Negro Project 2.0: Margaret Sanger’s Abortion Legacy Lives On

Opinion   |   Ryan Bomberger   |   Jul 25, 2011   |   11:39AM   |   Washington, DC

Last week’s NPR interview on “Tell Me More” really should be called “Tell Me Less”. Their heavy editing of only The Radiance Foundation’s perspective, while preserving every word spoken by Reverend Carlton Veazey,revealed NPR’s typical liberal bias and uninformed defense of Planned Parenthood. The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice CEO’s closing remarks (nearly two minutes versus mine which were cut down to 15 seconds) were just a continuation of pro-abortion histrionics by the historically challenged.

Veazey was unwilling to address the epidemic of abortion in the black community, even denying Planned Parenthood’s entire history rooted in the racist pseudoscience of eugenics. He played the role so clearly defined by Margaret Sanger’s original Negro Project back in 1939, using black pastors to propagandize on her behalf. Margaret Higgins Sanger Slee was a grand manipulator and strategist, with a veritable war chest from her second husband, Noah Slee, an oil tycoon.

Many of her aggressive and repulsive eugenics-based efforts were funded by organizations sympathetic with her Birth Control crusade. One of those population control entities was the Ford Foundation, which also funds the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) and pro-abortion activist groups like SisterSong, both staunch defenders of Planned Parenthood. Money was never an obstacle for Sanger and her fellow eugenicists. However, ideological resistance, rooted in Christian faith, was.

She needed the help of black ministers to overcome the vehement opposition to birth control targeted at the black community, proposing it would eliminate poverty. We know now, of course, that birth control policies have never reduced poverty because they offer no moral construct to healthy behavior especially by encouraging promiscuity over marriage fidelity.

Sanger wrote in her book, The Women Rebel: “Marriage laws abrogate the freedom of woman by enforcing upon her a continuous sexual slavery and a compulsory motherhood.”  She loathed the institution of marriage, but ministers were quick to overlook this and voluminous evidence of her acrimony toward Christianity. In typical hypocritical form, Sanger further writes: “Marriage, which is a personal agreement between a man and a woman, should be no concern of the State or of the Church.” This from a woman who actively campaigned for state-funded forced sterilizations, licensing couples for reproduction, “farms” to segregate people considered “unfit” for procreation and recruited Church ministers to further her crusade.

Adam Clayton Powell Sr., of the New York Abyssinian Baptist Church, was the first influential black pastor to open the doors to this depraved and duplicitous ideology, allowing Planned Parenthood’s founder to preach her eugenics-infused religion. Her Birth Control Review periodicals and numerous writings, including The Pivot of Civilization, made no secret about her goals of severely reducing or eliminating the birth rate of poorer blacks.

“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,” Margaret Sanger declared in Chapter 18 of her book, Women and the New Race.

Thank goodness she had nothing to say about the birth of Martin Luther King, Sr, who was born into poverty in a family of sharecroppers with nine children.

Planned Parenthood found its greatest public relations ally in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., America’s most revered civil rights minister, donning him with their inaugural Margaret Sanger annual award. King never knew that his desire to reduce poverty among black Americans, in part through birth control, would become enmeshed in the black community’s number one killer. Planned Parenthood and its minister allies justify today’s form of birth control—abortion—for any reason and at any cost.  Veazey calls abortion a “God-given right”, and in his recent NPR debate with me, denounced me for being part of the “religious right”, although I never mentioned religion throughout the entire discussion.

We’re a society that loves to quickly categorize people and simplistically label what requires more complex thought and explanation. However, when it comes to the issue of abortion, I’d rather be part of the religious right, any day, than part of the religious wrong.

Reverend Carlton Veazey has more access to historical data and health-related statistics than Dr. King could have ever imagined. Abortion has never mitigated poverty. It has never reduced healthcare disparities, and it doesn’t increase anyone’s access to real healthcare. Yet he chooses to remain in the dark, intellectually and morally, pulling thousands of others into the abyss of ignorance. Perhaps his annual salary of $182,784 for 5 hours/week of work, according to his RCRC’s own 990 form filed with the IRS, explains this abject willingness to deceive.

Regardless of his motives, Veazey and so many other pastors, politicians and community leaders named in the National Black Prolife Coalition’s new video, “NUMBER ONE KILLER”, are merely part of The Negro Project 2.0.