Planned Parenthood to remove Margaret Sanger's name from clinic over her 'racist legacy'
Planned Parenthood has announced it will be removing founder Margaret Sanger’s name from its Manhattan clinic due to her “racist legacy” and “harmful connections to the eugenics movement”.
In a statement released Tuesday, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York said: “Today, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York announced its plans to remove Margaret Sanger’s name from the Manhattan Health Centre as a public commitment to reckon with its founder’s harmful connections to the eugenics movement.
“The announcement reflects the first of many organisational shifts to address Sanger's legacy and system of institutional racism, which negatively impacts the well-being of patients, staff and PPGNY’s broader communities.”
Sanger, a public health nurse and women’s rights activist, opened the first birth control clinic in New York City and founded the American Birth Control League, which would later become Planned Parenthood.
While she is often praised for her accomplishments in regards to widespread access to birth control, a 2016 Planned Parenthood fact sheet dedicated to Sanger notes that she was also “complex and imperfect” and held beliefs that aligned with the eugenics movement, which promoted selective breeding.
“As their most basic belief, eugenicists held that careful ‘breeding’ could improve the human race by limiting population growth and by reducing the frequency of undesirable genetic attributes, such as hereditary diseases,” the fact sheet reads. “At their most malicious, eugenicists held that forced breeding or sterilisation could either increase or decrease certain ethnic populations.”
In 1921, Sanger wrote that “the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective,” according to the Associated Press.
The fact sheet also acknowledged, and denounced, Sanger’s endorsement of the 1927 Buck v Bell decision that allowed states to sterilise citizens deemed “unfit” without their consent.
According to Karen Seltzer, board chair at PPGNY, the decision to remove Sanger’s name from the organisation’s New York clinic is “both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of colour.”
“Margaret Sanger’s concerns and advocacy for reproductive health have been clearly documented, but so too has her racist legacy,” Seltzer continued. “There is overwhelming evidence for Sanger’s deep belief in eugenic ideology, which runs completely counter to our values at PPGNY.
“Removing her name is an important step towards representing who we are as an organisation and who we serve.”
The organisation said it is also working with city officials to rename “Margaret Sanger Square” at the intersection of Bleecker and Mott Streets in Manhattan.
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