Stay woke, everyone. While Cecile Richards is enjoying a dramatic salary boost that landed her nearly $960,000 in take-home pay in 2014, Planned Parenthood is inviting the nation to help celebrate its 100th birthday. #100YearsStrong!
Planned Parenthood was founded on the revolutionary idea that people should have the info & health care for healthy lives. #100YearsStrong pic.twitter.com/8mLB9DwaRB
— Planned Parenthood Generation Action ?️? (@PPGenAction) October 8, 2016
As the big day approaches, though, the taxpayer-funded abortion provider is preparing for uninvited guests who will inevitably try to spoil the fun by spreading lies about Margaret Sanger, the eugenicist who founded the organization.
The lies about Margaret Sanger are going to be intense over the next few weeks as PPFA celebrates its 100th anniversary. #staywoke
— ?Imani Gandied Yams? (@AngryBlackLady) October 10, 2016
As Planned Parenthood reaches #100YearsStrong, arm yourself against the false narratives about Margaret Sanger https://t.co/TeYxZDDpFi https://t.co/zABApSmHXZ
— Rewire.News (@Rewire_News) October 10, 2016
False narratives about PP's founder, Margaret Sanger, are used to further an anti-abortion agenda: https://t.co/Wv4xAVT71K @AngryBlackLady pic.twitter.com/rlow8Or9cI
— Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) October 13, 2016
As Planned Parenthood reaches #100YearsStrong, @AngryBlackLady gives you the facts on Margaret Sanger: https://t.co/7CINmjC07c #TBT pic.twitter.com/DS1TghiquT
— Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) October 13, 2016
Recommended
Planned Parenthood seems to have offloaded the burden of Sanger’s party makeover entirely to Imani Gandy and her 2015 essay, “How False Narratives of Margaret Sanger Are Being Used to Shame Black Women.”
You’d think more than 3,500 words would be sufficient to give Sanger some polish, and to be fair, the essay does present many of Sanger’s most famous quotes in their original context. By all means, read it, and then read more about Sanger — as much as you can stomach.
Know, though, that the focus of Gandy’s essay is black women, and she kicks things off by establishing that the United States itself is “rooted in anti-Blackness.” In that context, “whether or not Planned Parenthood had its roots in anti-Blackness is irrelevant in a discussion of the services that Planned Parenthood provides in 2015.”
Sorry, but no. An organization will soon celebrate the opening of Margaret Sanger’s first clinic in New York City, and that hosts the Maggie Awards each year, isn’t putting any effort into distancing itself from its founder; Planned Parenthood is and will always be rooted firmly in Sanger’s beliefs, and the way those beliefs inform the organization’s mission is every bit as relevant in 2016 as it was 100 years ago.
I guarantee there is no Margaret Sanger quote you can show me that I have not seen & already debunked or placed into context. Ask about me.
— ?Imani Gandied Yams? (@AngryBlackLady) October 13, 2016
Here are some out-of-context quotes from Gandy’s essay; by all means, read the essay in full to see if she meets the challenge of correcting the “false narratives” about Sanger:
- “It is true that Sanger was a proponent of eugenics, and pro-choice advocates do themselves no favors by attempting to whitewash this fact and paint Sanger as some infallible feminist hero.”
- “Margaret Sanger, without question, made a lot of racist remarks. But was she a capital-R racist?”
- “Margaret Sanger held many abhorrent ideas about population control and eugenics, ideas that any decent person today would find horrifying.”
- “… because Margaret Sanger was passionately committed to her birth control crusade, her fervor led her away from feminism and toward an allyship with racists and eugenicists.”
Again, this is the essay on which Planned Parenthood is relying to counter Sanger’s image as a racist and eugenicist. Sorry, but it’ll take more than that to rehabilitate all of those “false narratives” floating around out there. Here are a select few offered in honor of Planned Parenthood’s centennial celebration:
Shining Light on the Dark Side of Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger #DefundPP https://t.co/OsMp2m52aL
— MCCL (@MCCL_org) October 13, 2016
Margaret Sanger Would Be Proud of What Planned Parenthood Has Become https://t.co/hPHYk0rYyM
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) October 13, 2016
#100YearsStrong? How about #100YearsWrong. Planned Parenthood celebrates their broken founder. https://t.co/tnl5DByOxU #100YearsOfAbuse pic.twitter.com/AodTn7z7wj
— Radiance Foundation (@lifehaspurpose) October 12, 2016
Sorry, I read all about her, and she was a disgusting person in every way possible. The mother of Black genocide.
— Kathy (@Bleye600) October 13, 2016
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