Story 1: Planned Parenthood’s Evil of Killing, Butchering and Selling Baby Parts Regrets Their Tone Not Their Actions– Reminds Me of The Nazis (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) Discussing The Final Solution for The Jewish Question — The Killing of Babies Supported By Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Progressives and Ruling Political Elites — Stop Killing Babies And Lying To The American People — Videos
He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.
~Saint Augustine
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
~Edmund Burke
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
~Henry David Thoreau
The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
~Thomas Hardy
The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.
~Stephen Ambrose
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
~Hannah Arendt
Planned Parenthood: Cecile Richards’ Official Video Response
Brenda Lee – I’m Sorry
Senator Lankford Speaks about the Planned Parenthood Video on the Senate Floor
Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts
What So-Called Pro-Choicers Cannot Watch From Start To Finish
The Silent Scream (Full Length)
FULL FOOTAGE: Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts
Abby Johnson Exposes The Lie of Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards’ Attempt To Dismiss Viral Video Backfires!
Caught on Camera: Planned Parenthood Harvesting Babies Organs
Die Wannseekonferenz (1984)
A real time recreation of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which leading SS and Nazi Party officials led by SS-General Reinhard Heydrich gathered to discuss the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”.
MAAFA 21 THE BLACK HOLOCAUST
Abortion Inc: Promoting Black Genocide in US?
Planned Parenthood Banks on Fraud
Planned Parenthood’s New Image
Fit vs. UnFit, Eugenics, Planned Parenthood & Psychology, Mind Control Report
Sex Control Police State, Eugenics, Galton, Kantsaywhere, Mind Control Report
Mind Control Hate Propaganda, Hate Speech & Crime, Black PR
Mind Control, Psychology of Brainwashing, Sex & Hypnosis
Margaret Sanger: Eugenicist (1/3)
Margaret Sanger: Eugenicist (2/3)
Margaret Sanger: Eugenicist (3/3)
Eugenics Glenn Beck w/ Edwin Black author of “War Against the Weak” talk Al Gore & Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s Racist Founder
Justice Antonin Scalia talks about Roe v. Wade
Auschwitz The Nazis and the Final Solution complete
Auschwitz: The Nazi and the Final Solution (1/5)
AUSHWITZ:THE FINAL SOLUTION CLIP 2/5
Auschwitz: The Nazi and the Final Solution (3/5)
Auschwitz: The Nazi and the Final Solution (4/5)
Auschwitz: The Nazi and the Final Solution (5/5)
Science and the Swastika: The Deadly Experiment
Sterilizing Undesirables: Did The USA Inspire The Nazis?
Keeping Dems Honest: CNN’s Anderson Cooper Puts Truth First and Challenges DNC Abortion Lies
Glenn Beck : Agenda 21 is not a fiction, it’s implemented right now in US and all over the World !
Glenn Beck – Ted Cruz Discusses the Evils of Agenda 21
Bill Whittle What We Believe Full Version
Brenda Lee – I’m Sorry (Live from Canada 1980)
Planned Parenthood head apologizes for ‘tone’ of doctor in covert video
The president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America on Thursday apologized for remarks captured on video that show Deborah Nucatola, an executive of the organization, casually discussing abortion techniques aimed at preserving the internal organs of fetuses for use in research.
In a video posted on Planned Parenthood’s Web site, Cecile Richards called the tenor of the remarks “unacceptable,” and said the organization strives as its top priority to provide compassionate care.
“In the video, one of our staff members speaks in a way that does not reflect that compassion,” she said. “This is unacceptable, and I personally apologize for the staff member’s tone and statements.”
But Richards also emphatically defended the organization’s tissue donation program, which she said is purely voluntary for the women and does not yield a profit for Planned Parenthood. And she condemned the group that covertly recorded Nucatola’s remarks, which she said heavily edited the video to make “outrageous claims.”
“We know the real agenda of organizations behind videos like this, and they have never been concerned with protecting the health and safety of women,” she said. “Their mission is to ban abortion completely and cut women off from care at Planned Parenthood and other health centers.”
Richards’s apology came a day after a little-known anti-abortion group called the Center for Medical Progress unveiled the video as part of what its leader said was a 30-month investigation into Planned Parenthood’s tissue donation program. The group alleges Planned Parenthood illegally sells fetal body parts to companies that use the tissue for research.
While the video did not prove this claim, it still painted Planned Parenthood in an unflattering light that reignited controversy over the women’s health organization, the nation’s largest abortion provider and a longtime target of anti-abortion activism. It showed Nucatola, the organization’s senior director of medical services, discussing graphically the ways in which abortions can be completed to preserve a fetus’s liver, lungs, heart and other materials for research.
“I’d say a lot of people want liver,” she says in the video, drinking wine and eating salad with anti-abortion activists posing as medical company representatives.
Later in the video, she continues: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
The Center for Medical Research distilled the video into a nine-minute clip, but also posted a longer cut lasting more than two-and-a-half hours showing a fuller context of the discussion. It also posted some supporting documents on its site, and the group’s leader has promised more evidence in the coming weeks.
Planned Parenthood’s president apologized Thursday for a top official’s tone in a controversial video, but she also denied the clip’s allegation that her organization profits from tissue donation.
“Our top priority is the compassionate care that we provide. In the video, one of our staff members speaks in a way that does not reflect that compassion. This is unacceptable, and I personally apologize for the staff member’s tone and statements,” said Cecile Richards, the group’s president, in a video out Thursday. “As always, if there is any aspect of our work that can be strengthened, we want to know about it, and we take swift action to address it.”
Since the video’s release on Breitbart earlier this week, conservative elected officials have slammed its contents and called for congressional hearings on the incident, including House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
“I hope that everyone in the country watches it,” said Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Missouri, who called the video “the most horrifying and heartbreaking undercover video I have ever seen” during a Capitol Hill news conference on Wednesday.
But allegations that Planned Parenthood sells baby body organs and tissue are unfounded, she said.
“I want to be really clear: The allegation that Planned Parenthood profits in any way from tissue donation is not true. Our donation programs — like any other high-quality health care providers — follow all laws and ethical guidelines.”
On Wednesday, Richards used Twitter to criticize lawmakers and presidential candidates
“GOP leaders, including most of the ’16 field, are tripping over themselves to attack PP because they think that’s how to win elections,” organization president Cecile Richards said in a series of related tweets Wednesday. Her comments were her first addressing a video showing one of the organization’s top officials discussing the organs and tissue or aborted fetuses.
President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America Cecile Richards speaks during day two of the Democratic National Convention on September 5, 2012 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Congressional leaders and Republican presidential hopefuls slammed Planned Parenthood on Wednesday and called for congressional hearings on the incident.
Richards said political attacks are nothing new for her organization, the country’s largest abortion provider.
“Spreading false information is an age-old strategy of people hell-bent on denying women care & shaming them for exercising their rights,” she tweeted.
Several Republican candidates have promised to defund federal dollars to Planned Parenthood if elected. Richards argued that would keep millions from breast exams, sexually transmitted infection exams and sex education.
“Reminder: 1 out of every 5 women has been to PP in her life. Threatening our patients’ care & rights will get politicians nowhere real fast,” she tweeted. “We’ve fought for our patients before, and we’ll fight for them again and again.”
Planned Parenthood exec, fetal body parts subject of controversial video
By Steve Almasy and Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN
An anti-abortion group has released an online video that it says documents how Planned Parenthood is selling fetal organs for a profit, a felony, while violating medical ethics by altering normal abortion procedures so as to preserve the organs.
Planned Parenthood has countered that it donates the tissue for scientific research and receives only reimbursement for its expenses, which is legal. The group also says it helps people donate tissue “with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards,” according to a statement from spokesman Eric Ferrero.
Later, Ferrero issued another statement saying, “These outrageous claims are flat-out untrue, but that doesn’t matter to politicians with a longstanding political agenda to ban abortion and defund Planned Parenthood. Women and families who make the decision to donate fetal tissue for lifesaving scientific research should be honored, not attacked and demeaned.”
The group leveling the accusation, the Irvine, California-based Center for Medical Progress, says it shot the video a year ago at a California restaurant. On it, two people purporting to be with a human biologics company speak with a Planned Parenthood doctor over what appears to be a lunch meeting. The Center for Medical Progress says the pair, who are off-camera and never seen, are paid actors.
“Planned Parenthood’s criminal conspiracy to make money off of aborted baby parts reaches to the very highest levels of their organization,” said statement from David Daleiden, who led the undercover project.
The video has drawn the ire of GOP lawmakers in Washington, with House Speaker John Boehner calling for hearings on Planned Parenthood’s abortion practices.
“When anyone diminishes an unborn child, we are all hurt, irreversibly so. When an organization monetizes an unborn child — and with the cavalier attitude portrayed in this horrific video — we must all act,” he said.
On the video, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, the senior director of medical services at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, is seen talking matter-of-factly about the organization’s participation in tissue-donation programs.
Though Planned Parenthood has described the Center for Medical Progress footage as a hit piece by “a well-funded group established for the purpose of damaging Planned Parenthood’s mission and services,” Nucatola acknowledges in the video that Planned Parenthood’s national office sees the potential for controversy.
“So, we tried to do this, and at the national office we have a Litigation and Law Department that just really doesn’t want us to be the middle people for this issue right now,” she said. “And so we had a conversation, and we said, ‘What if we go out and find everyone who is doing this and present everybody with a menu?’ And at the end of the day they just decided that right now, it’s just too touchy an issue for us to be an official middleman.”
In another part of the video, the doctor tells the undercover actors that “behind closed doors,” Planned Parenthood’s affiliates are discussing how to handle the matter.
“Every provider has had patients who want to donate their tissue, and they absolutely want to accommodate them. They just want to do it in a way that is not perceived as ‘This clinic is selling tissue. This clinic is making money off of this,’ ” she said.
The edited version of the video appears to be missing important context that’s provided in the longer video. For instance, one of the actors asks Nucatola about prices for the organs.
“OK, so when you are, or the (Planned Parenthood) affiliate is determining what that monetary … so that it doesn’t raise any question of ‘This is what it’s about; this is the main,’ what price range would you …” the woman asks, her question trailing off.
Nucatola responds that the price would be between $30 and $100 per specimen, with consideration for what facility is used and “what’s involved.” It’s not clear if a specimen constitutes the entire organ or only samples of it.
Nucatola doesn’t specifically say that the price is for the purchase of the tissue, but the comment troubled bioethicist Art Caplan of New York University, who said after watching the edited version of the video it sounds like Planned Parenthood might be trying to make a profit.
But in the longer version of the video, Nucatola elaborates and appears to say the price is related to the cost of performing the procedure and shipping.
“It just has to do with space issues. Are you sending someone there who is going to be doing everything or is their staff going to be doing it? What exactly are they going to be doing? Is there shipping involved or is someone coming to pick it up?”
Selling fetal body parts — or any body parts — is against federal law, but Planned Parenthood said it makes no profit.
“In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field,” the group said.
Another part of the video also raised concerns for Caplan. Nucatola talks about doctors performing abortions in which ultrasound is used to ascertain the best location to grab the fetus with forceps.
“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver because we know that, I’m not going to crush that part,” she says.
Altering procedures in order to get tissue in the best condition would be a “big no-no,” the bioethicist said, because the patient’s health is paramount and that should be the only concern for doctors. Caplan did not comment specifically on whether the ultrasound procedure would endanger the mother, but he made it clear that any deviation from normal procedures is unacceptable.
“In abortion the primary goal is to give the safest abortion possible,” Caplan said. “Your sole concern has to be the mother and her health.”
There’s a parallel in patient care, he said. When someone is dying, doctors shouldn’t change how they treat the patient in order to harvest good tissue for donation after death.
Doctors should treat the patient as they normally would, and then use whatever is available after death. If a provider is considering how to get the tissue that’s in the best shape, “that’s a huge conflict of interest. … If you modify how someone dies, that’s unethical.”
The Center for Medical Progress also alleges that Nucatola describes a method — using ultrasound to manipulate the fetus so it comes out feet first, or breech presentation, instead of head first, or vertex presentation — that “is the hallmark of the illegal partial-birth abortion procedure.”
Partial birth abortions are illegal, according to U.S. law, which defines them as procedures “in which the person performing the abortion deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother, for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus.”
On the video, Nucatola describes the best strategy to extract calavarium, or skulls, intact, but it is not clear if she is speaking in general terms or if she is describing Planned Parenthood’s methods. And then, she says nothing about whether the fetus is still alive when it’s delivered.
“And with the calvarium, in general, some people will actually try to change the presentation so that it’s not vertex, because when it’s vertex presentation, you never have enough dilation at the beginning of the case, unless you have real, huge amount of dilation to deliver an intact calvarium. So if you do it starting from the breech presentation, there’s dilation that happens as the case goes on, and often, the last, you can evacuate an intact calvarium at the end.”
The Center for Medical Progress responded to Planned Parenthood’s written statement about the video and accused Planned Parenthood of lying about obtaining consent from patients and not making a profit on the tissue transactions. It did not offer any further evidence of either claim.
Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, said the anti-abortion group was the one that was lying.
“A well-funded group established for the purpose of damaging Planned Parenthood’s mission and services has promoted a heavily edited, secretly recorded videotape that falsely portrays Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research,” it said.
The statement continued, “Similar false accusations have been put forth by opponents of abortion services for decades. These groups have been widely discredited and their claims fall apart on closer examination, just as they do in this case.”
Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), commonly shortened to Planned Parenthood, is the U.S. affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and one of its larger members. PPFA is a non-profit organization providing reproductive health and maternal and child health services. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Inc. (PPAF) is a related organization which lobbies for pro-choice legislation, comprehensive sex education, and access to affordable health care in the United States. In recent years, Planned Parenthood has begun to move away from the pro-choice label to words and phrases that more accurately reflect the entire range of women’s health and economic issues.[3]
Planned Parenthood is the largest U.S. provider of reproductive health services, including cancer screening, HIV screening and counseling, contraception, and abortion.[4][5][6] Contraception accounts for 34% of PPFA’s total services and abortions account for 3%; PPFA conducts roughly 300,000 abortions each year, among 3 million people served.[7][8][9]
The organization has its roots in Brooklyn, New York, where Margaret Sanger opened the country’s first birth-control clinic. Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which in 1942 became part of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Since then, Planned Parenthood has grown to have over 820 clinic locations in the U.S., with a total budget of US $1 billion. PPFA provides an array of services to over three million people in the United States, and supports services for over one million clients outside the United States.
Margaret Sanger (1922), the first president and founder of Planned Parenthood
The origins of Planned Parenthood date to October 16, 1916 when Margaret Sanger, her sister Ethel Byrne, and Fania Mindell opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York.[10] All three women were immediately arrested and jailed for violating provisions of the Comstock Act– for distributing “obscene materials” at the clinic. The “Brownsville trials” brought national attention and support to their cause, and although Sanger and her co-defendants were convicted, their convictions were eventually overturned. Their campaign led to major changes in the laws governing birth control and sex education in the United States.[11]
In 1938, the clinic was organized into the American Birth Control League, which became part of the only national birth control organization in the US until the 1960s, but the title was found too offensive and “against families” so the League began discussions for a new name.[12] By 1941, the organization was operating 222 centers and had served 49,000 clients.[13] By 1942 the League had become part of what became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.[12]
By 1960, the Federation’s grassroots volunteers had provided family planning counseling in hundreds of communities across the country.[13] Planned Parenthood was one of the founding members of the International Planned Parenthood Federation when it was launched at a conference in Bombay, India in 1952.[13][14]
After Sanger
Following Margaret Sanger, Alan Frank Guttmacher became president of Planned Parenthood and served from 1962 till 1974.[15] During his tenure, the Food and Drug Administration approved the sale of the original birth control pill, giving rise to new attitudes towards women’s reproductive freedom.[13] Also during his presidency, Planned Parenthood lobbied the federal government to support reproductive health, culminating with President Richard Nixon‘s signing of Title X to provide governmental subsidies for low-income women to access family planning services.[16] The Center for Family Planning Program Development was also founded as a semi-autonomous division during this time.[17] The center became an independent organization and was renamed the Guttmacher Institute in 1977.[17]
Faye Wattleton was the first woman named president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1978 and served till 1992.[18] She was the first African-American to serve as president, and the youngest president in Planned Parenthood’s history.[19] During her term, Planned Parenthood grew to become the seventh largest charity in the country, providing services to four million clients each year through its 170 affiliates whose activities were spread across 50 states.[20]
A Planned Parenthood supporter participates in a demonstration in support of the organization.
From 1996 to 2006, Planned Parenthood was led by Gloria Feldt.[21][22] Feldt activated the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the organization’s political action committee, launching what was the most far reaching electoral advocacy effort in its history.[23] She also launched the Responsible Choices Action Agenda, a nationwide campaign to increase services to prevent unwanted pregnancies, improve quality of reproductive care and ensure access to safe and legal abortions.[13] Another initiative was the commencement of a “Global Partnership Program” with the aim of building a vibrant activist constituency in support of family planning.[13]
On February 15, 2006, Cecile Richards became president of the organization.[24]
PPFA is a federation of 85 independent Planned Parenthood affiliates around the U.S.[1] These affiliates together operate more than 820 health centers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.[1][32] The largest of these facilities, a $26 million, 78,000-square-foot (7,200 m2) structure was completed in Houston, Texas in May 2010.[33] This serves as a headquarters for 12 clinics in Texas and Louisiana.[33] Together, they are the largest family planning services provider in the U.S. with over four million activists, supporters and donors.[34][35][36] Planned Parenthood is staffed by 27,000 staff members and volunteers.[37]
They serve over five million clients a year, 26% of which are teenagers under the age of 19.[38] According to Planned Parenthood, 75% of their clients have incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level.[37]
In 2009, Planned Parenthood provided 4,009,549 contraceptive services (35% of total), 3,955,926 sexually transmitted disease services (35% of total), 1,830,811 cancer related services (16% of total), 1,178,369 pregnancy/prenatal/midlife services (10% of total), 332,278 abortion services (3% of total), and 76,977 other services (1% of total), for a total of 11,383,900 services.[9][37][39][40][41][42] The organization also said its doctors and nurses annually conduct 1 million screenings for cervical cancer and 830,000 breast exams.
Planned Parenthood has received federal funding since 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed into law the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act, amending the Public Health Service Act. Title X of that law provides funding for family planning services, including contraception and family planning information. The law enjoyed bipartisan support from liberals who saw contraception access as increasing families’ control over their lives, and conservatives who saw it as a way to keep people off welfare. Nixon described Title X funding as based on the premise that “no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition.”[43]
In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2011, total (consolidated) revenue was $201 million: clinic revenue totaling $2 million, grants and donations of $190 million, investment income of $2 million, and $7 million other income.[44] Approximately two-thirds of the revenue is put towards the provision of health services, while non-medical services such as sex education and public policy work make up another 16%; management expenses, fundraising, and international family planning programs account for most of the rest.
