An official says the change is an ‘overdue step’ and recognizes the organization’s contribution to reproductive harm within communities of color.<\/b>
\nPlanned Parenthood of Greater New York will remove the name of the national organization\u2019s founder, Margaret Sanger, from a Manhattan clinic in an attempt to reckon with her ties to the eugenics movement, the organization announced Tuesday.
An early feminist activist, Sanger is widely regarded as a pioneer in American reproductive rights. She opened the first birth control clinic in the United States more than a century ago, and helped create access to birth control for low-income, minority, and immigrant women. But she was also a vocal supporter of the now-discredited eugenics movement, which aimed to improve the human race through planned breeding based on genetic traits.
\u201cThe removal of Margaret Sanger\u2019s name from our building is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood\u2019s contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color,\u201d Karen Seltzer, chair of the board at Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, said in a statement. \u201cMargaret Sanger\u2019s concerns and advocacy for reproductive health have been clearly documented, but so too has her racist legacy.\u201d
The New York chapter, which is one of the largest Planned Parenthood affiliates, also announced it is working to rename an honorary street sign that marks the \u201cMargaret Sanger Square\u201d at the intersection of Bleecker and Mott Streets in Manhattan.
The efforts are the first of many \u201corganizational shifts\u201d to confront Sanger\u2019s legacy and institutional racism more broadly, the chapter said in a statement. Last month, the chapter\u2019s chief executive, Laura McQuade, was ousted from her job after hundreds of former and current employees signed public letters accusing McQuade, who is white, of abusive behavior and a failure to address complaints about systemic racism, pay inequity and a lack of upward mobility for black staff \u2013 allegations McQuade denied.
The chapter\u2019s move also comes amid nationwide calls to rename institutions and remove other tributes to racist historical figures in the aftermath of the deaths of George Floyd and other black Americans at the hands of police.
\u201cPlanned Parenthood, like many other organizations that have existed for a century or more, is reckoning with our history, and working to address historical inequities to better serve patients and our mission,\u201d Melanie Roussell Newman, senior vice president of communications and culture for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement, commending the New York chapter for its decision.
The announcement marks a dramatic shift in the organization\u2019s relationship with its founder, even as it has long acknowledged that Sanger\u2019s views were problematic. In 2016, Planned Parenthood\u2019s 100th anniversary, the organization published a lengthy fact sheet about Sanger, outlining her views on eugenics and describing her as \u201clayered and complex\u201d while defending her contributions.
Like many of her contemporaries at the time, Sanger supported the belief that it was possible to biologically create a better human race, said Esther Katz, a retired associate history professor at New York University and founder of the Margaret Sanger Papers Project. \u201cBut by better, she meant healthier, not morally better,\u201d Katz said.
Sanger supported the sterilization of some people with mental illnesses, Katz said. She also believed that if a woman gave birth to too many children, the children would become weaker as the number of children grew. And in order to advance the birth control movement, she spoke with the Ku Klux Klan. But her views and actions have also often been taken out of context to claim Sanger wanted to \u201cerase the black race,\u201d Katz said.
\u201cMargaret Sanger has been used as a tool for the anti-reproductive rights movement,\u201d Katz said. \u201cShe was not trying to eliminate the African American race from this country.\u201d
Sanger worked with Black leaders and ministers to give Black women the same access to birth control as white women, Katz said. She was single-mindedly focused on making birth control cheap and accessible to everybody.
\u201cThe problem with Sanger was she was so single minded that she was willing to align herself with anybody,\u201d Katz said. \u201cThese are problematic positions. She did speak to the Klan. But I think obliterating her\u2026doesn\u2019t allow us to discuss this in any way or debate it.\u201d
In recent years, antiabortion activists and conservatives have often brought up Sanger\u2019s views on eugenics in order to criticize Planned Parenthood and the abortion rights movement, even though Sanger did not advocate for abortion rights. In an opinion last year, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas emphasized her eugenicist views and the fact that she opened a birth-control clinic in Harlem. He implied that Sanger wanted to restrict the growth of the Black community, which multiple scholars said was misleading. Ben Carson, now U. S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, has made similar claims.
Planned Parenthood and its founder have often become inaccurately intertwined in conversations about sterilization abuse that occurred in hospitals in the 1960s and later, abuse that disproportionately affected black and indigenous women, said Ayah Nuriddin, a PhD candidate in the department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University who is writing her thesis on eugenics and the African American community. Nuriddin said it\u2019s important to distinguish between the Sanger\u2019s work and views and the later forms of state-sponsored sterilization.
\u201cShe\u2019s racist, she\u2019s eugenicist,\u201d Nuriddin said. \u201cThat does not make her unique among her contemporaries in this period. I think there\u2019s sometimes this notion that she\u2019s somehow superlative in her racism, and that\u2019s simply not the case.\u201d
Merle McGee, chief equity and engagement officer for Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, said the organization has been having public conversations about Sanger\u2019s complicated legacy for many years, and particularly since 2014.
\u201cThe Sanger legacy unchecked or unmet with a reckoning has been weaponized against women of color, and has effectively hampered our ability to be in a right relationship with women of color,\u201d McGee said. \u201cAnd we have left women of color to grapple with the totality of Sanger\u2019s legacy.\u201d
But taking Sanger\u2019s name off a building does not mean the organization is completely disconnecting from its founder, she said.
\u201cWhat we are saying is we are not going to center and essentialize Margaret Sanger as all good or all bad,\u201d McGee said.
Nuriddin agreed it was important not to consider Sanger as either \u201ca hero or a villain.\u201d
\u201cI think it\u2019s also important to recognize that taking a name off or taking a statue down is not the whole story,\u201d Nuriddin added, \u201cand it\u2019s not a substitute for reckoning with a complicated history.\u201d
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Forgot Password?
Don’t have a Talk profile? Create one.
Invalid username\/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Create a commenting profile by providing an email address, password and display name. You will receive an email to complete the registration. Please note the display name will appear on screen when you participate.
Already registered? Log in to join the discussion.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login to participate in the conversation. Here\u2019s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you’ve submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.
Send questions\/comments to the editors.
\u00ab Previous<\/p>\n