Questions about Planned Parenthood

I'd rather talk about this. Three friends of mine from college were in the same boat and I think it's a ridiculously perverse form of hypocrisy.

 

Of course you would
Bait and Switch?

Rocket River

 

No, although it is odd that you would kill your child in order to save him from smoking.

It was not clear from your initial post that you had changed your opinion. Frankly, the way you worded that statement made it seem quite clear that you were always pro-life.

My head thanks you.

No.

Irrelevant.

Hardly. My "argument" was merely that I thought it odd a "pro-life" person would have an abortion. Can you blow this more out of proportion?

 

Not really. I don't have any real stance in the abortion debate. I'm your stereotypical american fence-walker in this debate. I'm anti-abortion, but pro roe-vs-wade: i.e., it's not for me to dictate what someone else should or should not do with their own body. I support planned parenthood - but hardly enough to come springing to their defense in this instance, not that I know the answer or care at all anyhow.

It's kind of a silly question, since it would imply that all past leaders/founders indicate the values of their respective organizations. Which would be easily historically refutable. That being said, strictly from an informational standpoint, I'm intrigued - but not enough to do any research, a la hotballa.

Nice pigeonhole though.

 

I've never heard anything about her being involved with the "negro project." But she was an advocate for some forms of eugenics. How far she went with it I don't know.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger

 

Thanks.

Likewise. And an extra thank you for jumping to conclusions prematurely.

 

My understanding is that those reports of her early prejudices are true. I don't see how it has a bearing on the good works of the present organization, however.



D&D. Canned Peaches... Eat Some!

 

It's true as were many of the others in the movement that turned into Planned Parenthood (a better name for the public than- eugenics)

What better way to sell eugenic ideology than call it family planning. They get their cake and eat it too.

Nice

 

Understood.

Not my intent. I was trying to affirm to RR that I was hardly trying to "defend the honor" of planned parenthood.

 

That doesn't make sense to me, but okay.

My only comment here is that hypocracy is an action commited after a positon is taken, not before. We all take actions we regret, but the hypocracy is preaching that something is wrong while continuing to do it anyway.

 

I didn't think you were pointing fingers. I don't have time to look for links, but I remember reading about the woman over the years, and that the reports are true.



D&D. Hold a Peach in Each Hand!

 

Argh - sorry hotballa, I know this is what you wanted to avoid in here and I think from the start (albeit unintentionally) I have completely demolished your intent. My bad.


Thumbs: Very generically, I don't like to dictate how people should live their lives outside of it affecting my rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

What constitutes life and/or a fetus is (like it or not) a gray area. Thus I leave it people to choose their path. I would not, but some others might, and I don't feel I have a compelling reason or argument to lamblast their position.

 

That was hardly a "lamblast," but for what it's worth, I agree with your point of view as just explained.

 

The organization today and Sanger's views are two entirely different things... abortion was illegal during her lifetime.

A few quotes from Sanger...

"Always to me any aroused group was a good group, and therefore I accepted an invitation to talk to the women's branch of the Ku Klux Klan at Silver Lake, New Jersey, one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing. . . Never before had I looked into a sea of faces like these. I was sure that if I uttered one word, such as abortion, outside the usual vocabulary of these women they would go off into hysteria. And so my address that night had to be in the most elementary terms, as though I were trying to make children understand. In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered. The conversation went on and on, and when we were finally through it was too late to return to New York."

"I accepted one branch of this philosophy, but eugenics without birth control seemed to me a house built upon sands. It could not stand against the furious winds of economic pressure which had buffeted into partial or total helplessness a tremendous proportion of the human race. The eugenists wanted to shift the birth control emphasis from less children for the poor to more children for the rich. We went back of that and sought first to stop the multiplication of the unfit. This appeared the most important and greatest step towards race betterment."

(When she talks about race in this sense, she's talking about the human race.)

"Woman must have her freedom; the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she shall be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers; and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it. That right to decide imposes upon her the duty of clearing the way to knowledge by which she may make and carry out the decision. Birth control is woman's problem. The quicker she accepts it as hers and hers alone, the quicker will society respect motherhood. The quicker, too, will the world be made a fit place for her children to live."

“Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents.......to breed out of the race the scourges of transmissible disease, mental defect, poverty, lawlessness, crime … since these classes would be decreasing in number instead of breeding like weeds....such a plan would … reduce the birthrate among the diseased, the sickly, the poverty stricken and anti-social classes, elements unable to provide for themselves, and the burden of which we are all forced to carry”

“A mutual and satisfied sexual act is of great benefit to the average woman, the magnetism of it is health giving. When it is not desired on the part of the woman and she gives no response, it should not take place. The submission of her body without love or desire is degrading to the woman's finer sensibility, all the marriage certificates on earth to the contrary notwithstanding.”

"War, famine, poverty and oppression of the workers will continue while woman makes life cheap. They will cease only when she limits her reproductivity and human life is no longer a thing to be wasted."

"A sickly race is a weak race. As long as Negro mothers die in childbirth at two and one-half times the rate of white mothers, as long as Negro babies are dying at twice the rate of white babies, colored homes will be unhappy."

"Negro participation in planned parenthood means democratic participation in a democratic idea. Like other democratic ideas, planned parenthood places greater value on human life and the dignity of each person. Without planning at birth, the life of Negroes as a whole in a democratic world cannot be planned."

"The big answer, as I see it, is the education of the white man. The white man is the problem. It is the same as with the Nazis. We must change the white attitudes. That is where it lies."

"The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped."

"Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should not have more than two children at most. The average working man can support no more and and the average working woman can take care of no more in decent fashion."

Definitely some pre-60's views... some radical stuff, some good stuff, and some crazy stuff.