Ever since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, America’s longstanding abortion debate has taken on a new tone.
The battle has moved to the states and in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington, voters are no longer asking whether there’s a right to abortion in the Constitution — the court has made it quite clear that there isn’t — but rather if their state should allow women to abort their children.
The Left, of course, is fighting harder than ever. Planned Parenthood has even launched an ad campaign aimed at fighting abortion limits on the ballot in the 2024 elections. Another tactic the Left has employed is to pair racial justice with abortion access, suggesting in popular articles and even scientific studies that those who care about the wellbeing of racial minorities should vote for pro-abortion measures.
Mildred Jefferson, the first African American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School, would beg to differ. As she put in a 1977 debate with Nicki Nichols Gamble, the executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts:
“The abortionists have accomplished what perhaps 200 years of lynchings did not do; destroying an entire generation and crippling another.”
The truth that Dr. Jefferson understood and that younger generations need to know is that the abortion movement was founded as a eugenics project. Eugenics is the “science” behind the idea that there is a hierarchical ordering of the races, and it goes hand-in-hand with some of the most unethical medical practices that are part of American history.
Take the case of J. Marion Sims. He has been called the father of modern gynecology. In recent years, however, he has been rightly called out because his research was conducted on enslaved black women without anesthesia. It took decades, but the truth finally came out.
Today, in the midst of our abortion debates, Gen Z also needs to know the truth about Planned Parenthood.
Despite being presented as a compassionate progressive leader, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was also a vicious racist. Although pro-abortion advocates have defended her for years as a product of her time (the same defense used with Sims), the truth is that Sanger was a radical, even for 1930s America. Indeed, her purpose in founding Planned Parenthood and her mission in life was to destroy the black race. As she wrote in a 1939 letter to Clarence Gamble:
“We don’t want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the [African American] minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
Clarence Gamble spent his life and family fortune promoting eugenics. He passed his beliefs on to his son Richard Gamble, as well as his son’s wife, the aforementioned Nicki Nichols Gamble who debated Dr. Jefferson in 1977 and was even so bold as to suggest on air that abortion helps low-income women.
Then, and for the rest of her life, Dr. Jefferson stood up to the racist abortionists targeting her community and fought tenaciously for the lives of black babies. She went on to help form and lead Massachusetts Citizens for Life and found the Right to Life Crusade, Inc. She is a hero, deserves her place in history, and most importantly, needs to be remembered today.
Public pressure for change can make a difference. In 2018, for instance, the New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously to remove Sims’ statue from its prominent location in Central Park. Likewise, in 2020 Planned Parenthood of Greater New York removed Margaret Sanger’s name from its building.
And yet, the business of Sanger’s Planned Parenthood — “exterminate[ing] the Negro population”— continues. In 2016, more black babies were killed by abortion than were born in New York City. This is no accident, of course.
Ramona Treviño, a former manager of a Planned Parenthood clinic, said in 2021 that her former employer targets Hispanics and African Americans. Indeed, at a director’s meeting, she even discovered Planned Parenthood has abortion quotas.
So, simply removing Sanger’s name from the building is insufficient. Dr. Jefferson wouldn’t have been satisfied by the Left’s attempts to erase history. And we shouldn’t be either.
Listen to her words from 2003:
“I am at once a physician, a citizen and a woman, and I am not willing to stand aside and allow this concept of expendable human lives to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged and the planned have the right to live.”
It is time for America to put an end to Sanger’s institution of eugenics. It won’t be easy — Planned Parenthood is a well-funded force. But it wasn’t easy for Mildred Jefferson either.
As legislation on abortion continues to be on the ballot in statehouses across the counties, those who fight for life would do well to remember her example. Although the Left may label standing up for life as racist, fascist, right-wing extremism, the truth is that it’s simply the right thing to do.
Raychel Namiotka is a Digital Workplace Analyst for Information Technology at The Heritage Foundation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.