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| Margaret Sanger |
It was today, May 9, in 1960, that the US
Food and Drug Administration first approved the use of the birth control pill[1] and it
was Margaret Sanger
who apparently first coined the phrase, ‘birth control’, in about 1914.
We should today also remember some other important facts about this woman who
coined the phrase “birth control’. Truths which the advocates of contraceptives and abortion will not readily highlight.
Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in New York in 1921. In 1942 this organisation became what we today know as Planned Parenthood. The organisation was originally founded primarily to promote the establishment of birth control clinics amongst the Black and Latino population.[2]
Margaret Sanger believed that birth control
would do a great deal in helping to “assist
the race toward the elimination of the unfit.”[3] She
was without doubt one of the most prominent feminists to champion the eugenics
agenda.
Sanger “saw
birth control as a means to prevent unwanted children from being born into a
disadvantaged life, and incorporated the language of eugenics to advance the
movement. Sanger also sought to discourage the reproduction of persons who, it
was believed, would pass on mental disease or serious physical defect. She
advocated sterilization in cases where the subject was unable to use birth
control.”[4]
In 1920, in "Women and the New Race", Margaret
Sanger wrote this: [My emphases]
“Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of
natural law, is nothing more or less
than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of
preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives. So,
in compliance with nature’s working plan, we must permit womanhood its full
development before we can expect of it efficient motherhood. If we are to make racial progress,
this development of womanhood
must precede motherhood in
every individual woman. Then and then only can the mother cease to be an incubator
and be a mother indeed. Then only can
she transmit to her sons and daughters the qualities which make strong
individuals and, collectively, a strong race.”
It should however be noted that Margaret
Sanger, unlike the modern Planned Parenthood, was completely against abortion.
She saw contraception as a measure to prevent abortion. She wrote this in her autobiography
in 1938:
“…we explained what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way
no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was
the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was
well worth while in the long run, because
life had not yet begun”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the world would again realise this truth - Life begins at conception! Wouldn't it also be wonderful if the world came to the realisation that the promotion of artificial birth control is not necessarily based on the good of the individual.
[1] Birth Control, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
Ultimate Reference Suite, 2013
[2] American Birth Control League, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Birth_Control_League,
accessed May 9, 2013
[4] Eugenics in the United
States, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States,
accessed May 9, 2013
There are dangers about birth control pills. Aside from moral issues, we need to be concerned about health and the environment. http://www.thoughtful-living.org/2013/07/01/featured/planned-parenthood-damages-girl-power-health/
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