Planned Parenthood receives about a third of its money in government grants and contracts (about $360 million in 2009).[45] By law, federal funding cannot be allocated for abortions,[46] but some opponents of abortion have argued that allocating money to Planned Parenthood for the provision of other medical services “frees up” funds to be re-allocated for abortion.[4][47]
A coalition of national and local pro-life groups have lobbied federal and state government to stop funding Planned Parenthood, and as a result, Republican federal and state legislators have proposed legislation to reduce the funding levels.[46][48] Some six states have gone ahead with such proposals.[4][49][50][51] In some cases, the courts have overturned such actions, citing conflict with federal or other state laws, and in others, the federal executive branch has provided funding in lieu of the states.[50][51][52] In other cases, complete or partial defunding of Planned Parenthood has gone through successfully.[53][54]
Planned Parenthood is also funded by private donors, with a membership base of over 700,000 active donors whose contributions account for approximately one quarter of the organization’s revenue.[55] Large donors also contribute a substantial portion of the organization’s budget; past donors have included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Buffett Foundation, Ford Foundation, Turner Foundation, the Cullmans and others.[56][57][58][59] The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s contributions to the organization have been specifically marked to avoid funding abortions.[56] Some, such as the Buffett Foundation, have supported reproductive health that can include abortion services.[56] Pro-life groups have advocated the boycott of donors to Planned Parenthood.[60]
Stand on political and legal issues
Planned Parenthood and its predecessor organizations have provided and advocated for access to birth control. The modern organization of Planned Parenthood America is also an advocate for reproductive rights.[61] This advocacy includes contributing to sponsorship of abortion rights and women’s rights events[62] and assisting in the testing of new contraceptives.[63] The Federation opposes restrictions on women’s reproductive health services, including parental consent laws. Planned Parenthood has cited the case of Becky Bell, who died following a septic abortion after failing to seek parental consent, to justify their opposition.[64][65] Planned Parenthood also takes the position that laws requiring parental notification before an abortion is performed on a minor are unconstitutional on privacy grounds.[66] The organization also opposes laws requiring ultrasounds before abortions, stating that their only purpose is to make abortions more difficult to obtain.[67] Planned Parenthood has also opposed initiatives that require waiting periods before abortions,[68] and bans on late-term abortions including intact dilation and extraction, which has been illegal in the U.S. since 2003.[69]
Planned Parenthood argues for the wide availability of emergency contraception (EC) measures.[70] It opposes conscience clauses, which allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense drugs against their beliefs. In support of their position, they have cited cases where pharmacists have refused to fill life saving drugs under the laws.[71] Planned Parenthood has also been critical of hospitals that do not provide access to EC for rape victims.[72] Planned Parenthood supports and provides FDA-approved abortifacients such as mifepristone.[73]
Citing the need for medically accurate information in sex education, Planned Parenthood opposes abstinence-only education in public schools. Instead, Planned Parenthood is a provider of, and endorses, comprehensive sex education, which includes discussion of both abstinence and birth control.[74]
Planned Parenthood also has a political action committee called Planned Parenthood Action Fund. The committee was founded in 1996 by then new president Gloria Feldt for the purpose of maintaining reproductive health rights and supporting political candidates of the same mindset. In 2012 election cycle the committee gained prominence based on its effectiveness of spending on candidates.[75]
Before the U.S. Supreme Court
Former Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt with Congressman Albert Wynn in front of the U.S. Supreme Court
Planned Parenthood regional chapters have been active in the American courts. A number of cases in which Planned Parenthood has been a party have reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Notable among these cases is the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the case that sets forth the current constitutional abortion standard. In this case, “Planned Parenthood” was the Southeast Pennsylvania Chapter, and “Casey” was Robert Casey, the governor of Pennsylvania. The ultimate ruling was split, and Roe v. Wade was narrowed but upheld in an opinion written by Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter. Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens concurred with the main decision in separately written opinions. The Supreme Court struck down spousal consent requirements for married women to obtain abortions, but found no “undue burden”—an alternative to strict scrutiny which tests the allowable limitations on rights protected under the Constitution—from the other statutory requirements. Dissenting were William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Byron White. Blackmun, Rehnquist, and White were the only justices who voted on the original Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 who were still on the Supreme Court to rule on this case, and their votes on this case were consistent with their votes on the original decision that legalized abortion.[76] Only Blackmun voted to maintain Roe v. Wade in its entirety.
Other related cases include:
Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth (1976). Planned Parenthood challenged the constitutionality of a Missouri law encompassing parental consent, spousal consent, clinic bookkeeping and allowed abortion methods. Portions of the challenged law were held to be constitutional, others not.[77]
Planned Parenthood Association of Kansas City v. Ashcroft (1983). Planned Parenthood challenged the constitutionality of a Missouri law encompassing parental consent, clinic record keeping, and hospitalization requirements. Most of the challenged law was held to be constitutional.[78]
Planned Parenthood v. ACLA (2001). The American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA) released a flier and “Wanted” posters with complete personal information about doctors who performed abortions. A civil jury and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals both found that the material was indeed “true threats” and not protected speech.[79]
Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood (2003). Planned Parenthood sued Attorney General Gonzales for an injunction against the enforcement of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. Planned Parenthood argued the act was unconstitutional because it violated the Fifth Amendment, namely in that it was overly vague, violated women’s constitutional right to have access to abortion, and did not include language for exceptions for the health of the mother. Both the district court and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed,[80][81] but that decision was overturned in a 5–4 ruling by the Supreme Court.[82]
Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (2006). Planned Parenthood et al. challenged the constitutionality of a New Hampshire parental notification law related to access to abortion.[83][84] In Sandra Day O’Connor’s final decision before retirement, the Supreme Court sent the case back to lower courts with instructions to seek a remedy short of wholesale invalidation of the statute. New Hampshire ended up repealing the statute via the legislative process.[85]
Controversy and criticism
Abortion
Planned Parenthood has occupied a central position in the abortion debate in the U.S., and has been among the most prominent targets of U.S. pro-life activists for decades. Congressional Republicans have attempted since the 1980s to defund the organization,[45] nearly leading to a government shutdown over the issue in 2011.[86] The federal money received by Planned Parenthood is not used to fund abortion services, but pro-life activists have argued that the funding frees up other resources which are, in turn, used to provide abortions.[45]
Planned Parenthood is the largest single provider of abortions in the U.S.[7] In 2009, Planned Parenthood performed 332,278 abortions (for comparison, 1.21 million abortions were performed in the US in 2008[87]), from which it derives about $164,154,000, or 15% of its annual revenue as of their 2008–2009 calculations.[88] According to PPFA’s own estimates, its contraceptive services prevent approximately 612,000 unintended pregnancies and 291,000 abortions annually.[37][89] Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards has argued that the organization’s family planning services reduce the need for abortions.[90] Megan Crepeau of the Chicago Tribune said that, because of its birth control and family planning services, PPFA could be “characterized as America’s largest abortion preventer.”[91] Anti-abortion activists dispute the evidence that greater access to contraceptives reduces abortions.[92]
In the 1920s various theories of eugenics were popular among intellectuals in the United States. For example, 75% of colleges offered courses on eugenics.[93] Sanger, in her campaign to promote birth control, teamed with eugenics organizations such as the American Eugenics Society, although she argued against many of their positions.[94][95][96] Scholars describe Sanger as believing that birth control, sterilization and abortion should be voluntary and not based on race.[97] She advocated for “voluntary motherhood”—the right to choose when to be pregnant—for all women, as an important element of women’s rights.[98][99] Opponents of Planned Parenthood often refer to Sanger’s connection with supporters of eugenics to discredit the organization by associating it, and birth control, with the more negative modern view of eugenics.[100][101] Planned Parenthood has responded to this effort directly in a leaflet acknowledging that Sanger agreed with some of her contemporaries who advocated the voluntary hospitalization or sterilization of people with untreatable, disabling, hereditary conditions, and limits on the immigration of the diseased. The leaflet also states that Planned Parenthood “finds these views objectionable and outmoded” but says that it was compelled to discuss the topic because “anti-family planning activists continue to attack Sanger . . . because she is an easier target” than Planned Parenthood.[102]
Periodically pro-life activists have tried to demonstrate that Planned Parenthood does not follow applicable state or federal laws. The groups called or visited a Planned Parenthood health center posing as victims of statutory rape,[103] minors who would need parental notification for abortion,[104][105] racists seeking to earmark donations for abortions for black women to abort black babies,[106] or pimps who want abortions for child prostitutes.[107] Edited video and audio productions of these dialogues seem to capture employees being sympathetic to potentially criminal acts, leading to allegations that the health centers in question are violating the law. An official federal inspection in 2005 by the Bush administration‘s Department of Health and Human Services “yielded no evidence of clinics around the nation failing to comply with laws on reporting child abuse, child molestation, sexual abuse, rape or incest.”[104]
In 2011, the organization Live Action released a series of videos that they said showed Planned Parenthood employees at multiple affiliates actively assisting or being complicit in aiding the underage prostitution ring of actors posing as a pimp and a prostitute. Planned Parenthood conducted a frame-by-frame analysis of the recordings, and said they found instances of “editing that dramatically alter[ed] the meaning of the recorded conversations.”[108]
None of these stings have led to criminal conviction.[109] However, a small number of Planned Parenthood employees and volunteers were fired for not following procedure, and the organization committed to retraining its staff.[106][110]
State and local court cases against Planned Parenthood
In some states, anti-abortion Attorneys General have subpoenaed medical records of patients treated by Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood has gone to court to keep from turning over these records, citing medical privacy and concerns about the motivation for seeking the records.[111]
In 2006, Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, a strongly anti-abortion Republican, released some sealed patient records obtained from Planned Parenthood to the public. His actions were described as “troubling” by the state Supreme Court, but ultimately Planned Parenthood was compelled to turn over the medical records, albeit with more stringent court-mandated privacy safeguards for the patients involved.[111] In 2007, Kline’s successor, Paul J. Morrison, notified the clinic that no criminal charges would be filed after a three-year investigation, as “an objective, unbiased and thorough examination” showed no wrongdoing. Morrison stated that he believed Kline had politicized the attorney general’s office.[112] In 2012, a Kansas district attorney dropped all of the remaining criminal charges against the Kansas City-area Planned Parenthood clinic accused of performing illegal abortions, citing a lack of evidence of wrongdoing.[113] In all, the Planned Parenthood clinic had faced 107 criminal charges from Kline and other Kansas prosecutors, all of which were ultimately dropped for lack of evidence.[113]
In Indiana, Planned Parenthood was not required to turn over its medical records in an investigation of possible child abuse.[114] In October 2005, Planned Parenthood Minnesota/North Dakota/South Dakota was fined $50,000 for violating a Minnesota state parental consent law.[115]
On December 31, 2012, Judge Gary Harger ruled Texas may exclude otherwise qualified doctors and clinics from receiving state funding if they advocate for abortion rights.[116]
In 1994, John Salvi entered a Brookline, Massachusetts Planned Parenthood clinic and opened fire, murdering receptionist Shannon Elizabeth Lowney and wounding three others. He fled to another Planned Parenthood clinic where he murdered Leane Nichols and wounded two others.[128]
Planned Parenthood “dates its beginnings to 1916” but a predecessor, the American Birth Control League, was not founded until 1921 and the organization did not adopt its name until 1942.
William Sanger (1902–1921)[note 1]
James Noah H. Slee (1922–1943).
Margaret Higgins Sanger (September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Sanger was also a writer. She used this method to help promote her way of thinking. She was prosecuted for her book Family Limitation under the Comstock Act in 1914. She was afraid of what would happen, so she fled to Britain until she knew it was safe to return to the US.[citation needed] Sanger’s efforts contributed to several judicial cases that helped legalize contraception in the United States. Sanger is a frequent target of criticism by opponents of abortion and has also been criticized for supporting eugenics, but remains an iconic figure in the American reproductive rights movement.[2]
In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, which led to her arrest for distributing information on contraception. Her subsequent trial and appeal generated controversy. Sanger felt that in order for women to have a more equal footing in society and to lead healthier lives, they needed to be able to determine when to bear children. She also wanted to prevent unsafe abortions, so-called back-alley abortions, which were common at the time because abortions were usually illegal. She believed that while abortion was sometimes justified it should generally be avoided, and she considered contraception the only practical way to avoid the use of abortions.[citation needed]
In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In New York City, she organized the first birth control clinic staffed by all-female doctors, as well as a clinic in Harlem with an entirely African-American staff. In 1929, she formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, which served as the focal point of her lobbying efforts to legalize contraception in the United States. From 1952 to 1959, Sanger served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. She died in 1966, and is widely regarded as a founder of the modern birth control movement.
Life
Early life
Sanger was born Margaret Louise Higgins in 1879 in Corning, New York,[3] to Michael Hennessey Higgins, an Irish-born stonemason and free-thinker, and Anne Purcell Higgins, a Catholic Irish-American. Michael Hennessey Higgins had emigrated to the USA at age 14 and joined the U.S. Army as a drummer at age 15, during the Civil War. After leaving the army, Michael studied medicine and phrenology, but ultimately became a stonecutter, making stone angels, saints, and tombstones.[4] Michael H. Higgins was a Catholic who became an atheist and an activist for women’s suffrage and free public education.[5] Anne Higgins went through 18 pregnancies (with 11 live births) in 22 years before dying at the age of 49. Sanger was the sixth of eleven surviving children,[6] and spent much of her youth assisting with household chores and caring for her younger siblings. Anne’s parents took their children and emigrated to Canada when she was a child, due to the Potato Famine.
Supported by her two older sisters, Margaret Higgins attended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute, before enrolling in 1900 at White Plains Hospital as a nurse probationer. In 1902, she married the dashing architect William Sanger and gave up her education.[7] Though she was plagued by a recurring active tubercular condition, Margaret Sanger bore three children, and the couple settled down to a quiet life in Westchester, New York.
Sanger with sons Grant and Stuart, c. 1919
Social activism
In 1911, after a fire destroyed their home in Hastings-on-Hudson, the Sangers abandoned the suburbs for a new life in New York City. Margaret Sanger worked as a visiting nurse in the slums of the East Side, while her husband worked as an architect and a house painter. Already imbued with her husband’s leftist politics, Margaret Sanger also threw herself into the radical politics and modernist values of pre-World War IGreenwich Village bohemia. She joined the Women’s Committee of the New York Socialist party, took part in the labor actions of the Industrial Workers of the World (including the notable 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike and the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike) and became involved with local intellectuals, left-wing artists, socialists and social activists, including John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Mabel Dodge and Emma Goldman.[8]
Sanger’s political interests, emerging feminism and nursing experience led her to write two series of columns on sex education entitled “What Every Mother Should Know” (1911–12) and “What Every Girl Should Know” (1912-13) for the socialist magazine New York Call. By the standards of the day, Sanger’s articles were extremely frank in their discussion of sexuality, and many New York Call readers were outraged by them. Other readers, however, praised the series for its candor, one stated that the series contained “a purer morality than whole libraries full of hypocritical cant about modesty.[9] Both were later published in book form in 1916.[10]
During her work among working class immigrant women, Sanger was exposed to graphic examples of women going through frequent childbirth, miscarriage and self-induced abortion for lack of information on how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Access to contraceptive information was prohibited on grounds of obscenity by the 1873 federal Comstock law and a host of state laws. Searching for something that would help these women, Sanger visited public libraries, but was unable to find information on contraception.[11] These problems were epitomized in a (possibly fictional) story that Sanger would later recount in her speeches: while Sanger was working as a nurse, she was called to the apartment of a woman, “Sadie Sachs,” who had become extremely ill due to a self-induced abortion. Afterward, “Sadie” (whose marital status Sanger never mentioned) begged the attending doctor to tell her how she could prevent this from happening again, to which the doctor simply advised her to remain abstinent. A few months later, Sanger was called back to “Sadie’s” apartment — only this time, “Sadie” died shortly after Sanger arrived. She had attempted yet another self-induced abortion.[12][13] Sanger would sometimes end the story by saying, “I threw my nursing bag in the corner and announced … that I would never take another case until I had made it possible for working women in America to have the knowledge to control birth.” Although “Sadie Sachs” was possibly a fictional composite of several women Sanger had known, this story marks the time when Sanger began to devote her life to help desperate women before they were driven to pursue dangerous and illegal abortions.[13][14]
Accepting the connection proposed between contraception and working-class empowerment by radicals such as Emma Goldman, Sanger came to believe that only by liberating women from the risk of unwanted pregnancy would fundamental social change take place. She proceeded to launch a campaign to challenge governmental censorship of contraceptive information. She would set up a series of confrontational actions designed to challenge the law and force birth control to become a topic of public debate. Sanger’s trip to France in 1913 exposed her to what Goldman had been saying. Sanger’s experience during her trip to France directly influence The Women Rebel newsletter. The trip to France was also the beginning of the end of her marriage with William Sanger.[15]
In 1914, Sanger launched The Woman Rebel, an eight-page monthly newsletter which promoted contraception using the slogan “No Gods, No Masters“.[16][note 2][17] Sanger, collaborating with anarchist friends, popularized the term “birth control” as a more candid alternative to euphemisms such as “family limitation”[18] and proclaimed that each woman should be “the absolute mistress of her own body.”[19] In these early years of Sanger’s activism, she viewed birth control as a free-speech issue, and when she started publishing The Woman Rebel, one of her goals was to provoke a legal challenge to the federal anti-obscenity laws which banned dissemination of information about contraception.[20][21] Though postal authorities suppressed five of its seven issues, Sanger continuing publication, all the while preparing, Family Limitation, an even more blatant challenge to anti-birth control laws. This 16-page pamphlet contained detailed and precise information and graphic descriptions of various contraceptive methods. In August 1914 Margaret Sanger was indicted for violating postal obscenity laws by sending the The Woman Rebel through the postal system. Instead of standing trial, she jumped bail and fled to Canada. Then, under the alias “Bertha Watson”, sailed for England. En route she ordered her labor associates to release copies of the Family Limitation.[22]
Margaret Sanger spent much of her 1914 exile in England, where contact with British neo-Malthusianists helped refine her socioeconomic justifications for birth control. She was also profoundly influenced by the liberation theories of British sexual theorist Havelock Ellis. Under his tutelage she formulated a new rationale that would liberate women not just by making sexual intercourse safe, but also pleasurable. It would, in effect, free women from the inequality of sexual experience. Early in 1915, Margaret Sanger’s estranged husband, William Sanger, was entrapped into giving a copy of Family Limitation to a representative of anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock. William Sanger was tried and convicted, he spent thirty days in jail, while also escalating interest in birth control as a civil liberties issue.[23][24][25]
This page from Sanger’s Family Limitation, 1917 edition, describes a cervical cap.
Some countries in northwestern Europe had more liberal policies towards contraception than the United States at the time, and when Sanger visited a Dutch birth control clinic in 1915, she learned about diaphragms and became convinced that they were a more effective means of contraception than the suppositories and douches that she had been distributing back in the United States. Diaphragms were generally unavailable in the United States, so Sanger and others began importing them from Europe, in defiance of United States law.[8]
On October 16, 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic at 46 Amboy St. in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States.[26] Nine days after the clinic opened, Sanger was arrested. Sanger’s bail was set at $500 and she went back home. Sanger continued seeing some women in the clinic until the police came a second time. This time Sanger and her sister, Ethel Byrne, were arrested for breaking a New York state law that prohibited distribution of contraceptives, Sanger was also charged with running a public nuisance.[27] Sanger and Ethel went to trial in January 1917.[28] Byrne was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse but went on hunger strike. She was the first woman in the US to be force fed.[29] Only when Sanger pledged that Byrne would never break the law, she was pardoned after ten days.[30] Sanger was convicted; the trial judge held that women did not have “the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception.”[31] Sanger was offered a more lenient sentence if she promised to not break the law again, but she replied: “I cannot respect the law as it exists today.”[32] For this, she was sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse.[32] An initial appeal was rejected, but in a subsequent court proceeding in 1918, the birth control movement won a victory when Judge Frederick E. Crane of the New York Court of Appeals issued a ruling which allowed doctors to prescribe contraception.[33] The publicity surrounding Sanger’s arrest, trial, and appeal sparked birth control activism across the United States, and earned the support of numerous donors, who would provide her with funding and support for future endeavors.[34]
Sanger became estranged from her husband in 1913, and the couple’s divorce was finalized in 1921.[35] Sanger’s second husband was Noah Slee. He followed Sanger around the world and provided much of Sanger’s financial assistance. The couple got married in September 1922, but the public did not know about it until February 1924. They supported each other with their pre-commitments.[36]
American Birth Control League
Sanger published the Birth Control Review from 1917 to 1929.[note 4]
After World War I, Sanger shifted away from radical politics, and she founded the American Birth Control League (ABCL) in 1921 to enlarge her base of supporters to include the middle class.[37] The founding principles of the ABCL were as follows:[38]
We hold that children should be (1) Conceived in love; (2) Born of the mother’s conscious desire; (3) And only begotten under conditions which render possible the heritage of health. Therefore we hold that every woman must possess the power and freedom to prevent conception except when these conditions can be satisfied.
