A BRIEF HISTORY OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD
Planned Parenthood is certainly powerful. It has the enthusiastic
support of influential organizations and extensive connections inside
government. Each year it gets tens of millions of dollars in tax money
and millions more from charities such as United Way.
Yet the public knows nothing about the history of Planned Parenthood
or its founder, Margaret Sanger. There is a reason.
ROOTED IN FEAR
In the years after World War I, a number of competing organizations
formed to promote birth control. The most controversial of these was the
American Birth Control League, began by Margaret Sanger, wife of
"Three-in-One Oil" millionaire, Noah Slee.
These organizations were rooted in the fears of America's affluent,
educated elite. To have more money for themselves, these people were
having fewer children. As a result they were becoming alarmed that poor
and working-class people still had high birthrates. [1]
For them, the poor were a costly economic burden that produced most
of the nation's criminals. They feared what the poor's higher birthrate
would do to our political system.
Two groups developed in response to these fears. Both talked about
the nation as a "race" that could be strengthened by keeping the
birthrate of the "fit" (the affluent) above the "unfit" (the poor). It
was a "racism" still common among the well-off, one of income rather than
color. The two groups differed only in whose birthrate must be changed.
One group, the eugenicists, warned of "race suicide" if the nation's
dominant group, educated people of Northern European descent, didn't
increase its birthrate. President Theodore Roosevelt expressed their
views in March 1905 when he attacked women who used birth control as
"criminal against the race." [2] Eugenicists wanted a positive policy
with "more children from the fit."
The birth control movement belonged to the other group, one more
attractive to wealthy feminists such as Margaret Sanger. [3] It didn't
demand that affluent women abandon their careers and social lives to
raise large families. It hoped to solve the "race building" problem by
forcing down the birthrate of the "unfit."
In her autobiography, Margaret Sanger summed up the difference
between the two groups when she said that "eugenics without birth control
seemed to me a house built upon sands .... The eugenicists 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 to stop the
multiplication of the unfit." [4]
To stop this "multiplication," Sanger could be harsh. "Her The
Pivot of Civilization" has a chapter called "The Cruelty of Charity."
In it she blasts as "insidiously injurious" programs to provide "medical
and nursing facilities to slum mothers." For Sanger, such programs
"facilitate the function of maternity" when "the absolute necessity is to
discourage it." For Sanger a poor woman dying in childbirth gave other
women incentive to visit birth control clinics. [5]
PROBLEMS DEVELOP
For a time the birth control movement successfully created the
"radical but trendy" image often used by the elite to hide their
selfishness. It conveyed the impression that its birth control clinics
were "for" the poor rather than directed "at" them (helping attract poor
clients). By the late thirties, however, the birth control movement had
several serious problems.
First, worried about the political impact of high minority
birthrates, they targeted inner-city populations with their birth control
clinics. Today, that population is primarily black and Hispanic, but in
that era it included many southern European Catholic immigrants. Birth
controllers believed these people were "unfit" to benefit from democracy.
Instead, Catholics used the opportunities America offered to become
politically powerful. Catholic opposition to the birth controllers
wasn't just theological. Catholics were defending themselves against a
bigotry that denied them a place in American society. Present day
Catholic hostility to Planned Parenthood is thus like that blacks feel
for the Ku Klux Klan.
Second, the birth control movement equated being "unfit" with being
poor. With their typical lack of compassion, they saw the Great
Depression as an opportunity to promote birth control as a way to reduce
welfare costs. [6]
However, the Depression had another result. The millions of
ordinary Americans thrown into poverty by unemployment resented
suggestions that because they were now as poor as inner-city immigrants,
they were also "unfit" to have children. Potential support for birth
control was reduced. [7]
Third, in the late thirties, people noticed a similarity between the
arguments of the birth control groups and those of Nazism. Both talked
of "race building" and both divided humanity into two groups, the fit and
the unfit. Both even saw the fit as of Northern European "stock." [8]
Nazism and the birth control movement had only one major difference.
