Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) was the founder of Planned Parenthood (in 1916). She has been given the unusual title, "Father of Modern Society." The following facts on Sanger's philosophy of life give us insight into the underlying philosophy on which Planned Parenthood was founded: (Other references on Sanger, in addition to those cited below: (a) Elasah Drogin, Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society, (b) Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, and (c) Margaret Sanger, "A Plan for Peace," Birth Control Review.)
(a) Sanger was a militant radical who believed parents had the right to kill their children;
(b) In her book, Women and the New Race, Sanger said that it is "merciful" to kill infants; she said that, "The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it";
(c) Sanger was a socialist, feminist, occultist, and a believer in promiscuous sex;
(d) Sanger believed in controlled reproduction to purify the races (i.e., sterilization);
(e) Sanger founded and edited The Woman Rebel, the masthead read "No Gods, No Masters";
(f) Sanger coined the term "birth control" in 1912, founded the Voluntary Parenthood League in 1914, and founded the first birth control clinic in 1916 in Brooklyn, NY;
(g) That Planned Parenthood was anti-Christianity from the beginning is without dispute. In her first newspaper, The Woman Rebel, Margaret Sanger admitted that, "Birth control appeals to the advanced radical, because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian Churches. I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tyranny of Christianity no less than Capitalism";
(h) Sanger was the president of the American Birth Control League in 1939 from which Planned Parenthood was formed, and she remained honorary chairman of Planned Parenthood until her death in 1966;
(i) Sanger called the marriage bed "the most degenerating influence in the social order" (i.e., she was a "free love" advocate); she believed all sexual conduct was normal as long as harm was not brought to others;
(j) Sanger was violently anti-family: "only individuals count, not families";
(k) Sanger believed the poor should be sexually sterilized, and she endorsed euthanasia; she believed in selective breeding of the human race to produce "perfect" individuals (it was later that the Nazis adopted this philosophy). Her slogan was "more children from the fit, less from the unfit";
(l) Sanger hoped for a motherhood that would refuse "to bring forth weaklings ..." She wrote of "woman's upward struggle" and described the "lack of balance between the birth rate of the "unfit" and the "fit" as "the greatest present menace to civilization";
(m) Sanger hoped to use birth control to exterminate the genetically inferior races, which to her meant most of the non-white world; she wrote an article in 1921 called "Birth Control to Create a Race of Thoroughbreds";
(n) In 1922, Sanger declared that Jews, Hispanics, and blacks were "human weeds" that would by reproduction, "bring a dead weight of human waste into the world"; in April of 1932, Sanger outlined a "plan for peace" to eliminate these groups (in an article titled "Birth Control Review"). The article also advocated: (1) close doors to emigration to certain aliens; and (c) establishment of sterilization and/or segregation of issengenic groups, namely people considered to have bad genes;
(o) Sanger approved of Hitler's extermination of Jews in Europe, and had as a goal the extermination of the black race in the U.S. through sterilization and encouraging birth control via prominent black clergy (who would be "paid-off" if necessary);
(p) Sanger frequently attended séances to communicate with her dead daughter, and later drifted into eastern mysticism, Unitarianism, Rosicrucinism, astrology, and numerology; and
(q) Humanists declared Sanger "humanist of the year" in 1957.