Sanger Represents "American Values"?

The good news is that a new Planned Parenthood clinic has been effectively blocked from being built. Through the process of choice. One by one, contractors have chosen to drop out of the project, after urging by pro life groups and the threat of a boycott by Austin and San Antonio area churches. Alexander Sanger, grandson of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, says "It's profoundly threatening to American values."

American values? I wonder how many Americans with values of any sort would agree with the values espoused by Margaret Sanger and the organization she founded. We already know that the majority of Americans are pro-life. Poll after poll has demonstrated it, including a very recent Gallup poll showing that teens are even more pro-life than adults.

But even fewer would agree with the Sangers if they knew Margaret's motivation for promoting abortion. Sanger was, to put it bluntly, a racist and a believer in eugenics. She toured internationally espousing Nazi views and promoting abortion as a way of eliminating black and other non-aryan populations. If you don't want to believe this on the strength of web articles, I urge you to get hold of original publications written by Ms. Sanger herself. I found her writings in a university library, and discovered for myself her racist views.

Today is a time when racism is far less tolerated than it was in Margaret Sanger's day. Her grandson, Alexander, must therefore be far more cautious in being upfront about the racist goals of Planned Parenthood, even as Planned Parenthood continues to build the vast majority of their clinics in ethnic neighborhoods, among people who favor the complete illegalization of abortion even more strongly than the general American population. Yet Alexander, on his way into office, said "With all her success, my grandmother left some unfinished business, and I intend to finish it." And we know what her unfinished business was: minority people have not been eliminated.

Perhaps I am just not cynical enough. I do not, cannot, believe that the Sangers represent American values. Americans value equality, and the rights of all people. The contractors who are refusing to participate in the war against minorities... they are representing, far more surely, American values.