LifeNews.com Note: Maria Vitale is a LifeNews.com Opinion Columnist and the Education Director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. Vitale has written and reported for various broadcast and print media outlets, including National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and AP Radio.

A surprising character makes a cameo appearance in Ben Stein's new movie, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed."

It's Margaret Sanger, the matriarch of Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion operation. Stein notes that Sanger was a proponent of eugenics, the pseudo-science which involves trying to create a master race of human beings through breeding.

The implication in the film is that Darwinism leads to eugenics which leads to abortion and euthanasia.

The public relations machine at Planned Parenthood must not be happy about what's happening at the local Cineplex.

In essence, "Expelled" blows Sanger's cover as a benevolent birth control promoter. Instead, she is portrayed as one of the founding mothers of an ideology that treats human beings as animals and readily dismisses the sanctity of human life.

But what Ben Stein reveals on the Sanger front is really nothing new.

In her book, Margaret Sanger's Eugenic Legacy, author Angela Franks debunked the myth that Sanger was a minor player in the eugenics controversy.

Franks wrote, "Without her, eugenics itself would have become the sideshow, largely limited to the self-important musings and designs of academic societies and conferences." According to Franks, Sanger "brought an expansion of eugenics as an activist movement that was breathtaking."

It is obvious that promoters of eugenics follow a philosophy which fails to acknowledge the inherent value of all people, including those with physical and mental disabilities. But there is also a sinister link between eugenics and racism.

In her book, Franks said of Sanger, "Even if she did not attack racial minorities because of their race, her eugenic efforts nonetheless threatened them disproportionately."

Even today, nearly 130 years after Sanger's birth, black women are disproportionately affected by abortion, with black women more likely to have pregnancies ending in abortion than white women are.

The problem has become so pronounced that some black leaders, such as Pastor Clenard Childress of the organization known as L.E.A.R.N., refer to the abortions of African-Americans as a black genocide.

My guess is that Ben Stein will not win any Academy Awards by outing Margaret Sanger. But he has added some fresh insights to the marketplace of ideas. The monotone teacher from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" may just have something new to teach us all -- especially when it comes to the root causes of the culture of death.