Quote:
Originally posted by Miss Korea
I think a common misconception about Planned Parenthood and Margret Sanger is that they/she were racist eugenicists. They were eugenicists, but not racists. At least I don't think she was? She did say at one point there should be no more children birthed in developed countries (meaning Africa) but I think that comes from her belief that bringing children into the world is stupid if you cannot provide for them. She worked to provide birth control in Harlem and the South. Her beliefs are a bit archaic in this day and age, though.
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People in this day and age are very triggered by the term "eugenics" (as they should be) because it has become synonymous with the Nazi Final Solution.
Margaret Sanger's idea of eugenics was very different from Hitler's though: it was not to encourage or discourage a certain race from reproducing, but to encourage people with desirable traits to reproduce. People who exhibited high IQ, compassion, cleanliness etc... were thought to pass these traits on to their offspring (we didn't know very much about genetics at that time).
So people take the truth that Sanger was a proponent of eugenics and conflate it with Hitler's idea of eugenics and then apply that logical fallacy to the practices of Planned Parenthood today which does a lot of birth control outreach in black communities and come to the conclusion that Planned Parenthood seeks to discourage black people from reproducing in a modern day eugenics campaign. The real reason, though, that Planned Parenthood does so much birth control advocacy, education, and outreach in black communities - often by setting up clinics in these areas - is to empower the women (and men, indirectly) in these communities that have high rates of teen pregnancy, lots of families below the poverty line, and lot of people that lack health insurance.
TL;DR: Margaret Sanger did believe in eugenics but not the eugenics we think of. PP is not racist and they are not modern eugenicists. They seek to empower women in communities of color, not oppress them.