Sanger’s appeal of her conviction for the Brownsville clinic secured a 1918 court ruling that exempted physicians from the law that prohibited the distribution of contraceptive information to women—provided it was prescribed for medical reasons—she established the Clinical Research Bureau (CRB) in 1923 to exploit this loophole.[8][39] The CRB was the first legal birth control clinic in the United States, and it was staffed entirely by female doctors and social workers.[40] The clinic received a large amount of funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his family, which continued to make donations to Sanger’s causes in future decades, but generally made them anonymously to avoid public exposure of the family name,[41] and to protect family member Nelson Rockefeller‘s political career since openly advocating birth control could have led to the Catholic Church opposing him politically.[42] John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated five thousand dollars to her American Birth Control League in 1924 and a second time in 1925.[43] In 1922, she traveled to China, Korea, and Japan. In China she observed that the primary method of family planning was female infanticide, and she later worked with Pearl Buck to establish a family planning clinic in Shanghai.[44] Sanger visited Japan six times, working with Japanese feminist Kato Shidzue to promote birth control.[45] This was ironic since ten years earlier Sanger had accused Katō of murder and praised an attempt to kill her.[46]
In 1926, Sanger gave a lecture on birth control to the women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey.[47] She described it as “one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing,” and added that she had to use only “the most elementary terms, as though I were trying to make children understand.”[47] Sanger’s talk was well received by the group, and as a result, “a dozen invitations to similar groups were proffered.”[47]
In 1928, conflict within the birth control movement leadership led Sanger to resign as the president of the ABCL and take full control of the CRB, renaming it the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB), marking the beginning of a schism in the movement that would last until 1938.[48]
Sanger invested a great deal of effort communicating with the general public. From 1916 onward, she frequently lectured—in churches, women’s clubs, homes, and theaters—to workers, churchmen, liberals, socialists, scientists, and upper-class women.[49] She wrote several books in the 1920s which had a nationwide impact in promoting the cause of birth control. Between 1920 and 1926, 567,000 copies of Woman and the New Race and The Pivot of Civilization were sold.[50] She also wrote two autobiographies designed to promote the cause. The first, My Fight for Birth Control, was published in 1931 and the second, more promotional version, Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography, was published in 1938.
During the 1920s, Sanger received hundreds of thousands of letters, many of them written in desperation by women begging for information on how to prevent unwanted pregnancies.[51][52] Five hundred of these letters were compiled into the 1928 book, Motherhood in Bondage.[53][54]
Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau operated from this New York building from 1930 to 1973.
In 1929, Sanger formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control in order to lobby for legislation to overturn restrictions on contraception.[55] That effort failed to achieve success, so Sanger ordered a diaphragm from Japan in 1932, in order to provoke a decisive battle in the courts. The diaphragm was confiscated by the United States government, and Sanger’s subsequent legal challenge led to a 1936 court decision which overturned an important provision of the Comstock laws which prohibited physicians from obtaining contraceptives.[56] This court victory motivated the American Medical Association in 1937 to adopt contraception as a normal medical service and a key component of medical school curriculums.[57]
This 1936 contraception court victory was the culmination of Sanger’s birth control efforts, and she took the opportunity, now in her late 50s, to move to Tucson, Arizona, intending to play a less critical role in the birth control movement. In spite of her original intentions, she remained active in the movement through the 1950s.[57]
In 1937, Sanger became chairman of the newly formed Birth Control Council of America, and attempted to resolve the schism between the ABCL and the BCCRB.[58] Her efforts were successful, and the two organizations merged in 1939 as the Birth Control Federation of America.[59][note 5] Although Sanger continued in the role of president, she no longer wielded the same power as she had in the early years of the movement, and in 1942, more conservative forces within the organization changed the name to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a name Sanger objected to because she considered it too euphemistic.[60]
In 1946, Sanger helped found the International Committee on Planned Parenthood, which evolved into the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1952, and soon became the world’s largest non-governmental international family planning organization. Sanger was the organization’s first president and served in that role until she was 80 years old.[61] In the early 1950s, Sanger encouraged philanthropist Katharine McCormick to provide funding for biologist Gregory Pincus to develop the birth control pill which was eventually sold under the name Enovid.[62]
Long after her death, Sanger has continued to be regarded as a leading figure in the battle for American women’s rights. Sanger’s story has been the subject of several biographies, including an award-winning biography published in 1970 by David Kennedy, and is also the subject of several films, including Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story.[65] Sanger’s writings are curated by two universities: New York University‘s history department maintains the Margaret Sanger Papers Project,[66] and Smith College‘s Sophia Smith Collection maintains the Margaret Sanger Papers collection.[67]
Sanger has been recognized with many important honors. In 1957, the American Humanist Association named her Humanist of the Year. Government authorities and other institutions have memorialized Sanger by dedicating several landmarks in her name, including a residential building on the Stony Brook University campus, a room in Wellesley College’s library,[68] and Margaret Sanger Square in New York City’s Greenwich Village.[69] In 1993, the Margaret Sanger Clinic—where she provided birth control services in New York in the mid twentieth century—was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service.[70] In 1966, Planned Parenthood began issuing its Margaret Sanger Awards annually to honor “individuals of distinction in recognition of excellence and leadership in furthering reproductive health and reproductive rights.”[71]
While researching information on contraception Sanger read various treatises on sexuality in order to find information about birth control. She read The Psychology of Sex by the English psychologist Havelock Ellis and was heavily influenced by it.[74] While traveling in Europe in 1914, Sanger met Ellis.[75] Influenced by Ellis, Sanger adopted his view of sexuality as a powerful, liberating force.[76] This view provided another argument in favor of birth control, as it would enable women to fully enjoy sexual relations without the fear of an unwanted pregnancy.[77] Sanger also believed that sexuality, along with birth control, should be discussed with more candor.[76]
However, Sanger was opposed to excessive sexual indulgence. She stated “every normal man and woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and women who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells thinking deeply, are never sensual.”[78][79] Sanger said that birth control would elevate women away from a position of being an object of lust and elevate sex away from purely being for satisfying lust, saying that birth control “denies that sex should be reduced to the position of sensual lust, or that woman should permit herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction.”[80] Sanger wrote that masturbation was dangerous. She stated: “In my personal experience as a trained nurse while attending persons afflicted with various and often revolting diseases, no matter what their ailments, I never found any one so repulsive as the chronic masturbator. It would not be difficult to fill page upon page of heart-rending confessions made by young girls, whose lives were blighted by this pernicious habit, always begun so innocently.”[81] She believed that women had the ability to control their sexual impulses, and should utilize that control to avoid sex outside of relationships marked by “confidence and respect.” She believed that exercising such control would lead to the “strongest and most sacred passion.”[82] However, Sanger was not opposed to homosexuality and praised Ellis for clarifying “the question of homosexuals… making the thing a—not exactly a perverted thing, but a thing that a person is born with different kinds of eyes, different kinds of structures and so forth… that he didn’t make all homosexuals perverts—and I thought he helped clarify that to the medical profession and to the scientists of the world as perhaps one of the first ones to do that.”[83] Sanger believed sex should be discussed with more candor, and praised Ellis for his efforts in this direction. She also blamed the suppression of discussion about it on Christianity.[83]
Eugenics
Sanger’s 1920 book endorsed eugenics.
As part of her efforts to promote birth control, Sanger found common cause with proponents of eugenics, believing that they both sought to “assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit.”[84] Sanger was a proponent of negative eugenics, which aims to improve human hereditary traits through social intervention by reducing the reproduction of those who were considered unfit. In “The Morality of Birth Control,” a 1921 speech, she divided society into three groups: the educated and informed class that regulated the size of their families, the intelligent and responsible who desired to control their families however did not have the means or the knowledge and the irresponsible and reckless people whose religious scruples “prevent their exercising control over their numbers.” Sanger concludes “there is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.”[85] Sanger’s eugenic policies included an exclusionary immigration policy, free access to birth control methods and full family planning autonomy for the able-minded, and compulsory segregation or sterilization for the “profoundly retarded”.[86][87] In her book The Pivot of Civilization, she advocated coercion to prevent the “undeniably feeble-minded” from procreating.[88] Although Sanger supported negative eugenics, she asserted that eugenics alone was not sufficient, and that birth control was essential to achieve her goals.[89][90][91]
In contrast with eugenicist William Robinson, who advocated euthanasia for the unfit,[note 8] Sanger wrote, “we [do not] believe that the community could or should send to the lethal chamber the defective progeny resulting from irresponsible and unintelligent breeding.”[92] Similarly, Sanger denounced the aggressive and lethal Nazi eugenics program.[87] In addition, Sanger believed the responsibility for birth control should remain in the hands of able-minded individual parents rather than the state, and that self-determining motherhood was the only unshakable foundation for racial betterment.[89][93]
Sanger also supported restrictive immigration policies. In “A Plan for Peace”, a 1932 essay, she proposed a congressional department to address population problems. She also recommended that immigration exclude those “whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race,” and that sterilization and segregation be applied to those with incurable, hereditary disabilities.[86][87][94]
Sanger’s writings echoed her ideas about inferiority and loose morals of particular races. In one “What Every Girl Should Know” commentary, she references popular opinion that Aboriginal Australians were “just a step higher than the chimpanzee” with “little sexual control,” as compared to the “normal man and Woman.”[78] Elsewhere she bemoaned that traditional sexual ethics “… have in the past revealed their woeful inability to prevent the sexual and racial chaos into which the world has today drifted.”[93]
Such attitudes did not keep her from collaborating with African-American leaders and professionals who saw a need for birth control in their communities. In 1929, James H. Hubert, a black social worker and leader of New York’s Urban League, asked Sanger to open a clinic in Harlem.[96] Sanger secured funding from the Julius Rosenwald Fund and opened the clinic, staffed with black doctors, in 1930. The clinic was directed by a 15-member advisory board consisting of black doctors, nurses, clergy, journalists, and social workers. The clinic was publicized in the African-American press and in black churches, and it received the approval of W. E. B. Du Bois, founder of the NAACP.[97] In 1939 Sanger wrote, “We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the 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.” She did not tolerate bigotry among her staff, nor would she tolerate any refusal to work within interracial projects.[98] Sanger’s work with minorities earned praise from Martin Luther King, Jr., in his 1966 acceptance speech for the Margaret Sanger award.[99]
From 1939 to 1942 Sanger was an honorary delegate of the Birth Control Federation of America, which included a supervisory role—alongside Mary Lasker and Clarence Gamble—in the Negro Project, an effort to deliver birth control to poor black people.[100] Sanger wanted the Negro Project to include black ministers in leadership roles, but other supervisors did not. To emphasize the benefits of involving black community leaders, she wrote to Gamble “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.” This quote has been cited by Angela Davis to support her claims that Sanger wanted to exterminate black people.[101] However, New York University’s Margaret Sanger Papers Project, argues that in writing that letter, “Sanger recognized that elements within the black community might mistakenly associate the Negro Project with racist sterilization campaigns in the Jim Crow South, unless clergy and other community leaders spread the word that the Project had a humanitarian aim.”[102]
Freedom of speech
Sanger opposed censorship throughout her career, with a zeal comparable to her support for birth control. Sanger grew up in a home where iconoclastic orator Robert Ingersoll was admired.[103] During the early years of her activism, Sanger viewed birth control primarily as a free-speech issue, rather than as a feminist issue, and when she started publishing The Woman Rebel in 1914, she did so with the express goal of provoking a legal challenge to the Comstock laws banning dissemination of information about contraception.[21] In New York, Emma Goldman introduced Sanger to members of the Free Speech League, such as Edward Bliss Foote and Theodore Schroeder, and subsequently the League provided funding and advice to help Sanger with legal battles.[104]
Over the course of her career, Sanger was arrested at least eight times for expressing her views during an era in which speaking publicly about contraception was illegal.[105] Numerous times in her career, local government officials prevented Sanger from speaking by shuttering a facility or threatening her hosts.[106] In Boston in 1929, city officials under the leadership of James Curley threatened to arrest her if she spoke—so she turned the threat to her advantage and stood on stage, silent, with a gag over her mouth, while her speech was read by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.[107]
Abortion
Sanger’s family planning advocacy always focused on contraception, rather than abortion.[108][note 9] It was not until the mid-1960s, after Sanger’s death, that the reproductive rights movement expanded its scope to include abortion rights as well as contraception.[note 10] Sanger was opposed to abortions, both because she believed that life should not be terminated after conception, and because they were dangerous for the mother in the early 20th century. In her book Woman and the New Race, she wrote: “while there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.”[111]
Historian Rodger Streitmatter concluded that Sanger’s opposition to abortion stemmed from concerns for the dangers to the mother, rather than moral concerns.[112] However, in her 1938 autobiography, Sanger noted that her opposition to abortion was based on the taking of life: “[In 1916] we explained what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun.”[113] And in her book Family Limitation, Sanger wrote that “no one can doubt that there are times when an abortion is justifiable but they will become unnecessary when care is taken to prevent conception. This is the only cure for abortions.”[114]
Works
Books and pamphlets
What Every Mother Should Know – Originally published in 1911 or 1912, based on a series of articles Sanger published in 1911 in the New York Call, which were, in turn, based on a set of lectures Sanger gave to groups of Socialist party women in 1910–1911.[115] Multiple editions published through the 1920s, by Max N. Maisel and Sincere Publishing, with the title What Every Mother Should Know, or how six little children were taught the truth …Online(1921 edition, Michigan State University)
Family Limitation – Originally published 1914 as a 16-page pamphlet; also published in several later editions. Online (1917, 6th edition, Michigan State University)
What Every Girl Should Know – Originally published 1916 by Max N. Maisel; 91 pages; also published in several later editions. Online (1920 edition); Online (1922 ed., Michigan State University)
The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of Facts – May 1917, published to provide information to the court in a legal proceeding. Online (Internet Archive)
Woman and the New Race, 1920, Truth Publishing, foreword by Havelock Ellis. Online (Harvard University); Online (Project Gutenberg); Online (Internet Archive); Audio on Archive.org
An Autobiography. New York, NY: Cooper Square Press. 1938. ISBN0-8154-1015-8.
Fight for Birth Control, 1916, New York] [1] (The Library of Congress)
Birth Control A Parent’s Problem or Women’s?” The Birth Control Review, Mar. 1919, 6-7.
Periodicals
The Woman Rebel – Seven issues published monthly from March 1914 to August 1914. Sanger was publisher and editor.
Birth Control Review – Published monthly from February 1917 to 1940. Sanger was Editor until 1929, when she resigned from the ABCL.[116] Not to be confused with Birth Control News, published by the London-based Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress.
Collections and anthologies
Sanger, Margaret, The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900–1928, Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo, Peter Engelman (eds), University of Illinois Press, 2003
Sanger, Margaret, The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 2: Birth Control Comes of Age, 1928–1939, Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo, Peter Engelman (eds), University of Illinois Press, 2007
Sanger, Margaret, The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 3: The Politics of Planned Parenthood, 1939–1966, Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo, Peter Engelman (eds), University of Illinois Press, 2010
Story 1: Political Correctness Social Hysteria Over Confederate Flag Not Black On Black Homicides, Black Genocide In Abortion Mills, Drugs Induced Mental Illness Leading To Suicides and Mass Shootings — Get Serious People — Symbols Over Substance — The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down — Videos
The U.S. population’s distribution by race and ethnicity in 2010 was as follows; due to rounding, figures may not add up to the totals shown.[48]
Virgil Kane is the name
And I served on the Danville train
‘Till Stoneman’s cavalry came
And tore up the tracks again In the winter of ’65
We were hungry, just barely alive
By May the 10th, Richmond had fell
It’s a time I remember, oh so well
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, “Na, na, la, na, na, la
“Back with my wife in Tennessee
When one day she called to me
“Virgil, quick, come see,
There goes Robert E. Lee!
“Now, I don’t mind chopping wood
And I don’t care if the money’s no good
You take what you need
And you leave the rest
But they should never
Have taken the very best
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing
They went, “Na, na, la, na, na, la”Like my father before me
I will work the land
And like my brother above me
Who took a rebel standHe was just 18, proud and brave
But a Yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the mud below my feet
You can’t raise a Kane back up
When he’s in defeatThe night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing
They went, “Na, na, la, na, na, la”The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, “Na, na, la, na, na, la”
The Band, The Weight
South Carolina governor calls for Confederate flag’s removal
Charleston: Demands for removal of Confederate flag
Networks Omit How Democrat Governor In S.C. Raised Confederate Flag In 1962
Shooting reignites Confederate flag debate
Confederate Flag Debate
Confederate flag: A symbol of hate or history?
Walmart, Amazon, Sears, eBay to Stop Selling Confederate Flag Merchandise
CONFEDERATE FLAG BAN – Retailers & Government Boycotting the U.S. Confederate Flag
This is What “Political Correctness” Has Done to Our Society (Funny 1992 Sketch)
The History of Political Correctness (Complete)
Political Correctness: The Control of Thought and Speech
CULTURAL MARXISM: The Corruption of America
Bill Whittle on The Narrative: The origins of Political Correctness
Bill Whittle – Racism – Democrats and Republicans switch sides?
Confederate flag controversy amid S.C. grieving
Both the flags of the United States and state of South Carolina flew at half-mast to honor the nine victims of the Charleston church shooting. Yet the Confederate flag was not lowered. Elaine Quijano reports on the controversy.
The CONFEDERATE FLAG: Views from the Heart of Dixie
BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG
Battle Of Gettysburg | Civil War Documentary
Ken Burns The Civil War Episode 4 Simply Murder 1863 Ken Burns Documentary
Black on Black Crime —
Where is the damn outrage?
Ferguson Shooting, Myth Of Whites Killing Blacks, and Black On Black Crime
Why Isn’t Black on White Crime Reported in the Mainstream Media Like White on Black Crime?
PJTV: What the Bible Really Says About Abortion
Dr. Benjamin Carson Got Real on President Obama
78 percent of Abortions are Black or Hispanic Babies
Obama’s Eugenics Team Revealed by Dr. Webster Tarpley
Black Abortion Stats
Fit vs. UnFit, Eugenics, Planned Parenthood & Psychology, Mind Control Report
Against the USA, Naked Communist Conspiracy Theory, NWO, Mind Control Report
One World Government & Collectivism – G. Edward Griffin
War on the Weak: Eugenics in America
MAAFA 21 [A documentary on eugenics and genocide]
Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s Racist Founder
Hillary Clinton In Black Church “All Lives Matter”
Hillary Clinton Exposed, Movie She Banned From Theaters Full Movie
Eugenics Glenn Beck w/ Edwin Black author of “War Against the Weak” talk Al Gore & Margaret Sanger
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MENTAL ILLNESS
Elyn Saks: A tale of mental illness — from the inside
The Band 1994-4-22 Complete Show
The Band – The Last Waltz – Full Concert – 11/25/76 – Winterland (OFFICIAL)
The Band – The Last Waltz (full album)
The Complicated Political History Of The Confederate Flag
JESSICA TAYLOR
The Confederate flag flies near the South Carolina Statehouse, Friday, June 19, 2015, in Columbia, S.C. Tensions over the Confederate flag flying in the shadow of South Carolina’s Capitol rose this week in the wake of the killings of nine people at a black church in Charleston, S.C.
Rainier Ehrhardt/Associated Press
Last week’s tragic shooting at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., that killed nine black parishioners gathered for a Bible study has renewed the debate over one of the most controversial Southern symbols — the Confederate flag.
On Monday, a cascade of both Republicans and Democrats endorsed removing the Confederate flag from the statehouse in Columbia. South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley held a press conference Monday afternoon, flanked by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, to call for the flag to be removed. She was joined by the state’s Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham — who is running for president — and Tim Scott — the chamber’s only African-American Republican.
Demonstrators carry Confederate flags as they leave the entrance of the South Carolina Statehouse after the removal of the flag in Columbia, S.C., on July 1, 2000.
Eric Draper/Associated Press.
In December 1860, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union just months after Abraham Lincoln, from the anti-slavery Republican Party, was elected president. In April 1861, the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter, S.C.
Ten other states would eventually follow South Carolina in secession, forming the Confederate States of America. However, of the three flags the Confederacy would go on to adopt, none are the Confederate flag that is traditionally recognized today. The “Stars and Bars” flag, currently the subject of controversy, was actually the battle flag of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
After the war ended, the symbol became a source of Southern pride and heritage, as well as a remembrance of Confederate soldiers who died in battle. But as racism and segregation gripped the nation in the century following, it became a divisive and violent emblem of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist groups. It was also the symbol of the States’ Rights Democratic Party, or “Dixiecrats,” that formed in 1948 to oppose civil-rights platforms of the Democratic Party. Then-South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond was the splinter group’s nominee for president that same year; he won 39 electoral votes.
Now, the flag is a frequent emblem of modern white supremacist groups. The alleged Charleston shooter, Dylann Storm Roof, was photographed holding the Confederate flag in images on his website. Not all southerners, who believe the flag should be flown, however, see it as a racist symbol. They see it, instead, as a symbol of southern pride or as a way to remember ancestors who fought in the Civil War.
Why is it flying at the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C.?
The Confederate flag flies on the dome of the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C., in 2000.