Nazism used both positive and negative approaches. It encouraged
"Aryan" births with financial rewards while legalizing sterilization
(1933) and abortion for Jews and the genetically unfit (1935). After
occupying Eastern Europe, Nazi Germany eagerly provided Slavs with birth
control and legal abortions. [9]
Sanger objected to the positive measures, but neither she nor the
birth-control movement ever found "it necessary to denounce fascist
'negative-eugenics' policies." [10]
In fact, the birth control movement liked the Nazi birth control
agenda and held that attitude in spite of public opinion. In November
1939, two months after Germany invaded Poland, an article in Birth
Control Review commended the Nazi birth control program and noted that in
comparison to the Italians, "The German program has been much more
carefully worked out. The need for quality as well as quantity is
recognized." [11]
All these troubles meant birth control groups could no longer afford
to compete for the dwindling funds from foundations and wealthy donors.
Linda Gordon describes the process this way:
"In 1938 rivalry in the birth control movement was ended with the
reunification of Sanger's friends and enemies in the Birth
Control Federation of America (BCFA)." [12]
In January, 1940 the new BCFA held its annual meeting in New York
City. The title of the symposium, "Race Building in a Democracy," showed
nothing had changed. The same title was also give to a luncheon speech
by Henry Fairchild, a sociology professor.
That luncheon also began the 1940 fund drive for "The Citizens
Committee for Planned Parenthood." Birth Control Review noted that the
two events -- the speech on "race building" and fund raising for Planned
Parenthood -- would give "an unusually comprehensive portrayal of the
Federation of today and tomorrow." [13]
AN IMAGE CHANGE
The movement's leaders had realized that more than a new
organization was needed. A new image must replace the tainted one. So
Margaret Sanger, Honorary Chairman of the BCFA, had hired D. Kenneth Rose
as public relations consultant. [14]
Rose recommended that the organization drop "birth control" from its
name and use "Planned Parenthood" instead. Sanger objected but, "In 1942
the new organization changed its name to the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America (PPFA). It was the only national birth-control
organization until the abortion-reform movement that began in the late
1960s." [15]
With the new name came a new language. The old arguments based on
heredity and racial stock, now discredited by Nazism, disappeared.
Arguments based on environment replaced those based on heredity and birth
control clinics were renamed family planning agencies.
But the movement's basic tactic, using the poverty of the poor to
manipulate and pressure them to have fewer children, remained unchanged.
Gordon explains it this way:
"Furthermore, in its new emphasis on health, Planned Parenthood
continued its eugenic traditions. Class, or income level, now
replaced "stock" as the determining criteria, but many
planned-parenthood arguments rested on the assumption that the
children of the poor would be less healthy than the children of
the rich; and since they did not suggest that better nutrition or
medical care could change these health destinies, their arguments
continued to reinforce hereditarian views." [16]
A SHIFT IN TARGETS
The public relations consultant, however, wasn't the first to
suggest "Planned Parenthood" as a name. The suggestion first came in a
1938 letter from Dr. Lydia DeVilbiss, a Florida physician, birth
controller, and avowed racist. Choosing a name suggested by someone who
believed in black inferiority demonstrates that the new name didn't
signify a change of attitude. [17]
Dr. DeVilbiss's influence with the birth control movement and her
zeal to set up birth control clinics for poor blacks reflects a new
priority within the birth control movement. Racial minorities were
becoming more important than inner-city immigrants.
The reason is obvious. The same fears that created the birth
control movement also led to the strict 1924 immigration laws. High
immigrant birthrates were becoming less threatening.
Meanwhile, the nation's black population was on the move. At the
turn of the century ninety percent of the nation's black population lived
in the South. But the Depression and jobs in war industry attracted them
to Northern cities where they replaced Catholics in the ghettos. By the
sixties half the nation's blacks would live outside the South. Similar
economic conditions brought millions of Hispanics to this country.
