Study Shows Public Schools Teaching Margaret Sanger as Women’s Hero Instead of Racist Eugenicist

National   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Sep 2, 2020   |   5:54PM   |   Washington, DC

American history textbooks are portraying Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger as a heroine for women’s rights while ignoring her racist, eugenic beliefs, according to a new study from the Independent Institute.

Thomas Cargill, a professor emeritus at the University of Nevada-Reno, analyzed nine of the most popular high school history textbooks for the study. He concluded that students are not being exposed to the history of eugenics — a belief system linked directly forced sterilization and the Nazi Holocaust, as well as legalized abortion – because it may be “to close for comfort” to modern progressivism.

The Federalist reports the study found a “passing reference” to eugenics in a few of the textbooks, but none that “identify eugenics as a major part of progressivism.”

Eugenics was a popular belief in the early 20th century. Many, including Sanger, believed that certain groups of human beings, including people with disabilities, minorities and the poor, were less fit to live or have children.

Sanger, who founded the largest abortion chain in America, was mentioned in six of the textbooks that the study examined. Ignoring her discriminatory beliefs, the textbooks portrayed her to students as a “progressive reformer and advocate of women’s reproductive rights,” the report states. According to the study, none of the textbooks mentioned her eugenics beliefs.

Sanger helped to lead the eugenics movement, frequently promoting discrimination through her writing and speaking, including in a speech to the KKK in 1926.

In her book “Pivot of Civilization,” Sanger described certain groups of human beings as “human weeds,” “reckless breeders” and “spawning … human beings who never should have been born.”

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She also wrote about getting rid of people with diseases and disabilities through sterilization and segregation, describing these “morons” as “a dead weight of human waste.” And in a 1939 letter to a friend, she wrote, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”

Today, Sanger’s ugly beliefs live on through Planned Parenthood, a billion-dollar abortion practice. The abortion chain aborted more than 345,000 unborn babies last year. It also boasts of being the largest sex education provider in the U.S.

Cargill said students are being indoctrinated, not taught history.

Here’s more from the report:

Now that Planned Parenthood and abortion are sacrosanct to contemporary leftists, Cargill theorizes, it is vital for “defenders of abortion” to attempt to “repackage” Sanger and get rid of the link between abortion and the eugenics of the Progressive movement. …

Cargill told The Federalist that progressives, “paint a picture of American society that is consistent with their ideology.” The result for unsuspecting students is “nothing short of the indoctrination of America’s youth.” Cargill says that memory-holing eugenics and Sanger gives “an incomplete and misleading view of U.S. history” to young Americans, which “denies them a foundation to participate in the democratic process.”

Planned Parenthood itself has started to quietly distance itself from Sanger. This summer, its New York affiliate removed Sanger’s name from its main abortion facility after hundreds of its employees accused the abortion group of “systemic racism.” The abortion group also appears to have stopped giving out its annual Margaret Sanger Award.