Outrage from the Left: The Defense of the Immoral, Inhumane Planned Parenthood
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By: Shane Radliff
September 19th, 2015
This past Friday, the House voted 241 to 187 in favor of cutting the amount of extortion dollars that are allocated to the organization known as Planned Parenthood. The right-wing statists are happy for the “victory” and the left-wing statists are outraged; outraged enough, that #IStandWithPP is now trending on various social media outlets.
Planned Parenthood has been facing a lot of criticism from the right, when multiple videos were released, accusing the organization of selling aborted fetal body parts, and this past Friday’s events are the result.
The “battle” regarding this football issue isn’t over, as it still has to go to the Senate. Granted, this is just another dog and pony show in the carnival of distractions, more commonly known as the news cycle, but there are some things that are conveniently being left out and overlooked, by both the right-wing and left-wing statists.
Eugenics in America
One of the common pieces of misinformation in mainline history, is that eugenics made its debut in Hitler’s Nazi Germany. That is certainly not the case. (Author’s Note: The summary provided below is a compressed summary. For more information, visit The Embryo Project Encyclopedia.)
In 1910, the American Eugenics Movement was brought front and center, with the founding of the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) at Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory in New York. The focus of its founder, Charles Davenport, a geneticist and biologist, was the study of heredity and human reproduction, in hopes of formulating social policies based off of their findings. The ERO received heavy funding from organizations like the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and power moguls like John D. Rockefeller and John. H. Kellogg.
The ERO’s main focus was gathering a repository for the trait pedigree records of a significant number of Americans. Information was gathered byway of voluntary questionnaires and the examination of residents within mental hospitals, orphanages, as well as among other places.
Moving forward, there is another significant player in the ERO, and that is Harry H. Laughlin, whose expertise was the breeding of chickens and thoroughbred horses. Davenport and Laughlin discussed the possibility of using eugenics to formulate an approach for human breeding, and Laughlin moved to Cold Springs Harbor to be the superintendent of the organization.
At that time, Laughlin served as the eugenics expert to the now-defunct House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, and was heavily in favor of immigration restriction, based on the findings of the ERO. The ERO’s work was crucial especially considering it was later used as a model for Germany’s 1933 sterilization laws.
The ERO was closed in 1939, but the eugenics movement in America was only beginning.
Note: For a more in-depth explanation on eugenics in America, please check out the work by Edwin Black.
Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood
The roots of Planned Parenthood began in 1921, under the name of the American Birth Control League, founded by Margaret Sanger. It wasn’t until 1942 when the name was changed to Planned Parenthood. Currently, there are 85 affiliates and 820 clinics in the United States and there have been over 56,000,000 abortions since 1973, following the ruling in Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113 (1973).
So, who was Margaret Sanger?
Let’s first look at the opinion of the feminist war-hawk, Hillary Clinton, when she accepted the 2009 Margaret Sanger award from Planned Parenthood:
“Now, I have to tell you that it was a great privilege when I was told that I would receive this award. I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision. Another of my great friends, Ellen Chesler, is here, who wrote a magnificent biography of Margaret Sanger called Woman of Valor. And when I think about what she did all those years ago in Brooklyn, taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her.”[Emphasis added]
Unless you’re a murderous war-hawk named Hillary Clinton, there is one thing that Margaret Sanger was not, and that is admirable.
Let’s take a look back through Sanger’s writings and speeches to find out who exactly Mrs. Clinton is referencing.
First off, we can see the rampant statism inherent in Sanger’s words, which is no surprise when you look at the modern day feminist/social justice warrior movement: “use the state to force our views and beliefs upon the rest of the public”. In pages 107-108 of her Birth Control Review, published in 1932, she writes:
“Second, have Congress set up a special department for the study of population problems and appoint a Parliament of Population, the directors representing the various branches of science this body to direct and control the population through birth rates and immigration, and to direct its distribution over the country according to national needs consistent with taste, fitness and interest of the individuals.”[Emphasis added]
Well, there is at least one thing the right-wing would agree with Sanger on, albeit for different reasons, and that is their perspective on immigration. Sanger took it an extreme, but the degrees of separation between someone like her and the nationalistic right-wing should be a discussion for another time.
From pages 107-108 in the previously aforementioned publication, Sanger, sharing the same sentiments as Hitler, believed in sterilization and segregation to be decided upon by the State:
“…to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring…”[Emphasis added]
Immediately following the previous quote, Sanger lays out the plan:
“The first step would thus be to control the intake and output of morons, mental defectives, epileptics. The second step would be to take an inventory of the secondary group such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends, classify them in special departments under government medical protection, and segregate them on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct. Having corralled this enormous part of our population and placed it on a basis of health instead of punishment, it is safe to say that fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense– defending the unborn against their own disabilities. The third step would be to give special attention to the mothers’ health, to see that women who are suffering from tuberculosis, heart or kidney disease, toxic goitre, gonorrhea, or any disease where the condition of pregnancy disturbs their health are placed under public health nurses to instruct them in practical, scientific methods of contraception in order to safeguard their lives-thus reducing maternal mortality.”[Emphasis added]
We can begin to see why Hillary Clinton admires Margaret Sanger. When you look at the actions and agendas of both, the differences between them are very minor. The only significant one between the two is that Clinton has wielded government power and is seeking to do so again, as US President, and therefore has much more influence to contribute to the pushing of this dangerous agenda.
