From the SFLA Blog

Washington Post Article Shows Pre-Roe Black Community Feared Abortion Was a Eugenic Tool

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Caroline Wharton - 03 Oct 2022

If you haven’t realized it by now, the abortion lobby plays a mean game of pretend, and one of their favorite invented falsehoods is that the notorious eugenicist Margaret Sanger was some sort of a fairy godmother — not a racist. Going hand-in-hand with this pretense, abortion supporters also like to say the idea that abortion was used as a eugenic tool against Black people is a conspiracy propagated by the pro-life movement. 

This, however, is just not what history tells us, and a recent article by the Washington Post has shown that a large number of Black Americans prior to Roe v. Wade did believe abortion was being used against them. Here’s what you need to know about this article and how it proves what the pro-life movement has been saying all along:  

In a recent Washington Post perspective piece entitled “Black Women’s Voices Must Be Central to the Battle for Abortion Access,” author Kim Gallon is clearly pro-abortion — but her article nevertheless showcases Black concern and fear over abortion in the pre-Roe era; something which the current abortion lobby refuses to believe. She writes:  

“Known for its campaigns to end anti-Black racism and discrimination, the “fighting press,” as it was called, was much more circumspect in their position on abortion in the years that preceded the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973… Rumors circulated within and among African American communities claiming that the U.S. government sought to restrict Black population growth by limiting Black reproduction and controlling Black women’s fertility.” 

Instead of dismissing these rumors or chalking them up to some a white conspiracy theory, Gallon goes on to rightly state, “These beliefs were rooted in history.”  

She continued, “Scientific racism and forced sterilization in the early 20th century also demonstrated to significant numbers of Black people that they could trust neither the medical system nor the government with their reproductive decisions. As a result, suspicions of Black genocide and eugenics occupied the same space with discussions about abortion and reproductive rights.”  

As an example of real fear that the Black community felt over abortion being used in a eugenic manner against them, Gallon cited a poll from the Chicago Daily Defender back in the early 1970’s shortly after the Illinois State Supreme Court legalized abortion. The newspaper polled readers by asking them, “Do you believe that welfare funds used for abortion on black women is genocide?”  

The results of the poll found that a clear majority (63.7%) said yes — and Gallon explained in her article that this exposed “a deep concern by Black people about the relationship between abortion and genocide.”  Gallon also admitted that Black proponents of abortion at the time even feared abortion being used for eugenic purposes, as well.  

Unfortunately, Planned Parenthood is one example of the sad fact that these fears were grounded in reality as Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger is a well-known proponent of eugenics. Students for Life of America (SFLA) President Kristan Hawkins wrote a 2022 USA Today op-ed on the racist founder, writing:  

“In promoting birth control, she [Margaret Sanger] advanced a controversial “Negro Project,” wrote in her autobiography about speaking to a Ku Klux Klan group and advocated for a eugenics approach to breeding for “the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.” 

“In a 1939 letter to Dr. C. J. Gamble, Sanger urged him to get over his reluctance to hire “a full time Negro physician” as the “colored Negroes…can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubt.” 

Like the abortion lobby today, Sanger urged Dr. Gamble to enlist the help of spiritual leaders to justify their deadly work, writing, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” 

Clearly, the older Black generation’s fears were warranted — and unfortunately, Planned Parenthood’s racism lives on today as Black women still remain as a large percentage of all the abortions committed today. To learn more about SFLA’s Black Preborn Lives Matter campaign of 2020, click HERE.  

READ NEXT: Black Lives Matter But Not to the Abortion Industry  

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