Reaching these people with birth control required new tactics. As
the 1940 symposium title hints, "race building" in a democracy had to be
more subtle than that in a dictatorship. Cooperation has to be used
instead of coercion and deception has to replace force.
To do this, the birth controllers hoped black leaders would be
easier to manipulate than the Catholic leaders had been. The movement
hoped to win black cooperation by putting blacks in highly visible
positions. Sanger described this policy to Clarence Gamble in October
1939. In that letter she described how "colored Ministers, preferable
with social service backgrounds" could be used and said, "We do not want
word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the
minister is the man who can straighten out the idea if it ever occurs to
any of their more rebellious members." [18]
Clarence Gamble expressed the same idea in a private memo that same
year when he said that "There is a great danger that we will fail because
the Negroes think it a plan for extermination. Hence lets appear to let
the colored think it run it as we appear to let south do the conference
at Atlanta." [19] Following this policy, in 1944 PPFA hired a full-time
"Negro Consultant." [20]
Second, the movement realized its radical tactics had to be
abandoned. For programs on the scale they envisioned, government funding
and influential contacts inside the medical and social welfare systems
were needed. They must work within rather than outside the system.
In a March 1939 letter, Margaret Sanger explained this to Frank
Boudreau, director of the Milbank Memorial Fund:
" . . . statisticians and population experts as well as
members of the medical profession had courage to attack the basic
problem at the roots: That is not asking or suggesting a cradle
competition between the intelligent and the ignorant, but a
drastic curtailment of the birth rate at the source of the unfit,
the diseased and the incompetent .... The birth control clinics
all over the country are doing their utmost to reach the lower
strata of our population, but as we must depend upon people
coming to the Clinics, we must realize that there are hundreds of
thousands of women who never leave their own vicinity .... but
the way to approach these people is through the social workers,
visiting nurses and midwives." [21]
As with blacks, these programs would be more effective if they
appeared run by "social workers, nurses and midwives" who believed what
they were doing was for the poor.
Third, in a move that would not bear full fruit until the drive for
abortion legalization in the late sixties, Planned Parenthood began to
develop the political alliances necessary for government funding and
legal change.
In the South, birth control officials found they merely had to show
local officials the difference between black and white birthrates to win
enthusiastic support. Beginning with North Carolina in 1937, seven Deep
South states, who rarely led in any public health measure, pioneered
government-funded family planning. [22]
Political support was growing outside the South too. The motivation
for this new alliance can be seen in the different attitudes toward birth
control held by the two Roosevelts (distant cousins) who have been
President. In 1905 Theodore Roosevelt, a Progressive Republican, alarmed
feminists by denouncing birth control as "criminal against the race."
Almost exactly forty years later, in March of 1945, Franklin
Roosevelt, a liberal Democrat, would express a far different view, though
one with the same goal in mind. The British historian Christopher Thorne
described it:
"Subjects to do with breeding and race seem, indeed, to have held
a certain fascination for the President .... Thus, for example,
Roosevelt felt it in order to talk, jokingly, of dealing with
Puerto Rico's excessive birth rate by employing, in his own
words, 'the methods which Hitler used effectively.' He said to
Charles Taussig and William Hassett, as the former recorded it,
'that it is all very simple and painless -- you have people pass
through a narrow passage and then there is a brrrrr of an
electrical apparatus. They stay there for twenty seconds and
from then on they are sterile.'" [23]
TODAY'S PLANNED PARENTHOOD
Historical research leaves no doubt about the roots of today's
Planned Parenthood. The groups that merged to form it no longer exist
and their internal documents are open to historians. We can literally
read their mail to discover what they were doing.
It is equally clear that the motives behind the birth control
organizations did not change when they merged into one organization (the
BCFA). Nor did the language change that accompanied the formation of
Planned Parenthood signify any real change in attitude.
But the internal documents of today's Planned Parenthood aren't open
to the public. Much has changed in our society in the past five decades.
It is reasonable to ask if Planned Parenthood might have changed. There
are four reasons to believe this unlikely.
