offspring.”
In a lengthy Twitter thread, Wen lamented abortion being under attack in various states and called on people to unite and stand up for “reproductive health.” Her thread in full:
More than 100 years ago, Planned Parenthood was founded on the simple idea that our bodies are our own — without that, we cannot be truly free or equal.
Yet, in 2019, we’ve seen states pass 19 bans on abortion care. That’s just in 6 months.
Laws that ban abortion care at 6 weeks, before many women even know they’re pregnant. Laws that allow the state to investigate women’s miscarriages. Laws that threaten doctors, like me, with jail for taking care of our patients.
Already, 1 in 3 women of reproductive age lives in a state where abortion could be outlawed if Roe v. Wade is overturned. That’s more than 25 million people.
This is not what people in America want, nor is it something they’ll stand for. 77% of Americans say they do not want to see Roe overturned. They are paying attention to these dangerous attacks on our health and our rights.
Now is the time to unite, stand up, and speak up to make sure we all can live full and healthy lives. We won’t tolerate this assault on our reproductive health and rights, and we won’t be silenced.
According to LifeNews, people immediately excoriated Wen for commemorating Planned Parenthood’s founding and then proceeding to advocate for abortion without so much as acknowledging the fact that her organization’s founder endorsed racist population control measures against people of color — the very same people that Planned Parenthood often targets today.
“Wrong. Revisionist history. Planned Parenthood was founded on EUGENICS by Margaret Sanger, whose goal was to make sure ‘undesirable’ populations were reproducing. Or, if they became pregnant, their babies were aborted,” said conservative commentator Liz Wheeler.
Another user said: “Gee, sounds like you never read Margaret Sanger? Let me help you out with some excerpts from what PP was founded on: ‘We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population…’ – Letter to Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, December 10, 1939, p. 2.” Another user said: “‘Eugenics without birth control seems to us a house builded [sic] upon the sands. It is at the mercy of the rising stream of the unfit.’ – Sanger, Margaret. (1919) Birth Control and Racial Betterment. The Birth Control Review.”
“Yeah you don’t want to start touting the ‘history’ of Planned Parenthood, Dr Wen. It was started based on eugenics,” said another.
The racist underpinnings of abortion, a practice Planned Parenthood spearheads, made headlines this week when former NFL star Burgess Owens testified against the prospect of slavery reparations in Congress. Owens took time to specifically excoriate the Democratic Party for being responsible for the suffering of black people by pushing abortion.
“I used to be a Democrat until I did my history and found out the misery that that party brought to my race,” Owens said. “I do believe in restitution. Let’s point to the party that was part of slavery, KKK, Jim Crow, that has killed over 40 percent of our black babies, 20 million of them.”
“State of California, 75 percent of our black boys cannot pass standard reading and writing tests: A Democratic state,” Owens continued. “So yes, let’s pay restitution. How about a Democratic Party pay for all the misery brought to my race and those — after we learn our history — who decide to stay there, they should pay also. They are complicit. And every white American, Republican or Democrat, that feels guilty because of your white skin, you should need to pony up also. That way we can get past this reparation and recognize that this country has given us greatness.”