Eric Draper/Associated Press
The flag was first flown over the state Capitol dome (passed by the Democratic Legislature) in 1962 to mark the centennial of the start of the Civil War, but many saw it as a reaction to the civil-rights movement and school desegregation. For nearly four decades, it continued to be a controversial issue in the Palmetto State. A 1994 nonbinding referendum placed on the GOP primary ballot found that three-in-four voters said the flag should keep flying. That same year, black ministers and the NAACP threatened a boycott of the state if the flag didn’t come down, and business leaders sued to remove the flag.
But in 2000, a compromise was reached — the battle flag would be removed from atop the dome and a smaller, square version would be placed at a less-prominent place on the Statehouse grounds — on a 20-foot pole next to the 30-foot Confederate monument. But that didn’t end the controversy, and many years of protests, criticism and boycotts followed.
What is the process to remove the flag in South Carolina?
The “Get In Step” marchers pass by a small group of Confederate Flag supporters Tuesday, April 4, 2000, near Wells, S.C., on their way to Orangeburg on the third day of the march to Columbia to have the flag taken down from the Statehouse.
Mary Ann Chastain /Associated Press
According to the 2000 change, a two-thirds majority in both the state House and Senate is required to remove the flag. However, there may be a workaround, and the law itself could be changed by a simple majority. ThePost & Courier has a running tally of state lawmakers and how they stand on the issue. At her press conference, Haley said if the Legislature doesn’t finish its session by acting to remove the flag, she will call an additional session.
Also under the 2000 compromise: lowering the flag requires approval of the Legislature, which is why even after Haley ordered the American and South Carolina flags ordered to half-staff following last Wednesday’s massacre, the Confederate flag remained at full staff.
What other states have had controversies about the Confederate flag?
Protesters close their eyes in silent prayer as they stand on the South Carolina Statehouse steps during a rally to take down the Confederate flag, Saturday, June 20, 2015, in Columbia, S.C.
Rainier Ehrhardt/Associated Press
Many Southern states’ current flags are inspired by the “Rebel flag.” Georgia’s flag was changed to incorporate part of the Confederate flag into its own in 1956. From 2001 to 2003, a new flag that removed the more prominent emblem was adopted, and instead itfeatured the state seal with past flags at the bottom. The design was widely panned, though, and, in 2003, a new state flag was adopted. The new design instead draws from parts of the actual flag of the Confederate States of America and not the Confederate battle flag.
Mississippi’s state flag remains the only one in the U.S. that still features the battle flag prominently. In 2001, Magnolia State voters decidedto keep the current flag by a wide margin. The University of Mississippi, or “Ole Miss,” has also faced controversy. In 1997, waving Confederate flags at football games was banned. “Colonel Reb,” their Confederate soldier mascot, was retired in 2003 and, “From Dixie With Love” was dropped from the marching band set list.
What have top Republicans and presidential candidates said about the flag?
The question of whether to remove the controversial flag has played a role in presidential politics thanks to the state’s early primary status.
Among current 2016 hopefuls, only Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has explicitly endorsed the controversial flag’s removal, noting he decided to remove it from the Florida statehouse grounds to a museum during his tenure.
Before Haley’s press conference, other GOP candidates, and potential candidates, had walked a line on the flag, either declining to weigh in or underscoring that it’s a decision that should be up to South Carolina. But afterward, there was a flood of support from many candidates. Here’s a brief roundup of where others stand and stood:
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had said he wouldn’t weigh in until after funerals of the Charleston victims. But then he tweeted this afternoon, “I am glad @nikkihaley is calling for the Confederate flag to come down. I support her decision.”
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said he hoped the state would “make the right choice for the people of South Carolina”; as a state legislator, he voted for a bill that would have kept the Confederate flag on the Florida Capitol grounds in order to protect historical monuments.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry also said in a statement that he supported Haley’s decision, saying it “honors the people of Charleston, and the families of the victims of last week’s horrific hate crime. Removing the flag is an act of healing and unity, that allows us to find a shared purpose based on the values that unify us. May God continue to be with the families of the victims in Charleston, and the great people of South Carolina.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press” that the decision was “not an issue for someone running for president.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told the Washington Post that it was a matter for South Carolinians to decide, but that “I understand the passions that this debate evokes on both sides.”
John Kasich would support removing the flag before Haley’s press conference and afterward he said, “the flag should come down.”
Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee, supported its removal in the past. He tweeted: “[T]o many, it is a symbol of racial hatred” and should be taken down.
Several Republican members of Congress have also said they support the Confederate flag’s removal; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., endorsed the flag’s removal, calling it “a painful reminder of racial oppression.” And, he added, “the time for a state to fly it has long since passed.”
After Haley’s press conference, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus also issued a statement saying that he “support[s] the call by Governor Haley and South Carolina leaders to remove the Confederate battle flag from state house grounds.”
African-American Pastor Horrified at How Many Black Babies Abortion Kills
BY REBECCA DOWNS
The Rev. Elaine Flake of Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of New York has recently learned of and reacted to the statistics of black women having abortions in New York City.
Flake reacted in disbelief, initially wondering if the statistics were even true.
The Christian Post, reporting on the Rev., dedicates one paragraph to such statistics of black women, as well as links to a previous article of theirs:
As CP has reported, citing the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: “Black women in New York City aborted more than half of their pregnancies in 2012, topping the number of abortions recorded by women of every other racial or ethnic group in the city.” The report revealed that more than any other ethnic group in NYC, black women were the leading abortion patients and also had the highest pregnancy and miscarriage rates.
The Christian Post mostly focuses on Rev. Flake’s reactions to the abortion trend, as well as many other troubling statistics for the black community on marriage, miscarriages and out of wedlock pregnancies.
Millions of black babies have been aborted. The number amount to more than 16 million, actually. These rates create skewed ratio too, considering that, according to the 2010 census data, blacks made up 12.6% of the population. And, as Abort73.com broke down:
In 2009, a total of 286,623 blacks died in the U.S.14 That same year, an estimated 1.21 million abortions took place in the United States.15 If 35.4% were performed on black women, that means almost twice as many blacks were killed by abortion as by all other causes.
As the state health report mentions, it is not just that the abortion rate of black babies nationwide is alarming, but in New York City. As if such statistics could not be more of a cause for shock and concern, the rate at which black women abort their babies in New York City, the Reverend’s own back yard, is even more troubling.
In New York City, 37 percent of all pregnancies ended in abortion in 2012. According to 41 Percent NYC, that’s nearly twice the national average. Queens, where Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of New York is located has an abortion rate that is lower than that, but only slightly so, at 35 percent.
These are overall abortion rates for New York City though. If the above statistics for New York City are not disturbing enough, the specifics for blacks in the area will be.
Black women obviously need support then, but are they really getting it? Unfortunately, the answer may be that they are not getting as much help as truly needed.
Rev. Flake mentions that she is not aware of women in her church having dealt personally with abortion, since no one has ever gone to her:
CP suggested that with such a large congregation in Queens, it was likely some women belonging to The Greater Allen A.M.E Cathedral have had to personally deal with the issue of abortion. Pastor Flake agreed that it was likely, saying, “I would imagine, I’m not sure. No one has ever come to me, but I would think with that kind of percentage that that could be the case.”
Women are suffering in silence through the confusion of unplanned pregnancies and the pain of abortion while they lacked the necessary support. Let Rev. Elaine Flake be an example of the church being more involved to help women then.
Rev. Flake was in attendance at the Women’s Power Breakfast and participated in a “Black Church Panel,” along with her husband, who also leads the church alongside her. The two events were part of a conference organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.
As the leader of a mega-church of 23,000 people and participating at such events, Rev. Elaine Flake is no stranger to taking initiative it would seem. Now that she is aware of the rate of which her race is being killed off in her own city, perhaps she and others will answer the call to end this genocide of innocent black babies in the womb.
Hillary Clinton’s speech Tuesday at a historic black church in Missouri was mostly well-received by the audience, but three words angered some of the activists she was hoping to appeal to.
Clinton spoke to frequent applause about religion, racism, access to education, repairing communities and the shooting last week in Charleston, S.C.
The church where Clinton spoke, Christ the King United Church of Christ, is in Florissant, Mo., fewer than 5 miles from where the rioting and protesting happened in Ferguson.
But she’s now facing criticism on social media after using the phrase “all lives matter” — which has been used by some as pushback to the phrase “black lives matter.” The latter phrase, which hung on a banner outside the church, was widely used by protesters in Ferguson and other cities.
Before using the phrase, Clinton was retelling an anecdote about the lessons she learned from her mother.
“I asked her, ‘What kept you going?’ Her answer was very simple. Kindness along the way from someone who believed she mattered. All lives matter.”
To some in the pews, what Clinton said fell flat. Or worse:
“With her statement that all lives matter, that blew a lot of support that she may have been able to engender here,” said Renita Lamkin, a pastor at the St. John AME Church in St. Charles. She is white and while protesting in Ferguson was hit in the gut with a rubber bullet. Her passion comes in part because her children are African-American.
“My children matter,” she said. “And I need to hear my president say that the lives of my children matter. That my little black children matter. Because right now our society does not say that they matter. Black lives matter. That’s what she needs to say.”
Clinton’s campaign points out she did say “black lives matter,” late last year. But that didn’t stop a flood of complaints on Facebook and Twitter after Clinton’s speech:
Gabrielle Kennedy, also in audience at the church, had a more charitable reaction.
“I knew when she said it that there would be people who would not be happy with that. But I am of the belief that it’s a process,” she said.
And some on Twitter defended Clinton’s comment, including Democratic strategist and former Bill Clinton campaign advisor Donna Brazile:
‘It Takes Time’
In nearby Ferguson, burned-out businesses are still boarded up on West Florissant Avenue. Charles Davis, owner of the Ferguson Burger Bar, counts his blessings.
“We were saved by God. Nothing happened to us,” Davis said.
But business still isn’t back to where it was. And neither is the community. Ferguson is trying to heal from the wound ripped open when a black 18-year-old was shot by a white police officer.
“It takes time. A year is not long enough. But what people should understand is a lot of changes that needed be made has been made,” he said.
Many of the activists who rose up after the shooting of Michael Brown were on hand when Clinton spoke.
She spoke about the recent shooting in Charleston, and asked, “How do we make sense of such an evil act? An act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a house of God?” Clinton also praised the ability of the families of the victims to look at the accused gunman and offer forgiveness.
After her speech, still in front of an audience, Clinton sat down for an hourlong discussion with community leaders. Kennedy, who was there, gives Clinton credit for coming to Missouri and listening.
“What you saw on that stage there, in the pulpit area there, how we take care of ourselves. This is us doing us, and it’s fabulous stuff,” Kennedy said.
A pastor delivered a final prayer before Clinton left. And in it, she called for this to be the beginning of a conversation. Not the end.
Story 1: Part 3 of 3: American People Leaving Both Democratic and Republican Parties In Search of A Party With Principles and Leaders With Integrity and Defenders of The United States Constitution — A New Direction For America — Videos
Ageing population in U.S. skyrockets as baby boomers retire
Demographic Winter – the decline of the human family
Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family
One of the most ominous events of modern history is quietly unfolding. Social scientists and economists agree – we are headed toward a demographic winter which threatens to have catastrophic social and economic consequences. The effects will be severe and long lasting and are already becoming manifest in much of Europe.
A groundbreaking film, Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family, reveals in chilling soberness how societies with diminished family influence are now grimly seen as being in social and economic jeopardy.
Demographic Winter draws upon experts from all around the world – demographers, economists, sociologists, psychologists, civic and religious leaders, parliamentarians and diplomats. Together, they reveal the dangers facing society and the worlds economies, dangers far more imminent than global warming and at least as severe. These experts will discuss how:
The population bomb not only did not have the predicted consequences, but almost all of the developed countries of the world are now experiencing fertility rates far below replacement levels. Birthrates have fallen so low that even immigration cannot replace declining populations, and this migration is sapping strength from developing countries, the fertility rates for many of which are now falling at a faster pace than did those of the developed countries.
The economies of the world will continue to contract as the human capital spoken of by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker, diminishes. The engines of commerce will be strained as the workers of today fail to replace themselves and are burdened by the responsibility to support an aging population.
View the entire documentary below
The New Economic Reality Demographic Winter Part 1
The New Economic Reality Demographic Winter Part 2
Ageing population in U.S. skyrockets as baby boomers retire
New Study: Many Americans Will Not Be Able to Retire Until Their 80s
Laziness, Greed, Entitlement – Baby Boomers Defined
The End of the World as We Know It, with Mark Steyn
Gallup: Partisan split at historic level
Gallup Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Want GOP Congress to Set Country’s Agenda, Not Obama
Most Political Independents Ever In USA
How Are Conservative And Liberal Brains Different?
Poll Record High 42 Percent Americans Identify As Independents
Against the USA, Naked Communist Conspiracy Is Unfolding, NWO
1.U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2.U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3.Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4.Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation
5.Extension of long-term loans to Russia & satellites.
6.Provide American aid to all nations regardless
7.Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8.Set up East and West Germany as separate states under supervision of the U.N.
9.Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the U.S. has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10.Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11.Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. Demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.
12.Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13.Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14.Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15.Capture one or both of the political parties.
16.Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17.Get control of the schools. Promote Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations.
18.Gain control of all student newspapers.
19.Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20.Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21.Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22.Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23.Control art critics and directors of art museums.
24.Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech.
25.Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity 26.Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27.Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible as a “religious crutch.”
28.Eliminate prayer or religious expression in the schools
29.Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30.Discredit the American Founding Fathers.
31.Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history
32.Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture; education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33.Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of communism
34.Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35.Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36.Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37.Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38.Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
39.Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40.Discredit the family. Encourage promiscuity, masturbation, easy divorce.
41.Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding to suppressive influence of parents.
42.Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.
43.Overthrow all colonial governments before natives are ready for self-government.
44.Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45.Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems and individuals alike.
Mind Control, Psychology of Brainwashing, Sex & Hypnosis
Fit vs. UnFit, Eugenics, Planned Parenthood & Psychology, Mind Control Report
Yuri Bezmenov: Psychological Warfare Subversion & Control of Western Society
The Subversion Factor, Part 1: Moles In High Places
The Subversion Factor, Part 2: The Open Gates of Troy
CORPORATE FASCISM: The Destruction of America’s Middle Class
CULTURAL MARXISM: The Corruption of America
Countdown to Financial Collapse – A Conversation with G. Edward Griffin
WRCFresnoTV — G. Edward Griffin — The Federal Reserve, Taxes, The I.R.S. & Solutions
Rammstein “We’re all living in America” (HD) English Subtitle
Five Finger Death Punch – Wrong Side Of Heaven
Graphic shows number of births in the U.S. since
Just How Many Baby Boomers Are There?
(April 2014) Data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that there are 76.4 million baby boomers.
There were actually a total of 76 million births in the United States from 1946 to 1964, the 19 years usually called the “baby boom.” Of the 76 million baby boomers born, nearly 11 million had died by 2012, leaving some 65.2 million survivors. However, when immigrants are included (the number of people coming into the United States from other countries, minus those moving the other way), the number grows to an estimated 76.4 million because immigrants outweighed the number of baby-boomer deaths. The flow of immigrants greatly increased after passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, just as the baby boom was ending.
So one can use the figure 76.4 million (or round it down to 76 million) to approximate the number of baby boomers living in the U.S. today. But keep in mind that of the 76 million babies were born in the United States during the baby-boom years (1946 to 1964), only 65.2 million of those babies were still alive in 2012, and the baby-boom age group (ages 50 to 68 in 2014) stood at 76.4 million in 2012 with immigrants included in the count.
These 76.4 million baby boomers represent close to one-quarter of the estimated 2012 U.S. population of 314 million. The choices they make about whether to retire or continue to work will have profound implications for job openings and Social Security spending. According to American Community Survey data, about 68 percent of baby boomers were still in the labor force (including Armed Forces) in 2012.
The Census Bureau currently projects that the baby-boom population will total 61.3 million in 2029, when the youngest boomers reach age 65. By 2031, when the youngest baby boomers reach age 67 (the age at which persons born in 1964 can receive full Social Security benefits), the baby-boom population is projected to be even lower, at 58.2 million.
The aging of the baby boomers is creating a dramatic shift in the age composition of the U.S. population. Projections of the entire older population (which includes the pre-baby-boom cohorts born before 1946) suggest that 71.4 million people will be age 65 or older in 2029. This means that the elderly ages 65 and older will make up about 20 percent of the U.S. population by 2029, up from almost 14 percent in 2012.
Series Id: LNS14000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Rate
Labor force status: Unemployment rate
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Series Id: LNS13327709
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (seas) Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of all civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers
Labor force status: Aggregated totals unemployed
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Percent/rates: Unemployed and mrg attached and pt for econ reas as percent of labor force plus marg attached
Series Id: LNS11300000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Labor Force Participation Rate
Labor force status: Civilian labor force participation rate
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Series Id: LNS12000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Employment Level
Labor force status: Employed
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Series Id: LNS13000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Level
Labor force status: Unemployed
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Series Id: LNS15000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Not in Labor Force
Labor force status: Not in labor force
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
WASHINGTON, D.C. — After reaching a more than two-year high in early 2015, Americans’ satisfaction with the direction of the U.S. continues to fall. Twenty-six percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the nation in May, down slightly from 32% in January and February.
The latest data are from Gallup’s May 6-10 poll.
Satisfaction jumped nine points in January to 32%, a promising sign that Americans’ moods were improving after a year of lower figures throughout 2014, ranging between 20% and 27%. Since February, though, satisfaction has dipped only slightly each month, but these small drops have resulted in a six-point decline since the beginning of the year. Satisfaction remains below the 36% historical average for Gallup’s trend dating back to 1979.
The drop in Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going parallels the recent decline in economic confidence. Americans had a more positive outlook on the economy at the dawn of 2015, but these views, like satisfaction, have edged down in recent months.
Views of the nation’s direction have certainly been brighter in the past. Majorities of Americans were typically satisfied with the direction of the U.S. between 1998 and mid-2002 — including a record high of 71% in February 1999. But satisfaction declined steadily in the latter half of President George W. Bush’s presidency as the public grew disillusioned with the war in Iraq and the national economy suffered. This dip in satisfaction culminated in 7% of Americans, a record low, saying they were satisfied with the direction of the nation in October 2008 as the global economy collapsed and the U.S. stock market plummeted.
Satisfaction improved significantly during the first year of President Barack Obama’s term — reaching 36% in August 2009. It has not returned to that level since, ranging between 11% and 33% throughout Obama’s time in office.
Americans Still List Economy, Gov’t and Unemployment as Top Problems
Though the 14% of Americans who name dissatisfaction with government, Congress and politicians as the top problem facing the U.S. has fallen five points since April, it still remains the most commonly mentioned problem — a distinction it has held for six months.
The economy in general (12%) and unemployment (10%) have remained at the top of the list for several years. But mentions of these issues are down significantly from their recent peaks — the economy reached a high of 37% in 2012, and unemployment reached a high of 39% in 2011.
Race relations and racism (8%), immigration (6%), a decline in moral, religious and family ethics (6%), the state of the healthcare system (5%) and terrorism (5%) were also among the most frequently cited problems facing the nation.
Bottom Line
After years of dysfunctional government, the economy and unemployment dominating Americans’ mentions of the top problem facing the nation, fewer mention these problems now than in recent years. Still, these three problems remain at the forefront of Americans’ concerns, and may be driving Americans’ high level of dissatisfaction with the nation’s direction.
Although Americans’ confidence in the economy is higher this year than in recent years, it is still negative. And while fewer mention dysfunctional government as the nation’s top problem, Americans still strongly disapprove of Congress’ performance and remain divided on Obama’s.
Meanwhile, mentions of unemployment as a top problem have dipped as more U.S. workers report their workplaces are hiring and the unemployment rate as reported by the BLS declines. But unemployment still remains one of the most frequently cited problems.
Survey Methods
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted May 6-10, 2015, with a random sample of 1,024 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.
Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 50% cellphone respondents and 50% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.
Five Months Into GOP Congress, Approval Remains Low at 19%
by Andrew Dugan
Story Highlights
Congressional job approval at 19%, essentially unchanged
Approval of GOP Congress similar among Republicans and Democrats
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congressional job approval, currently at 19%, remains stuck near historical lows, despite a number of recent high-profile legislative achievements.