In a different publication, Sanger advocates in favor of “A Code for Babies” (America Needs a Code for Babies, published in March of 1934):
“Article 3. A marriage license shall in itself give husband and wife only the right to a common household and not the right to parenthood.
“Article 4. No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child, and no man shall have the right to become a father, without a permit for parenthood.
“Article 5. Permits for parenthood shall be issued upon application by city, county, or state authorities to married couples, providing they are financially able to support the expected child, have the qualifications needed for proper rearing of the child, have no transmissible diseases, and, on the woman’s part, no medical indication that maternity is likely to result in death or permanent injury to health.
“Article 6. No permit for parenthood shall be valid for more than one birth.”[Emphasis added]
One final quote, from “Woman and the New Race”:
“The most serious evil of our times is that of encouraging the bringing into the world of large families. The most immoral practice of the day is breeding too many children… The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it…” (Chapter 5)
From her own writings and speeches (no speculation is needed) it’s easy to tell that Margaret Sanger had an inhumane agenda, and that same agenda is rooted in the foundation of Planned Parenthood.
Population control is evident when you look at the estimated 56,000,000 abortions performed by the organization. Eugenics is also very much at play, when you look at the proportionality of abortions vis a vis ethnicity. According to the Guttmacher Institute, non-Hispanic black and Hispanic women have higher rates of abortions (40 and 29 per 1,000 women respectively), compared to the 12 per 1,000 for non-Hispanic white women.
The same Aryan mindset that drove Hitler to commit his atrocities, is the same racialist mindset that Sanger advocated for, and is now being defended by leftists, albeit, who are more likely than not, just useful idiots, in regards to their ignorance of Planned Parenthood’s own history.
Property Rights Issues and the Twin Libertarian Axioms
The major driver behind the progressive leftist’s defense of Planned Parenthood, is something termed “women’s rights,” which includes a variety of medical services provided to women of all ages. Being a propertarian anarchist (which includes the ownership of one’s physical body), these issues are ones dealing with property, more specifically self-ownership, and are even touchy subjects within the libertarian/voluntaryist faction.
All humans have a right to their body and what is inside of it. From a libertarian standpoint, the desired “eviction” of an unwanted fetus is not a violation of the non-aggression principle or of self-ownership, as Murray Rothbard pointed out in his book, “The Ethics of Liberty.” In a situation where the mother doesn’t want the baby, Rothbard terms the fetus a “parasitic invader” and it is within the mother’s rights to evict the unwanted invader from her body; this theory is called evictionism. (Author’s note: I’m not sure what I think about Rothbard’s proposed theory, but it is another way to examine the property rights of babies vs. expecting mothers, so I included it.)
For me personally, I dislike the idea of abortion, especially as a method of population control. It is also, in my opinion, immoral, because I consider it a form of murder; and while I would never kill my own children, I can understand why others may not want to take on the responsibility of raising a child or even giving them up for adoption, for whatever reason. For these reasons, this is why I fully support the property rights of all human beings.
It’s quite sad that there can never be any real, philosophical discussion on this subject; instead, these debates are often emotive, and as I mentioned before, emotion trumps logic 99 times out of 100.
The Economic Means: Let the Market Decide
Planned Parenthood is registered as a (government subsidized) non-profit organization that in FY 2009 reaped the benefits of $360 million in government grants and contracts, which is about 1/3 of its funding. Expanding the immorality a step further, Planned Parenthood uses extorted tax monies from people who may not support their agenda. There is no freedom of economic choice, and given that all taxation is theft, those who are opposed to abortion services are legally prohibited from voting with their wallet.
Now obviously, supporters of Planned Parenthood can, and do, make voluntary donations, but the issue here is that this organization enjoys government largess at the expense of the taxpayers; this socialization of the costs for abortion services is what conservatives are justifiably upset about and I join them in that.
In a libertarian society, organizations like Planned Parenthood would still exist, because of market demand. There would still be women that want to use birth control and utilize abortion services. I, and many others like me, would prefer to never use abortion services, but at least “we” wouldn’t be coerced to pay another person’s bills, as we currently do under the welfare state.
Let the market decide! In a more libertarian society, the barriers to entry would be lower and noticeably more open to competition, which would allow consumers to determine which of these clinics provides the most humane, efficient, safe, and cost-effective practices. For those who consider them pro-life, instead of using the reformist political means, such as lobbying and protesting, they would still be able to voice their disagreement through the economic means of ostracism and boycott. (Author’s note: Protesting appears on the direct action list, but the type of protesting referred to here, is the act of asking government to step-in and “do something”, much like the Occupy Wall Street protesters did, when they demanded the US Congress to remedy their grievances.)
Through the market process, everyone wins, unlike the “democratic process”. And the best part about this libertarian society, is that private property would be upheld to the fullest, which fully vindicates the self-ownership of one’s physical body.
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