First and most important, Planned Parenthood itself claims nothing
has changed and proudly points to its past. (One they never clearly
explain.) Margaret Sanger remained an honored member of Planned
Parenthood until her death in 1966.
Second, no conspiracy is needed to keep the agenda unchanged. As a
black woman in Seattle put it, legalized abortion is "just like in the
days of Moses." Then as now, no one has to persuade the rich to support
programs that reduce the size of threatening social groups.
Third, Planned Parenthood has remained remarkably constant. It
continues its hostility toward Catholics. It uses Northern European
countries (such as Sweden) as models for an ideal society. It defends
abortion as cheaper than welfare. It concentrates on limiting the
birthrate of the poor.
Finally, recent events suggest nothing has changed. During the baby
boom of the fifties Planned Parenthood issued no warnings about a
"population explosion." But during the sixties, with birthrates
plummeting, Planned Parenthood unleashed a barrage of warnings about a
"population bomb." Taken at face value its behavior was bizarre.
Planned Parenthood knew the statistics. They knew that in the
sixties birthrates were becoming too low rather than too high. (Our
birthrate dropped below the replacement level in 1972 and is almost half
a child per couple below that now.) In the right circles, Planned
Parenthood officials hinted at their real fears.
At 1965-66 Senate "baby boom" hearings, Dr. Robert Nelson, Medical
Director of Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, told Congress
to look at its "own backyard." He pointed out that in the city "the less
well-off economic section birth rate is 29/1,000 and going up" while "the
rate of the economically more secure group is 16/1,000 and going down."
[24]
Margaret Sanger's old argument of a "cradle competition" was back
with a vengeance. Immediately after World War II the black birthrate was
only ten percent higher than the white. By the early sixties, however,
the black birthrate was almost 50 percent higher. (The 1955-65 civil
rights period exactly parallels the period of high black birthrate.)
Immigration northward and to large cities multiplied the effect.
The statistics mask an even greater problem. A disproportionate
share of the white births were to people with conservative religious
beliefs. (The rise of both Jesse Jackson and the "New Right" two decades
later reflects these trends.) Planned Parenthood doesn't even bother to
mask its hostility to conservative Protestants and Catholics.
By the late sixties the nonviolence of black civil rights had been
replaced by the violence of "black power." It was a tense time and
anyone familiar with history would expect an reaction from the
"establishment."
As Judith Blake notes in a 1971 Science article, [25] it was
during this time that affluent "establishment" males on both coasts began
to support legalized abortion in growing numbers. Their inordinate
interest in providing abortion to the poor is revealing because, as Blake
notes, the poor, already strongly opposed to legalized abortion, became
even more opposed during the sixties.
The reaction came in two stages. First, government funding for
family planning clinics was dramatically increased. Programs long
popular with racist officials in the South became the delight of Northern
liberals. Tens of millions of tax dollars and charitable contributions
(i.e. United Way) poured into Planned Parenthood and similar groups.
Second, The drive to legalize abortion began. Lacking the popular
support to rapidly legalize abortion state by state, abortion supporters
followed Judith Blake's advice and used their power in the media and the
legal profession to get abortion declared legal by the Supreme Court. As
in Sanger's day, feminists had strong reasons for supporting anything
that avoided a "cradle competition."
SEXUAL REVOLUTION
The difference in birth rates was not the only factor driving
abortion legalization. The sexual revolution of the sixties added
further impetus.
The same Havelock Ellis who introduced Margaret Sanger to "cradle
competition" also introduced her to his ideas on "free love." [26] In
her autobiography Sanger brought the two together noting that "Eugenics
... had once been defined as including free love and the prevention of
conception .... had cropped up again in the form of selective breeding."
[27]
Sanger believed in a kind of sexual mysticism which made sex
absolutely necessary for good health and separated sex from the mutual
commitment of marriage. To be practical, sex separated from marriage has
to be separated from reproduction too.
The ideas were not widely publicized. In the twenties and thirties
the birth control movement was controversial enough and the new Planned
Parenthood carefully avoided controversy.