Over the past month, Congress has confirmed the stalled nomination of Attorney General Loretta Lynch and both chambers passed a bill that was signed into law regarding Medicare. Bills that would authorize limited congressional oversight on any international agreement with Iran and help victims of human trafficking passed the Senate with little or no opposition. The uptick in activity, though hardly historic, is notable compared with the past two Congresses. Those Congresses, marked by divided control of the two chambers, were known for their entrenched partisan gridlock and few legislative accomplishments. And Americans didn’t care for their inability to agree — they gave Congress its lowest approval ever over this time period. Gallup found in June 2013, six months into the previous Congress, that gridlock and ineffectiveness were the most frequently cited reason for Americans’ disapproval of Congress.
Several months into this new Congress, the accomplishments that have been realized could give one the impression that the gridlock is softening, particularly over the past month. But these achievements have had virtually no impact on Congress’s job approval compared with early April (15%).
And, of course, Congress is far from working perfectly now, even if the pace of work appears to have increased. Most dramatically, the Senate failed to overcome a Democratic filibuster Tuesday afternoon that would give the president enhanced authority in negotiating trade bills, though the May survey was conducted before this occurrence. Legislation authorizing the use of military force in Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS, proposed by the administration and which many members of Congress support, remains stalled.
GOP Congress Has Low Approval Among Republicans
A key reason the current 114th Congress appears to be having more legislative success than the two Congresses before it is that the House and Senate are now under one party’s control. Unified GOP control of Capitol Hill should, at least in theory, boost Republicans’ overall approval of Congress. But the expected “Republican rally” for Congress has yet to materialize — 21% of Republicans and Republican leaners approve of Congress, not much different from the 18% of independents and of Democrats who approve. Nor is Republican support notably higher than the 15% it reached in 2014, despite the decided Republican tilt of this year’s legislature.
Bottom Line
After years of dysfunction, Congress is moving forward on key pieces of legislation. No longer shackled by split control — though still facing a president of the opposite party — the legislative branch is suddenly finding some areas of agreement. But even if it appears that the gridlock is easing, the overwhelming majority of Americans still disapprove of Congress. If Congress continues passing bipartisan legislation, more Americans might soften their stance. Still, it may be that Americans are largely not aware of or impressed by Congress’ recent legislative successes. Or it may be that the hit to Congress’ reputation over the last several years — evident not only in dismal job approval ratings, but also fallinglevels of trust and confidence — will take a long time to reverse.
Survey Methods
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted May 6-10, 2015, with a random sample of 1,024 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.
Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 50% cellphone respondents and 50% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.
On Social Ideology, the Left Catches Up to the Right
by Jeffrey M. Jones
Story Highlights
31% say they are socially liberal, 31% socially conservative
This is the first time conservatives have not outnumbered liberals
Conservatives maintain edge on economic issues
PRINCETON, N.J. — Thirty-one percent of Americans describe their views on social issues as generally liberal, matching the percentage who identify as social conservatives for the first time in Gallup records dating back to 1999.
Gallup first asked Americans to describe their views on social issues in 1999, and has repeated the question at least annually since 2001. The broad trend has been toward a shrinking conservative advantage, although that was temporarily interrupted during the first two years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Since then, the conservative advantage continued to diminish until it was wiped out this year.
The newfound parity on social ideology is a result of changes in the way both Democrats and Republicans describe their social views. The May 6-10 Gallup poll finds a new high of 53% of Democrats, including Democratic-leaning independents, describing their views on social issues as liberal.
Democrats were more likely to describe their views on social issues as moderate rather than liberal from 2001 to 2005. Since then, socially liberal Democrats have outnumbered socially moderate Democrats in all but one year.
Meanwhile, the 53% of Republicans and Republican leaners saying their views on social issues are conservative is the lowest in Gallup’s trend. The drop in Republicans’ self-identified social conservatism has been accompanied by an increase in moderate identification, to 34%, while the percentage identifying as socially liberal has been static near 10%.
These trends echo the pattern in Gallup’s overall ideology measure, which dates back to 1992 and shows increasing liberal identification in recent years. As with the social ideology measure, the longer-term shifts are mainly a result of increasing numbers of Democrats describing their views as liberal rather than moderate. That may reflect Democrats feeling more comfortable in describing themselves as liberal than they were in the past, as much as a more leftward shift in Democrats’ attitudes on political, economic and social issues.
Conservatives Still Lead Liberals on Economic Issues
In contrast to the way Americans describe their views on social issues, they still by a wide margin, 39% to 19%, describe their views on economic issues as conservative rather than liberal. However, as on social ideology, the gap between conservatives and liberals has been shrinking and is lower today than at any point since 1999, with the 39% saying they are economically conservative the lowest to date.
Currently, 64% of Republicans identify as conservative economically, which is down from 70% the previous two years and roughly 75% in the early years of the Obama presidency. During George W. Bush’s administration, Republicans were less likely to say they were economic conservatives, with as few as 58% doing so in 2004 and 2005. The trends suggest Republicans’ willingness to identify as economic conservatives, or economic moderates, is influenced by the party of the president in office, and perhaps the types of financial policies the presidential administration is pursuing at the time.
Democrats are also contributing to the trend in lower economic conservative identification. While the plurality of Democrats have consistently said they are economically moderate, Democrats have been more likely to identify as economic liberals than as economic conservatives since 2007. The last two years, there has been a 15-percentage-point gap in liberal versus conservative identification among Democrats on economic matters.
Implications
Americans’ growing social liberalism is evident not only in how they describe their views on social issues but also in changes in specific attitudes, such as increased support for same-sex marriage and legalizing marijuana. These longer-term trends may be attributable to changing attitudes among Americans of all ages, but they also may be a result of population changes, with younger, more liberal Americans entering adulthood while older, more conservative adults pass on. Gallup found evidence that population replacement is a factor in explaining changes in overall ideology using an analysis of birth cohorts over time.
The 2016 presidential election will thus be contested in a more socially liberal electorate — and a less economically conservative one — than was true of prior elections. Economically and socially conservative candidates may still appeal to the Republican Party base in the primaries, but it may be more important now than in the past for the GOP nominee to be a bit less conservative on social issues in order to appeal to the broader general electorate.
And while Americans are less economically conservative than in the past, economic conservatives still outnumber economic liberals by about 2-to-1. As a result, Democrats must be careful not to nominate a candidate who is viewed as too liberal on economic matters if their party hopes to hold the White House beyond 2016.
Survey Methods
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted May 6-10, 2015, with a random sample of 1,024 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.
Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 50% cellphone respondents and 50% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.
Hillary Clinton is not the only Democratic comeback candidate on the 2016 ticket. Senate Democrats are betting on the past to rebuild their party for the future.
BY JOSH KRAUSHAAR
One of the most underappreciated stories in recent years is the deterioration of the Democratic bench under President Obama’s tenure in office. The party has become much more ideologically homogenous, losing most of its moderate wing as a result of the last two disastrous midterm elections. By one new catch-all measure, a party-strength index introduced by RealClearPolitics analysts Sean Trende and David Byler, Democrats are in their worst position since 1928. That dynamic has manifested itself in the Democratic presidential contest, where the bench is so barren that a flawed Hillary Clinton is barreling to an uncontested nomination.
But less attention has been paid to how the shrinking number of Democratic officeholders in the House and in statewide offices is affecting the party’s Senate races. It’s awfully unusual to see how dependent Democrats are in relying on former losing candidates as their standard-bearers in 2016. Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold, Pennsylvania’s Joe Sestak, Indiana’s Baron Hill, and Ohio’s Ted Strickland all ran underwhelming campaigns in losing office in 2010—and are looking to return to politics six years later. Party officials are courting former Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina to make a comeback bid, despite mediocre favorability ratings and the fact that she lost a race just months ago that most had expected her to win. All told, more than half of the Democrats’ Senate challengers in 2016 are comeback candidates.
On one hand, most of these candidates are the best choices Democrats have. Feingold and Strickland are running ahead of GOP Sens. Ron Johnson and Rob Portman in recent polls. Hill and Hagan boast proven crossover appeal in GOP-leaning states that would be challenging pickups. Their presence in the race gives the party a fighting chance to retake the Senate.
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But look more closely, and the reliance on former failures is a direct result of the party having no one else to turn to. If the brand-name challengers didn’t run, the roster of up-and-coming prospects in the respective states is short. They’re also facing an ominous historical reality that only two defeated senators have successfully returned to the upper chamber in the last six decades. As political analyst Stu Rothenberg put it, they’re asking “voters to rehire them for a job from which they were fired.” Senate Democrats are relying on these repeat candidates for the exact same reason that Democrats are comfortable with anointing Hillary Clinton for their presidential nomination: There aren’t any better alternatives.
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For a portrait of the Democrats’ slim pickings, just look at the political breakdown in three of the most consequential battleground states. Republicans hold 12 of Ohio’s 16 House seats, and all six of their statewide offices. In Wisconsin, Republicans hold a majority of the state’s eight House seats and four of five statewide partisan offices. In Pennsylvania, 13 of the 18 representatives are Republicans, though Democrats hold all the statewide offices. (One major caveat: Kathleen Kane, the Democrats’ once-hyped attorney general in the state, is under criminal investigation and has become a political punchline.) These are all Democratic-friendly states that Obama carried twice.
If Strickland didn’t run, the party’s hopes against Portman would lie in the hands of 30-year-old Cincinnati Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, who would make unexpected history as one of the nation’s youngest senators with a victory. (Sittenfeld is still mounting a long-shot primary campaign against Strickland.) Without Feingold in Wisconsin, the party’s only logical option would be Rep. Ron Kind, who has regularly passed up opportunities for a promotion. Former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett already lost to Gov. Scott Walker twice, and businesswoman Mary Burke disappointed as a first-time gubernatorial candidate last year. And despite the Democratic establishment’s publicized carping over Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania, the list of alternatives is equally underwhelming: His only current intra-party opposition is from the mayor of Allentown.
(RELATED: Hillary Clinton to Launch Her Campaign, Again)
In the more conservative states, the drop-off between favored recruits and alternatives is even more stark. Hagan would be a flawed nominee in North Carolina, but there’s no one else waiting in the wings. The strongest Democratic politician, Attorney General Roy Cooper, is running for governor instead. And in Indiana, the bench is so thin that even the GOP’s embattled governor, Mike Pence, isn’t facing formidable opposition. Hill, who lost congressional reelection campaigns in both 2004 and 2010, is not expected to face serious primary competition in the race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Dan Coats.
Even in the two swing states where the party landed young, up-and-coming recruits to run, their options were awfully limited. In Florida, 32-year-old Rep. Patrick Murphy is one of only five House Democrats to represent a district that Mitt Romney carried in 2012—and his centrism has made him one of the most compelling candidates for higher office. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee quickly rallied behind his campaign (in part to squelch potential opposition from firebrand congressman Alan Grayson). But if Murphy didn’t run, the alternatives would have been limited: freshman Rep. Gwen Graham and polarizing Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz being the most logical alternatives.
In Nevada, Democrats boast one of their strongest challengers in former state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, vying to become the first Latina ever elected to the Senate. But her ascension is due, in part, to the fact that other talented officeholders lost in the 2014 statewide wipeout. Democratic lieutenant-governor nominee Lucy Flores, hyped by MSNBC as a “potential superstar,” lost by 26 points to her GOP opponent. Former Secretary of State Ross Miller, another fast-rising pol, badly lost his bid for attorney general against a nondescript Republican. By simply taking a break from politics, Cortez Masto avoided the wave and kept her prospects alive for 2016.
(RELATED: Newly Released Clinton Email Detail Benghazi Correspondence)
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This isn’t an assessment of Democratic chances for a Senate majority in 2017; it’s a glaring warning for the party’s longer-term health. If Clinton can’t extend the Democrats’ presidential winning streak—a fundamental challenge, regardless of the political environment—the party’s barren bench will cause even more alarm for the next presidential campaign. And if the Democrats’ core constituencies don’t show up for midterm elections—an outlook that’s rapidly becoming conventional wisdom—Democrats have serious challenges in 2018 as well. It’s why The New Yorker’s liberal writer John Cassidy warned that a Clinton loss next year could “assign [Republicans] a position of dominance.”
By focusing on how the electorate’s rapid change would hand Democrats a clear advantage in presidential races, Obama’s advisers overlooked how the base-stroking moves would play in the states. Their optimistic view of the future has been adopted by Clinton, who has been running to the left even without serious primary competition.
But without a future generation of leaders able to compellingly carry the liberal message, there’s little guarantee that changing demographics will secure the party’s destiny. The irony of the 2016 Senate races is that Democrats are betting on the past, running veteran politicians to win them back the majority—with Clinton at the top of the ticket. If that formula doesn’t work, the rebuilding process will be long and arduous.
How Many Workers Support One Social Security Retiree?
Veronique de Rugy | May 22, 2012
With the Social Security Trust Fund exhausting faster than expected, another obstacle to the sustainability of the program is rearing its head: Social Security benefits rest on fewer and fewer taxpayers. This week’s chart by Mercatus senior research fellow Veronique de Rugy uses data from the 2012 Social Security Trustees Report to show the number of workers that need to contribute to the system to ensure the benefits for one retiree.
Most of the major shifts in worker-to-beneficiary ratios before the 1960s are attributable to the dynamics of the program’s maturity. In the early stages of the program, many paid in and few received benefits, and the revenue collected greatly exceeded the benefits being paid out. What appeared to be the program’s advantage, however, turned out to be misleading. Between 1945 and 1965, the decline in worker-to-beneficiary ratios went from 41 to 4 workers per beneficiary.
The Social Security program matured in the 1960s, when Americans were consistently having fewer children, living longer, and earning wages at a slower rate than the rate of growth in the number of retirees. As these trends have continued, today there are just 2.9 workers per retiree—and this amount is expected to drop to two workers per retiree by 2030.
The program was stable when there were more than 3 workers per beneficiary. However, future projections indicate that the ratio will continue to fall from two workers to one, at which point the program in its current structure becomes financially unsustainable.
*Note on the data: At the inception of Social Security in 1935, there were few beneficiaries and a lot of workers. (See the number of beneficiaries per 100 covered workers inTable IV.B2 of the Trustees Report). As the post-WWII baby boomers were born, the worker-to-beneficiary ratio increased. As birth rates decline and the baby boomers retire, the worker-to-beneficiary ratio is on the decline. The increased longevity of Americans only further compounds the problem.
Story 1: Breaking News — Tsarnaev Sentenced To Death — Bring Back Prompt Public Executions — Hillary Clinton’s War On Babies A Woman’s Right To Kill Her Baby In The Womb — We Need To Kill More Black Babies? — Black Genocide and Eugenics Through Planned Parenthood — Videos
Abortion — Killing Babies in The Womb
“it’s not enough to legalize the procedure.
Far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth, and laws don’t count for much if they’re not enforced.
And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.’
~ Hillary Clinton
I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision,”
“I am really in awe of her, there are a lot of lessons we can learn from her life”
~ Hillary Clinton
Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sentenced to death
Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Sentenced to Death
Boston Marathon Bomber “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev” Gets Death Penalty!
WestVirginia @150 – The Last Public Hanging in West Virginia 1897
Execution of N. Korea defense chief shows cruelty of regime: U.S. State Department
Hillary Clinton Says Religious Beliefs About Abortion Have to be Changed
Would Girl Scouts Want Cookie Ovens Heated with Aborted Kids?
Eugenics, Planned Parenthood & Psychology, Mind Control
Sex Control Police State, Eugenics, Galton, Kantsaywhere, Mind Control Report
The American Eugenics Society and Adolf Hitler: Making the blueprint for a genetic revolution
PJTV — Forgotten Newsreel History: Margaret Sanger Declaring ‘No More Babies’
Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s Racist Founder
Dr Angela Franks- Planned Parenthood:Everything You Didn’t Know
Hillary Clinton admires Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood
Beck Reveals Hillary’s Misinformation About Margaret Sanger (Eugenics) & Thomas Jefferson (Slaves)
Planned Parenthood Exposed
The “exterminator” Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger
VERY REVEALING Margaret Sanger Interview MUST SEE ! PLANNED PARENTHOOD
Abortion and Black Genocide (Barack Obama and the Negro Project)
Eugenics in America: Then & Now
Eugenics Glenn Beck w/ Edwin Black author of “War Against the Weak” talk Al Gore & Margaret Sanger
American Eugenics movement, the truth is here, must see!
Scientific Racism The Eugenics of Social Darwinism
Harvest of Despair Soviet Communism engineered Ukraine Famine Genocide 1933)
USSR, The Genocidal Communist Empire (FULL video)
The Bloody History of Communism Full
BBC’s World at War- The Final Solution part 1
BBC’s World at War- The Final Solution part 2
Mao’s Bloody Revolution
Mao’s Great Famine HDTV great leap foward, history of china
Stephanopoulos Discloses $75K Donation To Clinton Foundation
Peter Schweizer This Week Abc Stephanopoulos Challenges Clinton Cash Author Is There a Smoking Gun
George Stephanopoulos Apologizes on ‘GMA’ For Not Disclosing Clinton Foundation Donations
Should George Stephanopoulos Be Fired?
Stephanopoulos: “Bill Clinton has no character problem”
Three Reasons: The War Room
The War Room (1993)
George Stephanopoulos Interview, describing Clinton 2 of 2
The War Room Trailer
THE WAR ROOM with D.A. Pennebaker
Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On – What’s Happening Brother”
B.B. King – Blues Boys Tune
B. B. King – The Thrill Is Gone (Live at Montreux 1993)
Rock Me Baby-BB King/Eric Clapton/Buddy Guy/Jim Vaughn
B.B. King Dead at the Age of 89
Hillary Clinton’s keynote address at the 2015 Women in the World Summit
The presidential hopeful made her sixth appearance at the Women in the World Summit with a keynote address that challenged viewers to be champions for change.
Tsarnaev sentenced to death
By Milton J. Valencia, Patricia Wen, Kevin Cullen, John R. Ellement and Martin Finucane
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death Friday for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the terror attack on the finish line of the storied race that killed three people and injured more than 260 others.
Tsarnaev, 21, had been convicted last month in US District Court in Boston of 17 charges that carried the possibility of the death penalty.
The death sentence handed down Friday by the seven-woman, five-man jury came at the end of a lengthy, high-profile trial. Tsarnaev, who had taken a sharp turn from hopeful immigrant college student to radical jihadist, also was convicted in the murder of a police officer.
The April 15, 2013, bombing was one of the worst terror attacks in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.
Wearing a blazer and a collared shirt, Tsarnaev, as has been his habit for most of the trial, had no expression as a court clerk read the verdict sentencing him to death. The jury took 14 1/2 hours over three days to render its decision on the penalty.
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Explore the evidence from the trial
A look at the witnesses, evidence, and key players in the trial.
Tsarnaev sentencing verdict form
Live updates from the courtroom
US District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. will impose the sentence at a hearing where Tsarnaev’s victims will be able to confront him and he also has the option of addressing the court.
After the verdict was announced, O’Toole told jurors, at least three of whom wiped away tears, “You should be justly proud of your service in this case.”
Those in the courtroom included Bill and Denise Richard, parents of 8-year-old Martin Richard of Dorchester, the youngest victim of the attack. Despite the devastating impact on their family, the Richards had called for life in prison, rather than death, for Tsarnaev.
Federal prosecutors said Tsarnaev was a remorseless self-radicalized terrorist who had participated in the bombing to make a political statement. Defense attorneys, seeking to save Tsarnaev’s life, portrayed him as the puppy dog-like follower of his troubled, violence-prone older brother, Tamerlan, who became obsessed with waging jihad and died in a firefight with police.
The jurors decided Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be sentenced to death for the people he was found directly responsible for killing when he placed one of the two homemade pressure cooker bombs: Martin Richard and 23-year-old Boston University graduate student Lingzi Lu.
The panel also had the right to sentence Tsarnaev to death for the second bomb placed by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, which killed Krystle Campbell, 29, of Arlington. But the jury chose not to impose the death penalty for her death.
The jurors also decided against imposing the death penalty for the subsequent murder of MIT Police Officer Sean A. Collier, whom the defense argued was shot to death by Tamerlan, not Dzhokhar.
The response to the death sentence was immediate from some of the hundreds of people who were injured.
One of those who turned to social media to share their views was Sydney Corcoran, who was seriously injured along with her mother, Celeste, who lost both legs in the blast.
“My mother and I think that NOW he will go away and we will be able to move on. Justice,’’ Sydney Corcoran wrote on the Twitter account. “In his own words, ‘an eye for an eye.’ “
Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh said in a statement that the “verdict provides a small amount of closure to the survivors, families, and all impacted by the violent and tragic events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon.’’
