Maybe you read my op-ed about her in The New York Times last week. If you didn't, I hope you'll give it a read.
For as long as I've been involved with Planned Parenthood, our founder Margaret Sanger's legacy on race has been under scrutiny. Was she, or was she not, racist?
Over the years, we've answered every question but that one. We've defended her as an avenger of bodily autonomy but unfortunately "a product of her time." But now, as we're being called upon to grapple with our 100-year history, we can no longer afford to reconcile Margaret Sanger's legacy: We must reckon with it.
In this reckoning, Planned Parenthood is naming and owning the harm that Sanger caused to generations of people with disabilities and Black, Latino, Asian American, and Indigenous people. For example:
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when she spoke to the women's auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan at a rally in New Jersey to generate support for birth control.
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when she endorsed the Supreme Court's decision in Buck v. Bell, which allowed states to forcibly sterilize people deemed "unfit" without their consent.
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when the first human trials of the birth control pill, her passion project, were conducted in Puerto Rico on women who did not know they were an experiment, or that they might experience potentially dangerous side effects.
We don't know what was in Sanger's heart, and we don't need to, to condemn and disavow her harmful choices. Reckoning doesn't mean answering a yes or no question about whether she was racist. Reckoning is understanding her legacy and its impact. Reckoning is the work that comes next.
Re-assessing Sanger's history doesn't take away from her feminist fight. But her feminist fight wasn't enough. When you engage with people who believe in white supremacy, by default, you are devaluing and dehumanizing people of color.
And sometimes Planned Parenthood has repeated Sanger's mistakes. By centering women, and centering whiteness, we've contributed to America's harm for Black women and other women of color. And when we narrowly focus on "women's health," we have excluded trans and nonbinary people.
When we do that, we're failing our mission to care for the communities we serve. We owe it to them to show up differently to fight the dehumanization we are seeing right now. The dehumanization of victims of police violence like Adam Toledo, Daunte Wright, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and too many others. The dehumanization of transgender kids whose health care and rights are being denied in states across the country. The dehumanization that comes when groups of people are not seen or valued as equals.
Long after we've reckoned with Sanger, we must continue to interrogate every structure and process and examine how racial hierarchy continues to operate.
We will no longer make excuses or apologize for Margaret Sanger's actions. We are committed to confronting white supremacy in our own organization and across the movement for reproductive freedom. This work has already begun at Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, through its Reviving Radical initiative.
Margaret Sanger harmed generations with her beliefs. Planned Parenthood has a chance to heal those harms and build a better future in our second century. I'm so grateful to you for growing and evolving with us and continuing to stand by our side as we go forward.