But the sexual revolution of the sixties made these ideas seem less
radical. As the name implies, family planning clinics were created for
the married poor. But the sixties created a demand for services to
single women, many of them teenagers. Supplying this demand offered
several advantages.
First, it meant more of what organizations crave -- money. More
services mean more grants. This is why many Planned Parenthood staff
show so little enthusiasm for telling teens to "Just Say No" to sex.
Fewer sexually-active teens means less money and fewer jobs.
Second, programs targeting the poor and minorities become less
obvious when they are one of several programs dealing with "unplanned
pregnancies." Minorities could even be targeted with programs claiming
to deal with teen pregnancy. (School-based clinics seem mysteriously
attracted to schools with high minority populations.)
Third, teen pregnancies create the same costly social problems that
have always bothered the birth control movement. The financial
advantages of birth control and abortion apply to white teens as well as
to poor black and Hispanic women.
A CONCLUSION
Attempts to solve our nation's problems with legalized abortion have
failed. It neither eliminates poverty (as its supporters claim) nor
eliminates the poor (as they actually intend).
The poverty rate reached an all time low in 1973, the year of
abortion legalization. Since then it has steadily risen such that by the
late seventies sociologists noted that poverty wore a new face. No
longer a racial minority, it was a single mother with kids.
Twenty-five million aborted babies is a strange price to pay to push
millions of women into poverty and double the child abuse rate. It's
time we faced the fact that escaping poverty requires, not fewer kids,
but an intact, two parent family. Abortion, by denying a man's
responsibility for his child, destroys that family.
In the same way, the AIDS epidemic is a warning that the problems of
teen sexuality are deeper than just "children having children." Programs
that fail to solve the problem of teen pregnancy will fail in the far
more difficult task of stopping AIDS. If we wait until AIDS invades the
teen community we'll be too late.
REFERENCES
[1] Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right, (New York: Grossman,
1974, 1976), 156-57.
[2] Gordon, 136.
[3] Gordon, 137, 157-8, 295-96, 327-28.
[4] Gordon, 287, 278-79.
[5] Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, (Elmsford, NY: Maxwell
Reprint, 1922, 1950), 114-115.
[6] Gordon, 304.
[7] Gordon, 302-03.
[8] Gordon, 303.
[9] M. W. Perry. "The Sound of the Machine," The Freeman 38:7 (July,
1988): 257f.
[10] Gordon, 351.
[11] Robert C. Cook, "Birth Rates in Fascist Countries" Birth Control
Review. XXIV:1 (November, 1939): 8.
[12] Gordon, 341.
[13] "Annual Meeting" and "The 1940 Campaign," Birth Control Review,
XXIV:2 (December, 1939): 26.
[14] Gordon, 344.
[15] Gordon, 341.
[16] Gordon, 352.
[17] M. W. Perry, "How Planned Parenthood Got Its Name,"International
Review of Natural Family Planning X:3 (Fall 1986): 234.
[18] Gordon, 332-33.
[19] Gordon, 333.
[20] Gordon, 353.
[21] Sanger to Frank G. Boudreau, March 12, 1939. Gordon, 359.
[22] Gordon, 329f. David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America. (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1970) 258f.
[23] Thorne, Christopher. Allies of a Kind. (New York: Oxford
University, 1978) 158-59.
[24] Stephen P. Strickland, ed. Population Crisis (Washington, D.C.:
Socio-Dynamics Publ., 1970) 74.
[25] Judith Blake, "Abortion and Public Opinion, The 1960-1970 Decade,"
Science 171 (February 12, 1971) 540-49.
[26] Gordon 186f.
[27] Gordon, 274.
(C)opyright 1988 M. W. Perry (206) 365-1624.
Released into the public domain August 11, 1988.
This article maybe freely copied, printed, and published without
charge. If published, please send a copy to:
Mike W. Perry
11537 34th Ave NE
Seattle, WA 98125-5613
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