“We will forever remember and honor those who lost their lives and were affected by those senseless acts of violence on our City,’’ Walsh said. “Today, more than ever, we know that Boston is a City of hope, strength and resilience, that can overcome any challenge.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted last month of 30 charges, including 17 that carried a possible death penalty, in the first phase of the two-phase federal death penalty trial.
The defense never contested his guilt, focusing instead on the second phase of the trial, in which the jury was asked to determine whether Tsarnaev should get life in prison without parole or a death sentence. Over 11 days of testimony jurors heard from more than 60 witnesses, most of them called by the defense in an effort to humanize Tsarnaev.
Tsarnaev did not testify himself during either phase, showing little emotion as he sat in the courtroom, leaving him an inscrutable figure to the jury that decided his fate.
But in a statement he wrote when he was hiding from police several days after the bombing, he said he had acted because the US government was “killing our innocent civilians. … We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all.”
Prosecutor Steven Mellin, in his closing argument, cited a line from the note that said, “Now I don’t like killing innocent people, but in this case it is allowed.”
“These are the words of a terrorist who thought he did the right thing,” Mellin told jurors. “His actions have earned him a sentence of death.”
Defense attorney Judy Clarke suggested that Tsarnaev’s parents were emotionally, and later physically, absent from his life, and that Tamerlan had filled the void.
The root cause of the violence that erupted on Boylston Street on April 15, 2013, was Tamerlan, Clarke said.
“Dzhokhar would not have done this but for Tamerlan,” she said.
“We’re asking you to choose life,” she said. “Yes, even for the Boston Marathon bomber. It’s a sentence that reflects justice and mercy.”
The homemade pressure cooker bombs planted by the Tsarnaev brothers went off just before 3 p.m. at the race, a colorful rite of spring in which thousands of runners, including top competitors from around the world, stream down the course into the heart of the city.
In addition to the three people killed, more than 260 others were injured, including 17 who lost limbs. First responders and people in the crowd rushed forward to help, and the city’s renowned medical community saved lives that were hanging by a thread.
A massive manhunt followed that ended several days later in a violent, chaotic showdown. After authorities released their pictures, Tsarnaev, who was 19 at the time, and his 26-year-old brother murdered Collier while he sat in his cruiser on the night of April 18, 2013, in an unsuccessful attempt to get a second gun.
When police caught up with the brothers in Watertown, just outside the city, in the early hours of April 19, the brothers hurled more deadly bombs and fired dozens of shots at police. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after being shot by police and run over by his own brother as he made his escape.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev slipped away from the legions of police who swarmed to the area as the governor, in an unprecedented step, urged residents of Boston, Watertown and other nearby areas to stay indoors and “shelter in place.” But Tsarnaev was ultimately captured later in the day, hiding in a boat stored in a Watertown back yard, where he had written the note explaining his actions. A stunned region breathed a sigh of relief.
People in Boston and beyond rallied together after the attacks, expressing sympathy and offering support to the bombing victims. At the same time, questions were raised and investigations launched into why the attacks weren’t prevented.
One mystery remaining at the heart of the case was how Dzhokhar Tsarnaev transformed from a hard-working teenager to a failing college student who joined a deadly terrorist plot.
“If you expect me to have an answer, a simple clean answer, I don’t have it,” Clarke said in her closing argument.
Tsarnaev arrived in America with his family when he was 9 years old. Jurors heard from his teachers in Cambridge that as a young boy, he was an A student, smart, popular, and kind. He became captain of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School wrestling team and went on to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and witnesses described him as a laid-back, and fun-loving college student.
But jurors also heard about Tsarnaev’s upbringing in a dysfunctional immigrant Chechen family that held to old cultural traditions that gave outsized rank to the oldest brother. And an expert on Chechnya described how that country’s struggles for independence became intertwined over the last two decades with the global jihad movement by Islamic militants.
When his parents returned to Russia in 2012, the jihad-obsessed Tamerlan was the only adult figure in his life, the defense said.
Prosecutors rejected the idea that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had influenced his young brother.
“These weren’t youthful crimes,” said prosecutor William Weinreb. “There was nothing immature or impulsive about them. These were political crimes, designed to punish the United States . . . by killing and mutilating innocent civilians on US soil.”
Governor Charlie Baker met reporters at the State House after the verdict, but refused to say whether he believed the death sentence was the right choice to have been made. Instead, he said, the verdict resulted from the persistence of the 12 jurors who were in court day after day and for 10 weeks.
“This was their call,’’ he said.
As a parent and husband, Baker said he was stunned by the “randomness” of the bombings. He also said that the region would be reminded about the bombings every April when the Marathon is held.
“I think it will be a long time before this event and all that came with it ever lands in my rear view mirror,’’ Baker said. “It changed the Marathon and thereby by definition, changed Boston as well.’’
He said that he hopes some closure, some healing will be forthcoming for anyone connected to the bombings.
Hillary Clinton Reaffirms Her Commitment to Women’s Rights
At Tina Brown’s Women in the World conference, the presidential hopeful spoke about the obstacles women still face in this country and abroad.
Today at Tina Brown’s Women in the World summit, presidential hopeful and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the stage to reaffirm her commitment to women’s and girls’ rights, and outlined what will likely be her talking points on women, girls, and minorities as she travels the country trying to gain voter support in the coming months.
“It’s not just enough for some women to get ahead,” Clinton said, adding that all women need support, “no matter where you live and who you are.”
Clinton outlined issues facing women from birth through retirement, noting that “all the evidence tells us that despite the enormous obstacles that remain, there has never been a better time in history to be born female.” But when women enter the workforce, she said, they face a pay gap, which is particularly wide for women of color. She pointed to the recent Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision to assert that a woman’s boss should not determine what kind of health care she can access.Sexual assault on college campuses and in the military remains a pressing issue in need of legislative solutions, Clinton said. And she criticized discrimination in retirement benefits, saying, “When we deny women access to retirement that is secure, when we continue as we do to discriminate against women in the Social Security system, we are leaving too many women on their own.”
The way forward, Clinton said — and presumably what she will campaign on — is to embrace those who have long been marginalized in American society.
“We move forward when gay and transgender women are embraced as our colleagues and friends, not fired from good jobs because of who they love and who they are,” she said. Immigrants too, Clinton said, need protections and a path to citizenship. Striking a populist tone, Clinton highlighted economic inequality and the value of closing the wage gap — not just for women and their families, but for the U.S. economy as a whole.
Tina Brown’s Women in the World is a global conference, and Clinton emphasized her longtime advocacy for international women’s rights. She famously spoke at the 1995 Beijing conference on women’s rights, where she declared, “Women’s rights are human rights once and for all.” And at Women in the World today, she not only focused heavily on a domestic agenda centered on women’s rights, but mentioned her Beijing work, saying that when she gave her speech back in 1995, 189 countries came together to declare that “human rights are women rights and women rights are human rights, once and for all. And finally, the world began to listen.”
But, Clinton said, “Despite all this progress, we’re just not there yet. Yes, we’ve nearly closed the global gender gap in primary school, but secondary school remains out of reach for so many girls around the world. Yes, we’ve increased the number of countries prohibiting domestic violence, but still more than half the nations in the world have no such laws on the books, and an estimated one in three women still experience violence. Yes, we’ve cut the maternal mortality rate in half, but far too many women are still denied critical access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth.”
Clinton announced her run for president earlier this month and is the presumptive Democratic nominee. But when she sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, she moved away from her women’s rights bona fides, staking out a more gender-neutral position.
Now, running again eight years later, Clinton may be more inclined to embrace her potentially historic role as the first female candidate for president from a major political party. A month before she announced her intent to run, Clinton gave the keynote speech at the anniversary gala of EMILY’s List, an organization that raises money for pro-choice female politicians.
The Women in the World speech focused on women and girls, handily avoiding any mention ofallegations of inappropriate relationships between governments Clinton dealt with at the State Department and her family’s nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation. Those allegations originated in a book called Clinton Cash written by a Republican consultant, and the accusations of unethical behavior are now being investigated further by several media outlets, including The New York Times and TheWashington Post.
The Women in the World conference runs through Friday and features a long list of female activists and celebrities, including actresses Meryl Streep, Ashley Judd, Robin Wright, and Friedo Pinto; journalists Katie Couric, Poppy Harlow, Nora O’Donnell, and Mika Brzezinski; writers Tavi Gevinson, Jon Krakauer, and Janet Mock; and political leaders Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris.
Hillary Clinton’s remarks last week at the sixth annual Women in The World Summit raised eyebrows when she openly admitted her goal to steamroll conservative religious beliefs to clear the way for abortion on demand.
As the Daily Caller reports, “Clinton said, ‘it’s not enough to legalize the procedure. Far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth, and laws don’t count for much if they’re not enforced. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.’”
Hillary is right about one thing. Laws can’t simply be created, they have to be enforced, and you can’t enforce the progressive agenda fully unless you completely uproot the “deep seated cultural codes and religious beliefs” of society. Then, and only then, will the liberals secure their progressive dream.
That’s why progressives push so hard to “normalize” single motherhood, non-traditional families, transgenderism and remove all trappings of our Judeo-Christian faith heritage.
Law and morality cannot entirely be separated, because nearly all laws are based on moral standards: codes of right and wrong. Our Founders recognized this and made us “one nation under God” with certain rights endowed to us by our Creator.
Hillary’s progressive worldviews include the “woman’s right to choose” – death, actually. Death for the unborn. And primarily, death for unborn non-white babies.
But liberals’ credal commitment to abortion hides an appalling racial bias.
While progressives are quick to label conservatives as racists, they support a genocidal industry that targets and slaughters African American babies more than any other race. This industry is abortion on demand.
According to CDC estimates, an average of “1,876 black babies are aborted every day in the United States.” Also, in 2011, the CDC released a shocking report that “black women were 3.7 times more likely to have an abortion..than non-Hispanic white women.”
In 2012, black women were almost five times as likely to have an abortion as white women. Among white women there were 138 abortions for every 1,000 births. Among black women, there were 501 abortions for every 1,000 births.”
Right now, we’re seeing Baltimore erupt in anger over the tragic death of Freddy Gray. The current narrative is that policemen are rampantly killing young black men. In fact, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) even went so far as to say the recent deaths of unarmed African-American men at the hands of police officers make it feel like “open season” on members of his race.
No sir, it’s open season on babies of your race. Self-inflicted.
According to the FBI there were about 33 homicides each day across the United States in 2013. That’s right, only 33 – whatever their color. But 1,876 black babies are aborted every day. In other words, 5,685% more black babies aborted by their mothers every day then there are homicides in the entire nation.
Rep. Johnson, I hope those figures alarm you. And Mrs. Clinton, aren’t you interested in changing that “deep-seated cultural code?”
In the end, when political leaders like Hillary Clinton promote the destruction of human life through abortion, they are willfully aiding Margaret Sanger’s eugenical dream to purify the population.
Segment 2: Race Racketeers Running Race Rallies — Black Gangs Kill Blacks By The Thousands and Planned Parenthood Kills Black Babies By The Millions — Race Never Played A Role in Zimmerman Verdict Says Juror #b37!– Videos
A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, will not be affected, or would not otherwise exist. Conducting a racket is racketeering.[1] Particularly, the potential problem may be caused by the same party that offers to solve it, although that fact may be concealed, with the specific intent to engender continual patronage for this party. A prototype is the protection racket, wherein a person or group indicates that they could protect a store from potential damage, damage that the same person or group would otherwise inflict, while the correlation of threat and protection may be more or less deniably veiled, distinguishing it from the more direct act of extortion.
Racketeering is often associated with organized crime, and the term was coined by the Employers’ Association of Chicago in June 1927 in a statement about the influence of organized crime in the Teamsters union.[2]
Largest freestanding abortion facility in the Western Hemisphere
“This six-story building is 78,000 square feet, and the ambulatory surgical center will take up the entire third floor,” the group added. “This is where unborn babies up to 25 weeks will be aborted. This is more than half way through a woman’s pregnancy.”
Mark Crutcher on Alex Jones: “Planned Parenthood, the racist, eugenics front”
Genocide: Worse Than War | Full-length documentary | PBS
“By the most fundamental measure — the number of people killed — the perpetrators of mass murder since the beginning of the twentieth century have taken the lives of more people than have died in military conflict. So genocide is worse than war,” reiterates Goldhagen. “This is a little-known fact that should be a central focus of international politics, because once you know it, the world, international politics, and what we need to do all begin to look substantially different from how they are typically conceived.”
WORSE THAN WAR documents Goldhagen¹s travels, teachings, and interviews in nine countries around the world, bringing viewers on an unprecedented journey of insight and analysis. In a film that is highly cinematic and evocative throughout, he speaks with victims, perpetrators, witnesses, politicians, diplomats, historians, humanitarian aid workers, and journalists, all with the purpose of explaining and understanding the critical features of genocide and how to finally stop it.
ABORTION: The Silent Scream
Obama SUPPORTS Black Genocide. The Cover-Up!
Obama: Babies are a “punishment”
Barack Obama Promises to Sign FOCA
“…Last year before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Barack Obama told pro-abortion activists: “The first thing I’d do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.”
FOCA would establish the right to abortion as a fundamental right (like the right to free speech) and wipe away every restriction on abortion nationwide.
It will eradicate state and federal abortion laws that the majority of Americans support and prevent states from enacting similar protective measures in the future. …”
Barack Obama Addresses Planned Parenthood
OBAMA SUPPORTED INFANTICIDE IN 02 AS SENATOR…
Obama And Infanticide – Part 1 – 45 Minutes / Documentary Video / Why Was There The Need For The Born
Obama And Infanticide – Part 2 – 23 Minutes / Documentary Video / The Evidence Against Obama / Illinois
Abortion Inc: Promoting Black Genocide in US?
BLACK GENOCIDE — The Negro Project — Pastor Clenard Childress, Jr.
Planned Parenthood has been successful in achieving Sanger’s Negro Project goals. More than 54 million babies have been aborted since the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States according to numberofabortions.com website. The two leading sources of information about abortions are the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Guttmacher Institute, once part of Planned Parenthood.
Since 1973 more than 15 million black, 10 million Hispanic and 20 million white babies have been aborted. Across America Planned Parenthood clinics have aborted more than 6 million babies since 1973. Planned Parenthood’s primary target market has always been the poor, especially blacks and Hispanics. Minority babies are disproportionately targets for abortion.
Notes: “Other” includes Asians, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and those of mixed race. These numbers add to 101% because of a small overlap among the Hispanic, black and other categories.
Obama in 2006 Accused GOP of Engaging in Social Darwinism
Obama SUPPORTS Black Genocide. The Cover-Up!
Barack Obama, Planned Parenthood, and FOCA
A message to Planned Parenthood Supporters from President Obama
Barack Obama Addresses Planned Parenthood
Black Pastors Condemn Planned Parenthood’s “Blatant Racism”
Obama’s Plans To Remove All Legal Restrictions To Abortion Is Backed By Planned Parenthood
Margaret Sanger’s “Negro Project” & Barack Obama’s Planned Parenthood
Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s Racist Founder
Maafa 21 Preview – Block Buster Documentary
The documentary Maafa 21 connects the dots in history to show that the real motive behind modern legal abortion or population control is racial genocide, not a woman’s right to choose or women’s health. The conspiracy reaches to the highest levels of government. A viewer said she can reject abortion on grounds of the conspiracy regardless of her pro-choice ideology. Everyone in the world should see this history so closely reasoned that it’s irrefutable.
Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 1/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 2/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 3/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 4/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 5/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 6/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 7/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 8/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 9/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 10/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 11/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 12/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 13/13)
How Planned Parenthood Works
How Planned Parenthood Works (1 of 4)
How Planned Parenthood Works (2 of 4)
How Planned Parenthood Works (3 of 4)
How Planned Parenthood Works (4 of 4)
War on the Weak: Eugenics in America
Gates of Hell
“…In 2014, abortion will be banned across the United States. An electrifying documentary from the year 2016, “Gates of Hell” explains how and why. …”
Alveda King hits President Obama, Jesse Jackson and Occupy
BLACK GENOCIDE — The Negro Project — Pastor Clenard Childress, Jr.
Paster Clenard Childress: The Negro Project – The Root of Today’s Abortion Industry_1/4
Paster Clenard Childress: The Negro Project – The Root of Today’s Abortion Industry_2/4
Paster Clenard Childress: The Negro Project – The Root of Today’s Abortion Industry_3/4
Paster Clenard Childress: The Negro Project – The Root of Today’s Abortion Industry_4/4
Racism: A History (1/3) “The Colour of Money” – BBC documentary (2007)
Racism: A History (2/3) “Fatal Impact” – BBC documentary (2007)
Racism: A History (3/3) “A Savage Legacy” – BBC documentary (2007)
Background Articles and Videos
President Obama Speaks at the Associated Press Luncheon
“…What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of a person, and what kind of a society will we have 20 years hence if life can be taken so casually?”
Jessee Jackson
BLACK GENOCIDE — The Negro Project — Pastor Clenard Childress, Jr.
Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 1/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 2/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 3/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 4/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 5/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 6/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 7/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 8/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 9/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 10/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 11/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 12/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 13/13)
How Planned Parenthood Works
How Planned Parenthood Works (1 of 4)
How Planned Parenthood Works (2 of 4)
How Planned Parenthood Works (3 of 4)
How Planned Parenthood Works (4 of 4)
War on the Weak: Eugenics in America
Gates of Hell
“…In 2014, abortion will be banned across the United States. An electrifying documentary from the year 2016, “Gates of Hell” explains how and why. …”
Alveda King hits President Obama, Jesse Jackson and Occupy
How we respect life is the over-riding moral issue
By Jesse Jackson
“…Those advocates of taking. life prior to birth do not call it killing or murder; they call it abortion. They further never talk about aborting a baby because that would imply something human. Rather they talk about aborting the fetus. Fetus sounds less than human and therefore can be justified.
In conclusion, even if one does take life by aborting the baby, as a minister of Jesus Christ I must also inform and-or remind you that there is a doctrine of forgiveness. The God I serve is a forgiving God. The men who killed President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. can be forgiven. Everyone can come to the mercy seat and find forgiveness and acceptance. But, and this may be the essence of my argument, suppose one is so hard-hearted and so in-different to life until he assumes that there is nothing for which to be forgiven. What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of a person, and what kind of a society will we have 20 years hence if life can be taken so casually?
“…If Jesse Jackson of the 1970s were to debate the Jesse Jackson of 1988 on abortion, the old would flatten the new and leave him mumbling pro-choice slogans. As Jackson now does: ”Women must have freedom of choice over what to do over their bodies.” The 1977 Jackson would repeat his still-sound conviction: ”Some argue, suppose the woman does not want to have the baby. They say the very fact that she does not want the baby means that the psychological damage to the child is enough to abort the baby. I disagree. The solution to that problem is not to kill the innocent baby but to deal with her values and her attitude toward life — that which has allowed her not to want the baby.”
Jackson of 1988 says abortion is acceptable because ”it is not right to impose private, religious and moral positions on public policy.” The 1977 Jackson handily dismissed the privacy argument: ”If one accepts the position that life is private, and therefore you have the right to do with it as you please, one must also accept the conclusion of that logic. That was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside your right to be concerned.”
None of Jackson’s six Democratic opponents made an issue of his desertions. Perhaps they saw him ”maturing,” which is said of Jackson’s ’88 campaign. A pro-abortion party can embrace Jackson, but it is getting a defective product. Jackson has become the kind of politician he warned about a decade ago, one whose pro-abortion arguments ”take precedence over human value and human life.” Or as the word master could say: Don’t agonize, compromise. …”
Women’s Health Care Caught in Texas Vs. Gov’t Showdown
Dispute may cut health services for TX women
Bitter debate over Planned Parenthood participation in health program
“Don’t Mess With Texas Women” Planned Parenthood rally, Austin, Texas
Women’s Health Program – YNN
Gov. Rick Perry on Planned Parenthood and Women’s Health in Texas
Joe Pojman, Ph.D., Executive Director
Beverly Nuckols MD, FAAFP, Family Physician
Carol Everett
John Zerwas on Abortion and Women’s Health Programs
BLACK DIGNITY.org – What is the #1 cause of death in the African-American community?
We Have a Cure for the Leading Cause of Death in America
How “The Pill” works as an Abortifacient
Baby Screams for help during an abortion procedure! THIS VIDEO WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER!
President Barack Obama’s popularity with women is falling in the polls as gas prices rise and unemployment remains high. Unless this is reversed quickly, Obama is going to lose in November.
For weeks now, Obama, the Democratic Party and their supporters in the media peddled the propaganda of a Republican Party war on women. This distraction is simply not working.
Laura Ingraham Exposes the Phony War On Women
Why? Propaganda works when people trust or believe you. Many Americans simply do not trust or believe Obama, anymore. Case in point is the Texas Woman Health Program (WHP).
The Obama administration announced on March 15 that it will be terminating federal Medicaid funding of WHP. An estimated 130,000 of the state’s poorest low-income women who are between 18 and 44 and who do not otherwise qualify for Medicaid are covered by the program. Established in 2006, this research and demonstration program provides family planning services, physical exams, gynecological exams, breast and cervical cancer screening, diabetes testing, Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) screenings and contraceptive services. Texas is the first state to have the federal funding cancelled for this type of demonstration program.
Many Texans think if there is a war on women, Obama started the war.
Texas law prohibits public funding of health care provider clinics with affiliates that offer abortions. According to the Texas Health and Human Service Commission (THHSC) website:
“Section 32.0248, Human Resources Code, prohibits payment of WHP funds to a provider that performs elective abortions. A provider that performs elective abortions (through either surgical or medical methods) for any patient is ineligible to serve WHP clients and cannot be reimbursed for those services. This prohibition has been in effect since Sept. 1, 2005. The Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) may recoup WHP funds that it determines were paid to providers that have performed elective abortions.”
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued Opinion No. GA-0844 letter dated Feb. 17, 2011 on the Constitutionality of subsection 32.0248(h), Human Resources Code, which prohibits the THHSC from contracting under the WHP with entities that perform or promote elective abortions or with affiliates of such entities. The opinion summary stated:
“Human Resources Code section 32.0248(h), which applies to women’s health care demonstration project services, provides that the Health and Human Services Commission may not contract with entities that are affiliates of entities that perform or promote elective abortions. This provision is not preempted by federal law.”
The opinion letter points out that Medicaid was established under Title XIX of the Social Security Act and under Title 42, section 1396a(p) of the United States Code:
“(1) In addition to any other authority,a State may exclude any individual or entity for purposes of participating under the State plan under this subchapter for any reason for which the Secretary could exclude the individual or entity from participation in a program under subchapter XVIII of this chapter under section 1320a-7, 1320a-7a, or 1395cc (b) (2) of this title.”
Without these restrictions on abortions, the WHP would not exist because the Texas Legislature would have not have created and funded the program.
There are more than 2,500 qualified providers that offer health care but do not promote or provide elective abortions, according to the THHSC. Planned Parenthood is a qualified provider with 44 clinics in Texas, making it the largest abortion chain in Texas. Federal regulation mandates that patients can pick any qualified provider participating in Medicaid. Texas requested a waiver from the regulation for the first time in 2011.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius decided to decline Texas’ waiver request solely because Texas law prohibits taxpayer dollars from being allocated to entities that perform or promote elective abortions. On March 16, the Texas attorney general, Gregg Abbot, filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division, challenging Sebelius’ decision. The lawsuit alleges that:
“The Secretary’s action violates the Administrative Procedure Act because it is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and “not in accordance with law.” See 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). It also violates the Constitution of the United States by seeking to commandeer and coerce the States’ lawmaking processes into awarding taxpayer subsidies to elective abortion providers.”
The program is funded 10 percent by the state and 90 percent by the federal government. Administrative costs are split 50 percent by the state and 50 percent by the federal government. For 2012 Texas provided $3.3 million and the federal government $29.8 million for the WHP.
This funding will be phased out over the next three months, according to Cindy Mann, Director for Medicaid and State Operations, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). This federal division is responsible for overseeing and administering the Medicaid law for HHS. She said, “We don’t have a choice. Medicaid law is clear: Patients, not the state, are able to choose the doctors and health care providers that can best serve them.” Texas Gov. Rick Perry vowed that Texas will find state funding to replace the $30 million from the federal government.
Planned Parenthood has endorsed and supports Obama for president. In an election year, the funding of Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinics apparently takes priority over the health care needs of Texas woman. For additional background information about Planned Parenthood see the sidebar commentary below.
On Jan. 20 HHS mandated that nonprofit religious employers that provide a health care plan for their employees must provide free contraceptives, sterilization procedures and abortifacients (abortion-inducing drugs) without the insured paying a co-pay, co-insurance or deductible.
Most group insurance employer-based plans do cover so-called “reproductive services,” namely contraceptives, sterilization procedures, abortifacients and abortions. However, employers in the past were allowed to select a health insurance plan that excluded these reproductive services.
The Obama administration is now forcing all employers including nonprofit religious employers to provide these services even if it is against the religious beliefs and convictions of employers and their employees. This includes both group insurance employer-based plans as well as employer self-funded plans where the employer funds or pays for all claims and a third party such as an insurance company is administering the plan.
The issue is not whether “reproductive services” are included in health insurance plans, but religious freedom. Obama’s war on women, children and religious freedom is a direct assault on the American people, their religious beliefs and the U.S. Constitution.
The American dream cannot long survive if we abandon our poor, murder our children and lose our faith. Obama and his progressive supporters need to be reminded of the words of Martin Luther King Jr. who said “The Negro cannot win as long as he is willing to sacrifice the lives of his children for comfort and safety.”
[Raymond Thomas Pronk is host of the Pronk Pops Show on KDUX web radio from 3-5 p.m. Wednesdays and author of the companion blog http://www.pronkpops.wordpress.com]
Planned Parenthood’s Inconvenient Truth
Planned Parenthood has a deep dark secret—an inconvenient truth.
The American Birth Control League (ABCL) was founded in 1921 by Margret Sanger (1879-1966). ABCL together with other groups became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942.
Sanger was a progressive proponent of population control and eugenics. Eugenics is a racist ideology and pseudoscience that believes the human race can be improved by encouraging the reproduction of the “fit” (positive eugenics) and discouraging the reproduction of the “unfit” with genetic defects or undesirable traits (negative eugenics).
The essence of the eugenics movement was control by an enlightened elite over the masses in determining who was fit and who was unfit. Sanger was insistent that contraception not be called family planning but birth control. Sanger said, “birth control is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defective.” A popular slogan of the eugenics movement was “Quality not quantity.”
A master race could be created by controlling who had children and who did not. This could be achieved by birth control through the use of condoms, contraceptives, sterilization and segregation. When birth control fails, abortion could be used to stop the birth of “unfit” babies.
In 1939 Sanger initiated the Negro Project with the goal of slowing and reversing the growth of the black population in America. Planned Parenthood cannot deny the inconvenient truth that its founder was a eugenicist.
“Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy: The Control of Female Fertility” by Angela Franks provides a detailed history and analysis of Sanger’s eugenic ideology. Edwin Black’s “The War against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race”chronicles the history of the eugenics movement and its funding by the Carnegie, Harriman and Rockefeller fortunes.
Three excellent documentaries that can be viewed on YouTube are “Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America,” “How Planned Parenthood Works” and “Racism: A History.”
Margaret Sanger and Her Reproductive Revolution
Four excellent documentaries that can be viewed on YouTube are Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America, How Planned Parenthood Works and Racism: A History, and BLACK GENOCIDE — The Negro Project — Pastor Clenard Childress,
Jr.:
Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 1/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 2/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 3/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 4/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 5/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 6/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 7/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 8/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 9/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 10/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 11/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 12/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 13/13)
How Planned Parenthood Works
How Planned Parenthood Works (1 of 4)
How Planned Parenthood Works (2 of 4)
How Planned Parenthood Works (3 of 4)
How Planned Parenthood Works (4 of 4)
Racism: A History
Racism: A History [2007] – 1/3
Racism: A History [2007] – 2/3
Racism: A History [2007] – 3/3
BLACK GENOCIDE — The Negro Project — Pastor Clenard Childress, Jr.
Alveda King hits President Obama, Jesse Jackson and Occupy
Planned Parenthood has been successful in achieving Sanger’s Negro Project goals. More than 54 million babies have been aborted since the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States according to numberofabortions.com website. The two leading sources of information about abortions are the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Guttmacher Institute, once part of Planned Parenthood.
Since 1973 more than 15 million black, 10 million Hispanic and 20 million white babies have been aborted. Across America Planned Parenthood clinics have aborted more than 6 million babies since 1973. Planned Parenthood’s primary target market has always been the poor, especially blacks and Hispanics. Minority babies are disproportionately targets for abortion.
Notes: “Other” includes Asians, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and those of mixed race. These numbers add to 101% because of a small overlap among the Hispanic, black and other categories.
Killing babies for profit is big business and Planned Parenthood is the industry leader. Planned Parenthood markets its abortion services to both federal and state governments. Like any big business, its executives lobby and make campaign contributions to progressive politicians of both political parties who support their eugenics population control agenda.
Every abortion or baby killed saves the federal government and state governments thousands of dollars annually in education, health care and welfare expenditures for poor black, Hispanic and white babies who did not make it out of their mother’s womb alive.
Today abortion is no longer rare but commonplace. Abortion is a public private partnership. Abortion is not an equal opportunity killer. Abortion is womb lynching. Abortion is death by government—genocide.
[Raymond Thomas Pronk is host of the Pronk Pops Show on KDUX web radio from 3-5 p.m. Wednesdays and author of the companion blog http://www.pronkpops.wordpress.com]
Background Articles and Videos
HHS Messes with Texas
Obama’s real agenda is clear: abortion.
By Patrick Brennan
“…Recently, Texas conservatives have taken dramatic strides to ensure that federal women’s health-care funding didn’t specifically fund or encourage abortion — and thus dealt serious blows to the abortion industry in Texas. Over the past year, with legal help from advocacy groups such as Texas Right to Life, the Texas legislature has continually redirected “family planning” funds away from health-care providers that provide or refer for abortions to other clinics.
The legislature’s rules and funding priorities have reduced the federal funding for abortion providers in Texas by 37 percent over the past year, resulting in the closure of twelve Planned Parenthood branches. The funding has been merely redirected, and thus has in no way restricted poor women’s access to necessary and preventive care (as abortion proponents might have claimed).
But the redirections have put a serious financial strain on abortion providers. Planned Parenthood and other groups are thus loath to see more of their federal dollars snatched away, and, as Graham puts it, consider any more restrictions as “salt in the wound.” It looks now as if the federal government is stepping in specifically in order to bail them out. The state of Texas has done an exemplary job of proving that liberal concern for “women’s health” has as much to do with support for abortion providers as it does with ensuring equity and access.
HHS’s recent contraception mandate, its most infamous policy, isn’t primarily concerned with “women’s health,” despite claims to the contrary. Claims that free coverage of birth control is an essential health benefit because women take it for other hormonal or prescriptive reasons ring hollow, since, if the administration were actually so concerned with protecting particular women’s health issues, it could require coverage of all the relevant treatments, such as other treatments for certain kinds of cancer, rather than just those that happen to double as contraception. The HHS mandate is thus, on closer inspection, another politically tinged program trumpeted as a groundbreaking expansion of women’s health care. …”
Eugenics: The End of Humanity with Host Aaron Dykes – Infowars Nightly News
Eugenics In America
Eugenics Movement in US w/ Wanda Franz
Barack Obama and Margaret Sanger’s “Negro Project”
Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s Racist Founder
Obama: Babies are a “punishment”
Barack Obama Promises to Sign FOCA
“…Last year before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Barack Obama told pro-abortion activists: “The first thing I’d do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.”
FOCA would establish the right to abortion as a fundamental right (like the right to free speech) and wipe away every restriction on abortion nationwide.
It will eradicate state and federal abortion laws that the majority of Americans support and prevent states from enacting similar protective measures in the future. …”
Barack Obama Addresses Planned Parenthood
OBAMA SUPPORTED INFANTICIDE IN 02 AS SENATOR…
Obama And Infanticide – Part 1 – 45 Minutes / Documentary Video / Why Was There The Need For The Born
Obama And Infanticide – Part 2 – 23 Minutes / Documentary Video / The Evidence Against Obama / Illinois
The Alan Guttmacher Institute (a special affiliate to Planned Parenthood), which actively collects the abortion data directly from providers. All numbers reported are voluntary; there are no laws requiring abortionists to report to any national agency the numbers of abortions they perform. 2009-2011 are estimates of 1,212,400 annually.
BLACK BABIES TARGETED BY PLANNED PARENTHOOD ABORTION CLINICS
SILENT GENOCIDE IN AMERICA
“… Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America. Are we being targeted? Isn’t that genocide? We are the only minority in America that is on the decline in population. If the current trend continues, by 2038 the black vote will be insignificant. Did you know that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a devout racist who created the Negro Project designed to sterilize unknowing black women and others she deemed as undesirables of society? The founder of Planned Parenthood said, “Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated.” How is her vision being fulfilled today?Minority women constitute only about 26% of the female population (age 15-44) in the United States, but they underwent approximately 36% of the abortions. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, black women are more than 3 times as likely as white women to have an abortion. On average, 1,452 black babies are aborted every day in the United States.
This incidence of abortion has resulted in a tremendous loss of life. It has been estimated that since 1973 Black women have had over 13 million abortions. Michael Novak had calculated “Since the number of current living Blacks (in the U.S.) is 31 million, the missing 10 million represents an enormous loss, for without abortion, America’s Black community would now number 41 million persons. It would be 35% larger than it is. Abortion has swept through the Black community like a scythe, cutting down every fourth member.”
A highly significant 1993 Howard University study showed that African American women over age 50 were 4.7 times more likely to get breast cancer if they had had any abortions compared to women who had not had any abortions. …”
Leftist Sandra Fluke testifies, “Birth Control Is a Medicine… Religious Schools Should Pay”
Bill O’Reilly — Contraception Conundrum
“…Sandra Fluke is a student at Georgetown Law. She’s also a “reproductive rights activist” who agrees wholeheartedly with the Obama administration’s controversial contraceptive mandate. Her reasoning, though, is likely to enrage some critics.
During a testimony in front of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee on Monday (a meeting that was held by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi), Fluke — who was coincidentally the only witness heard — described the financial constraints that purchasing birth control puts on her peers.
“Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy,” Fluke said, referring to the fact that the university doesn’t pay for contraception. “Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school.”
She detailed, among other stories, how one woman felt “embarrassed” and “powerless” at the pharmacy counter when she “learned for the first time” that contraceptives weren’t covered by the university’s health care plan.
CNS News’ Craig Bannister, though, challenged Fluke’s $3,000 figure and came up with some pretty interesting numbers: $3,000 for birth control in three years? That’s a thousand dollars a year of sex — and, she wants us to pay for it. […] At a dollar a condom if she shops at CVS pharmacy’s website, that $3,000 would buy her 3,000 condoms — or, 1,000 a year… Assuming it’s not a leap year, that’s 1,000 divided by 365 — or having sex 2.74 times a day, every day, for three straight years. And, I thought Georgetown was a Catholic university where women might be prone to shun casual, unmarried sex. At least its health insurance doesn’t cover contraception (that which you subsidize, you get more of, you know).
This isn’t the first time Fluke has made her voice heard in the halls of Congress. Earlier this month, it was reported that Democrat Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Eleanor Norton (D-DC) and their anger over the lack of female witnesses present at a previous contraceptive hearing.
The congresswomen wanted Fluke to be permitted to speak at the event, but Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) declined to allow it, stating that Fluke was not an expert in religious freedom, which was the issue being investigated.
Fluke, though, responded by claiming that women should be included in the discussion. She also alleged that a friend of hers died because of a lack of access to contraception and accused Issa of silencing the people who have the most authority to speak on the subject.Sandra Fluke Opening Statement (C-SPAN) …”
Lawmakers Walk Out on Congressional Contraception Rule Hearing After Female Witness Barred
Senate Narrowly Defeats Anti-Contraception Bill as Reproductive Rights Face Sustained Attack
Rush Limbaugh Gives You The Reason Sandra Fluke Is Going To A Catholic College
“… Are we supposed to believe that it’s impossible to find free condoms in Washington? And it’s a good question. Where are the guys that these women at Georgetown Law are having sex with? Where’s their responsibility? I mean, these guys are gonna learn (if they haven’t already) they’re gonna be buying a lot more for sex than just birth control pills. Why the exemption here on birth control pills? What makes birth control pills so unique that the insurance company — government, somebody, taxpayers — has to provide this? We all know the answer here. This allows them to talk “women’s freedom,” and “women’s reproductive rights.” But it’s also the expansion of government.
Let’s listen to some Sandra Fluke. By the way, did you know CBS ripped me for calling Danica Patrick “a woman driver.” What is she? Is she a male driver and I’ve missed it? What is she? Look at what’s happening to our language. I called Danica Patrick “a woman driver…” (interruption) Well, because she had said that she thinks the government is perfectly responsible in making these decisions for us; she trusts the government. I said, “Well, okay, she’s a woman driver. That makes sense.” What is she? Here’s Sandra Fluke before this committee, the House Democrat Steering and Policy Committee Hearing on Contraception. Here’s a portion of her opening remarks.
Barack Obama and Margaret Sanger’s “Negro Project”
Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s Racist Founder
Obama: Babies are a “punishment”
Barack Obama Promises to Sign FOCA
“…Last year before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Barack Obama told pro-abortion activists: “The first thing I’d do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.”
FOCA would establish the right to abortion as a fundamental right (like the right to free speech) and wipe away every restriction on abortion nationwide.
It will eradicate state and federal abortion laws that the majority of Americans support and prevent states from enacting similar protective measures in the future. …”
Barack Obama Addresses Planned Parenthood
OBAMA SUPPORTED INFANTICIDE IN 02 AS SENATOR…
Obama And Infanticide – Part 1 – 45 Minutes / Documentary Video / Why Was There The Need For The Born
Obama And Infanticide – Part 2 – 23 Minutes / Documentary Video / The Evidence Against Obama / Illinois
Abortion Inc: Promoting Black Genocide in US?
Maafa 21
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 1/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 2/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 3/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 4/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 5/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 6/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 7/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 8/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 9/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 10/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 11/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 12/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 13/13)
Repealing Obamacare and Restoring a Free Market in Healthcare
The Elite’s Plan for Global Extermination(Depopulation Eugenics) Exposed by Webster Tarpley 1 of 4
The Elite’s Plan for Global Extermination(Depopulation Eugenics) Exposed by Webster Tarpley 2 of 4
The Elite’s Plan for Global Extermination(Depopulation Eugenics) Exposed by Webster Tarpley 3 of 4
The Elite’s Plan for Global Extermination(Depopulation Eugenics) Exposed by Webster Tarpley 4 of 4
“…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. …”
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declarationof the thirteen unitedStates of America
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
~The Constitution of the United States, Amendment One
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
~The Constitution of the United States, Amendment Two
Still more pathetic is the total collapse of moral fanaticism. Fanatics think that their single-minded principles qualify them to do battle with the powers of evil; but like a bull they rush at the red cloak instead of the person who is holding it; he exhausts himself and is beaten. He gets entangled in non-essentials and falls into the trap set by cleverer people.”
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Letters and Papers from Prison (1943-1945, English publication 1967)
“…People have been beatened down so long they feel so betrayed by their government. So it’s not surprising that they get bitter and cling to their guns and religion or antipathy towards people who are not like them as a way to explain their frustrations.”
~Candidate Barack Obama
Obama And The Second Amendment
“We Will Not Comply” – Catholic Civil Disobedience
Religious Leaders Vow Not To Comply With HHS Mandate
Santorum Slams Obama’s Agenda Driven by a “Phony Theology . . . Not a Theology Based on the Bible”
Obama’s Agenda
“…not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology. …”
~Former Republican Senator Rick Santorum and Candidate for Presidential Nomination
Face The Nation …: Santorum clarifies prenatal testing, theology statements
“We’re talking about specifically prenatal testing and specifically amniocentesis, which is a — which is a procedure that creates a risk of miscarriage when you have it and is done for the purposes of identifying maladies of a child in the womb, which in many cases, in fact, most cases, physicians recommend, particularly if there’s a problem, recommend abortion. 90 percent of Down Syndrome children in America are aborted. So to suggest where does that come from? I have a child who has Trisomy 18. Almost 100 percent of Trisomy 18 child are encouraged to be aborted. So I know what I’m talking about here.”
What Obama Does Not Want You To See Or Know / Video PSA
Barack Obama Addresses Planned Parenthood
Margaret Sanger and Her Reproductive Revolution
Abortion’s Cultural Advance: Planned Parenthood and You
Fit vs. UnFit, Eugenics, Planned Parenthood & Psychology, Mind Control Report
Margaret Sanger: Eugenicist (1/3)
Margaret Sanger: Eugenicist (2/3)
Margaret Sanger: Eugenicist (3/3)
Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s Racist Founder
National Right to Life: The Truth About Planned Parenthood
Abortion Is Big Business And Big Bucks (Truth #6)
Planned Parenthood’s Political Machine
Mass Murder of Blacks in Libya
Why are they lynching us in Libya? Kamit live in fear.
Obama SUPPORTS Black Genocide. The Cover-Up!
OBAMA LYNCHING BLACK AFRICANS : Presides Over Racial Genocide in Libya
OBAMA Is Preparing BLACK GENOCIDE In LIBYA
Obama’s Massacre in Libya – With Support Of NATO Racist Rebels Continue To Eradicate Black Libyans
More Proof of rebel atrocities after Gaddafi troops found dead, mutilated in mass grave
West Unleashes Arab KKK in Libya
Black People Face Ethnic Cleansing in Libya, 1 of 2
Black People Face Ethnic Cleansing in Libya, 2 of 2
Cardinal George on… Obama and Abortion
The Health Care Betrayal
Obamacare: Ending the Elderly
Rick Santorum – Tea Party Phony
Rick Santorum a Progressive Conservative?
PHONY christian rick santorum EXPOSED – VOTER’S GUIDE TO 2012
Ron Paul on Religion
The Compassion of Dr. Ron Paul
“…James Williams of Matagorda County, Texas recounts a touching true story. Living in a still prejudiced Texas In 1972, his wife had a complication with her pregnancy. No doctors would care for her or deliver their bi-racial child. In fact one of the hospital nurses called the police on James.
Dr. Ron Paul was notified and took her in, delivering their stillborn baby. Because of the compassion of Dr. Ron Paul, the Williams’ never received a hospital bill for the delivery.
Ron Paul views every human being as a unique individual, afforded the rights endowed by our creator and codified in the Bill of Rights. …”
Ron Paul Ad – Life
Obama’s Gamble
‘You can’t compromise on principle’
“In an interview Monday evening in Rome with Catholic News Service, Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan discusses why the U.S. bishops oppose the revised contraceptive mandate announced by President Obama three days earlier. Major excerpts here.”
Ron Paul Texas Straight Talk: The Latest Obamacare Overreach – 2/13/2012
Ron Paul embarrasses Rick Santorum CNN SC Republican Debate 1/19/12
Ron Paul Ad – Plan
Armed Chinese Troops in Texas!
Ron Paul on Just War, War Breaking Families
Ron Paul Thanksgiving Family Forum Debate Nov,19,2011 Part 1
Ron Paul Thanksgiving Family Forum Debate Nov,19,2011 Part 2
Ron Paul: The Only One We Can Trust
Ron Paul Leaks His Choice for Vice President
Ron Paul Ad – Betrayal
Ron Paul – Three of a Kind
No One But Paul — Can Beat Obama
Ron Paul – “The one who can beat Obama”
“Jesus’ commandment never wishes to destroy life, but rather to preserve, strengthen, and heal life.”
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Santorum questions Obama’s Christian values
By Steve Peoples Associated Press
“…Lashing out on two fronts, Rick Santorum on Saturday questioned President Barack Obama’s Christian values and attacked GOP rival Mitt Romney’s Olympics leadership as he courted tea party activists and evangelical voters in Ohio, “ground zero” in the 2012 nomination fight.
Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator known for his social conservative views, said Obama’s agenda is based on “some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology.” He later suggested that the president practices a different kind of Christianity.
“In the Christian church there are a lot of different stripes of Christianity,” he said. “If the president says he’s a Christian, he’s a Christian.”
The Obama campaign said the comments represent “the latest low in a Republican primary campaign that has been fueled by distortions, ugliness, and searing pessimism and negativity.” …”
“…In Ohio, a Super Tuesday prize, he shifted decidedly to offense before friendly crowds. Trailing Romney in money and campaign resources, Santorum is depending on the tea party movement and religious groups to deliver a victory March 6 in the Midwestern contest.
More delegates will be awarded in Ohio than in any other state except Georgia in the opening months of the Republican campaign. Ohio and Georgia are two of the 10 contests scheduled for March 6, a benchmark for the primary campaign that often decides who can continue to the next level.
Santorum has surged in recent opinion polls after capturing Republican caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado and a non-binding primary in Missouri on Feb. 7. Several polls have shown him ahead in Romney’s native state of Michigan, where primary voters cast ballots a week from Tuesday. …”
“…A devout Roman Catholic who has risen to the top of Republican polls in recent days, Santorum said the Obama administration had failed to prevent gas prices rising and was using “political science” in the debate about climate change.
Obama’s agenda is “not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology,” Santorum told supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement at a Columbus hotel.
When asked about the statement at a news conference later, Santorum said, “If the president says he’s a Christian, he’s a Christian.”
But Santorum did not back down from the assertion that Obama’s values run against those of Christianity.
“He is imposing his values on the Christian church. He can categorize those values anyway he wants. I’m not going to,” Santorum told reporters.
A social conservative, Santorum is increasingly seen as a champion for evangelical Christians in fights with Democrats over contraception and gay marriage. …”
Rick Santorum tries to show he can win in November
By Dan Balz, Published: February 18
“…Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has won four states and risen suddenly to challenge Mitt Romney as the leader in the national polls. Now he faces a new hurdle: defining himself positively before others rush to disqualify him.
Santorum presents himself as a committed and consistent conservative with blue-collar roots — just the kind of candidate Republicans need to energize the party’s base and reach out to Reagan Democrats in a campaign against President Obama that could be decided in the nation’s industrial heartland.
Obama advisers and other Democrats see a Santorum whose record, writings and statements, particularly on social issues, will be used to portray him as far too conservative for many voters. His record, they say, could make Santorum anathema to suburban swing voters, especially women. That view is shared by some Republicans and independent analysts.
“They [Democrats] would brutalize him on social and cultural issues and present him as so far out of the mainstream as to be radical,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College and a leading pollster in Pennsylvania. “The analogy would be Barry Goldwater” — the 1964 GOP nominee who suffered a landslide defeat.
Santorum’s advisers recognize that he has entered a new phase in his campaign, and they see the obstacles ahead. They argue that a full and fair reading of his record reveals a more attractive profile of the former senator. But they acknowledge it is up to Santorum and his campaign to explain that record and allay concerns about his ability to run competitively in November.
“There will be people — Romney and the Democrats — who will try to distort these things,” said John Brabender, Santorum’s longtime political adviser. “It’s the responsibility of our campaign to show what the senator’s record really is. We are confident that once that happens, people will understand that the senator is extremely reasonable.”
The first tests will come over the next 10 days, as Santorum attempts to leverage his new prominence against Romney in primaries in Arizona and especially Michigan, and then on Super Tuesday, March 6. …”
Ron Paul Texas Straight Talk: The Latest Obamacare Overreach – 2/13/2012
Ron Paul: Many religious conservatives understandably are upset with the latest Obamacare mandate, which will require religious employers (including Catholic employers) to provide birth control to workers receiving healthcare benefits. This mandate includes certain birth control devices that are considered abortifacients, like IUDs and the “morning after” pill.
Of course Catholic teachings forbid the use of any sort of contraceptive devices, so this rule is anathema to the religious beliefs of Catholic employers. Religious freedom always has been considered sacrosanct in this country. However, our federal bureaucracy increasingly forces Americans to subsidize behaviors they find personally abhorrent, either through agency mandates or direct transfer payments funded by tax dollars.
Proponents of this mandate do not understand the gravity of forcing employers to subsidize activities that deeply conflict with their religious convictions. Proponents also do not understand that a refusal to subsidize those activities does not mean the employer is “denying access” to healthcare. If employers don’t provide free food to employees, do we accuse them of starving their workers?
In truth this mandate has nothing to do with healthcare, and everything to do with the abortion industry and a hatred for traditional religious values. Obamacare apologists cannot abide any religious philosophy that promotes large, two parent, nuclear, heterosexual families and frowns on divorce and abortion. Because the political class hates these values, it feels compelled to impose—by force of law—its preferred vision of society: single parents are noble; birth control should be encouraged at an early age; and abortion must be upheld as an absolute moral right.
So the political class simply tells the American people and American industry what values must prevail, and what costs much be borne to implement those values. This time, however, the political class has been shocked by the uproar to the new mandate that it did not anticipate or understand.
But Catholic hospitals face the existential choice of obeying their conscience and engaging in civil disobedience, or closing their doors because government claims the power to force them to violate the teachings of their faith. This terrible imposition has resonated with many Americans, and now the Obama administration finds itself having to defend the terrible cultural baggage of the anti-religious left.
Of course many Catholic leaders originally supported Obamacare because they naively believe against all evidence that benign angels in government will improve medical care for the poor. And many religious leaders support federal welfare programs generally without understanding that recipients of those dollars can use them for abortions, contraceptives, or any number of activities that conflict deeply with religious teachings. This is why private charity is so vitally important and morally superior to a government-run medical system.
The First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty is intended to ensure that Americans never have to put the demands of the federal government ahead of the their own conscience or religious beliefs. This new policy turns that guarantee on its head. The benefits or drawbacks of birth control are not the issue. The issue is whether government may force private employers and private citizens to violate their moral codes simply by operating their businesses or paying their taxes.”
Ron Paul Says Santorum Can’t Beat Obama
Ron Paul says social issues are a ‘losing position’ for the GOP
“…Ron Paul said he doesn’t think that Rick Santorum can defeat President Obama in a general election. “I don’t see how that’s possible,” he said on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
Paul also jabbed at Santorum for his aim “to control peoples’ lives” and what he framed as Santorum’s hypocrisy on the birth control issue.
Santorum admitted in a 2006 interview on Fox News that he supported Title X, a government program that provides funds for family planning services, including access to contraceptives. Santorum said he voted for it during his time as Pennsylvania Senator, and though he believes in access to contraceptives, he personally feels they’re harmful to women and that abstinence education is a “healthier” option.
“I don’t see how anybody can get away with that inconsistency—pretending he’s a conservative,” Paul said in reference to Santorum’s vote.
Paul dismissed the recent debate over contraception entirely, saying that while the other candidates discuss birth control, he’s concerned with “the undermining of our civil liberties, the constant wars going on” and the debt.
Paul said the focus on social issues is a fundamental problem and an unwise fight for the GOP.
“I think it’s a losing position,” he said. “I talk about it because I have a precise understanding of how these problems are to be solved,” on a state-specific level, he said. …”
“…Black liberation theology, is a relatively new theological perspective found in some Christian churches in the United States. It is an instance of the liberation theology which originated from Catholic Theologians in the 1950’s. Liberation theology observes that Jesus Christ was a religious leader seeking greater justice for the oppressed and occupied people of Israel and views his teachings as both an inspiration and a model for others to seek freedom from injustice. The influenced of liberation theology resulted in a more socially conscious Catholic Church during the 1962 Vatican II conference and was central to Latin American peasant and grass-roots movements throughout the 60s 70’s and 80’s.
Black liberation theology seeks to liberate people of color from multiple forms of political, social, economic, and religious subjugation and views Christian theology as a theology of liberation — “a rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the Gospel, which is Jesus Christ,” writes James Hal Cone.
Development
Modern American origins of contemporary black liberation theology can be traced to July 31, 1966, when an ad hoc group of 51 black pastors, calling themselves the National Committee of Negro Churchmen (NCNC), bought a full page ad in the New York Times to publish their “Black Power Statement,” which proposed a more aggressive approach to combating racism using the Bible for inspiration.[1]
In the minds of many African-Americans, Christianity was long associated with slavery and segregation.[2] The Southern Baptist Convention had supported slavery and slaveholders, and it was not until June 20, 1995 that the formal Declaration of Repentance was adopted. This resolution declared that they “unwaveringly denounce racism, in all its forms, as deplorable sin” and “lament and repudiate historic acts of evil such as slavery from which we continue to reap a bitter harvest.” The convention offered an apology to all African-Americans for “condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime” and repentance for “racism of which we have been guilty, whether consciously or unconsciously.[3][4] Christianity was long associated with racism. Therefore, there must then be a dialogue regarding the implications of racism in today’s society and to what extent historical factors affect the plight of the black community. Cone argues that, “About thirty years ago it was acceptable to lynch a black man by hanging him from a tree; but today whites destroy him by crowding him into a ghetto and letting filth and despair put the final touches on death.”
Black theology deals primarily with the African-American community, to make Christianity real for blacks. It explains Christianity as a matter of liberation here and now, rather than in an afterlife. The goal of black theology is not for special treatment. Instead, “All Black theologians are asking for is for freedom and justice. No more, and no less. In asking for this, the Black theologians, turn to scripture as the sanction for their demand. The Psalmist writes for instance, ‘If God is going to see righteousness established in the land, he himself must be particularly active as ‘the helper of the fatherless’ [5] to ‘deliver the needy when he crieth; and the poor that hath no helper.’[6]“[7]
James Cone and Black Liberation Theology
Main article: James Hal Cone
James Cone first addressed this theology after Malcolm X’s proclamation in the 1950s against Christianity being taught as “a white man’s religion”.[8] According to Black religion expert Jonathan Walton: “James Cone believed that the New Testament revealed Jesus as one who identified with those suffering under oppression, the socially marginalized and the cultural outcasts. And since the socially constructed categories of race in America (i.e., whiteness and blackness) had come to culturally signify dominance (whiteness) and oppression (blackness), from a theological perspective, Cone argued that Jesus reveals himself as black in order to disrupt and dismantle white oppression.”[9]
Black liberation theology contends that dominant cultures have corrupted Christianity, and the result is a mainstream faith-based empire that serves its own interests, not God’s. Black liberation theology asks whose side should God be on – the side of the oppressed or the side of the oppressors. If God values justice over victimization, then God desires that all oppressed people should be liberated. According to Cone, if God is not just, if God does not desire justice, then God needs to be done away with. Liberation from a false god who privileges whites, and the realization of an alternative and true God who desires the empowerment of the oppressed through self-definition, self-affirmation, and self-determination is the core of black liberation theology.[10]
On God and Jesus Christ
Cone based much of his liberationist theology on God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt in the Book of Exodus. He compared the United States to Egypt, predicting that oppressed people will soon be led to a promised land. For Cone, the theme of Yahweh’s concern was for “the lack of social, economic, and political justice for those who are poor and unwanted in society.”[11] Cone also says that the same God is working for the oppressed blacks of the 20th century, and that “God is helping oppressed blacks and has identified with them, God Himself is spoken of as ‘Black’.” [12]
Cone saw Christ from the aspect of oppression and liberation. Cone uses the Gospel of Luke to illustrate this point: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them.[13]” “‘In Christ,’ Cone argues, ‘God enters human affairs and takes sides with the oppressed. Their suffering becomes his; their despair, divine despair.’”[14] Cone also argues that, “We cannot solve ethical questions of the twentieth century by looking at what Jesus did in the first. Our choices are not the same as his. Being Christians does not mean following ‘in his steps.'” [Black Theology and Black Power, Page 139] [3]
Cone’s view is that Jesus was black, which he felt was a very important view of black people to see. “It’s very important because you’ve got a lot of white images of Christ. In reality, Christ was not white, not European. That’s important to the psychic and to the spiritual consciousness of black people who live in a ghetto and in a white society in which their lord and savior looks just like people who victimize them. God is whatever color God needs to be in order to let people know they’re not nobodies, they’re somebodies.” [15]
Stylistic differences in the Black religious community
Because of the differences in thought between the black and white community, most black religious leaders attempt to make their services more accessible to other African-Americans, who must identify with the faith in order to accept it. Another notable difference is Cone’s suggestion as to what must occur if there is not reconciliation among the white community. He states, “Whether the American system is beyond redemption we will have to wait and see. But we can be certain that black patience has run out, and unless white America responds positively to the theory and activity of Black Power, then a bloody, protracted civil war is inevitable.” [Black Theology and Black Power, Page 143] [10]
Black Liberation Theology is considered by some to be a form of racism, as some followers associate liberation with retribution and anger. For this to be considered a true Christian Faith, followers should embrace the liberation in concert with acceptance and fogiveness, just as Christ forgave his oppressors.
Criticisms
Anthony Bradley of the Christian Post interprets that the language of “economic parity” and references to “mal-distribution” as nothing more than channeling the views of Karl Marx. He believes James Cone and Cornel West have worked to incorporate Marxist thought into the black church, forming an ethical framework predicated on a system of oppressor class versus a victim much like Marxism.[16]
Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago is the church most frequently cited by press accounts, and by Cone as the best example of a church formally founded on the vision of Black liberation theology.[17] The 2008 Jeremiah Wright controversy, over differing interpretations of some of his sermons and statements, caused then-Senator Barack Obama to distance himself from his former pastor.[18][19]
Stanley Kurtz of the National Review wrote about the perceived differences with ‘conventional American Christianity’. He quoted black-liberation theologian Dr. Obery M. Hendricks Jr.: “According to Hendricks, ‘many good church-going folk have been deluded into behaving like modern-day Pharisees and Sadducees when they think they’re really being good Christians.’ Unwittingly, Hendricks says, these apparent Christians have actually become ‘like the false prophets of Ba’al.'” Kurtz also quotes the Rev. Jeremiah Wright: “How do I tell my children about the African Jesus who is not the guy they see in the picture of the blond-haired, blue-eyed guy in their Bible or the figment of white supremacists [sic] imagination that they see in Mel Gibson’s movies?”[20]
“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”
Newt: Obama Has Declared War on Religious Freedom in America
Obama Administration, Catholic Leaders Clash Over Contraception Mandate
Catholic League Poised To Go To War With Obama
The Health Care Betrayal
Obama Birth Control Mandate Debate Heats Up
Citizenlink Report: HHS Draws Line in Sand
Becket Fund on Stossel discussing HHS mandate
Our President Who Art in DC
Obama’s Anti-Catholic HHS Mandate
Obama Promises Abortion in Public Plan
Abortion doctor: ‘Am I killing? Yes, I am’
Glenn Beck & Bill Donohue Discuss Obama Admin vs. Catholic Church Contraception Debate – Part 1
Glenn Beck & Bill Donohue Discuss Obama Admin vs. Catholic Church Contraception Debate – Part II
Fr. David interviewed about HHS mandate and the Church
Ave Maria University Will Fight HHS Mandate
Obama Admin: Birth Control Mandate is Final; Bishops Vow to Fight
We Will Not Comply’: Catholic Leaders Distribute Letter Slamming Obama Admin Contraceptive Mandate
Obama The Betrayer of The Constitution and The American People
Obamacare: Abortion’s Trojan Horse
For The Record : Obama’s Abortion Bailout
Barack’s Big Abortion Bailout
Planned Parenthood’s Roots
Planned Parenthood’s Victims
Abortion and Black Genocide (Barack Obama and the Negro Project)
“…Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America. Are we being targeted? Isn’t that genocide? We are the only minority in America that is on the decline in population. If the current trend continues, by 2038 the black vote will be insignificant. Did you know that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a devout racist who created the Negro Project designed to sterilize unknowing black women and others she deemed as undesirables of society? The founder of Planned Parenthood said, “Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated.” Is her vision being fulfilled today? …”
Planned Parenthood’s Evil of Killing, Butchering and Selling Baby Parts Regrets Their Tone Not Their Actions– Reminds Me of The Nazis (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) Discussing The Final Solution for The Jewish Question — The Killing of Babies Supported By Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Progressives and Ruling Political Elites — Stop Killing Babies And Lying To The American People — Videos
Posted on July 18, 2015. Filed under: American History, Articles, Babies, Biology, Blogroll, Books, British History, Business, Catholic Church, Chemistry, College, Communications, Congress, Constitution, Corruption, Crime, Crisis, Cult, Culture, Demographics, Diasters, Documentary, Economics, Education, Employment, European History, Faith, Family, Federal Government Budget, Fiscal Policy, Friends, Genocide, government, government spending, Health Care, history, Homicide, Illegal, Immigration, Investments, IRS, Language, Law, Legal, liberty, Life, Links, media, Medical, Money, Music, Non-Fiction, Obamacare, People, Philosophy, Photos, Political Correctness, Politics, Press, Programming, Psychology, Quotations, Radio, Radio, Rants, Regulations, Religion, Science, Security, Strategy, Supreme Court, Talk Radio, Tax Policy, Taxation, Taxes, Television, Terrorism, Torture, Video, War, Wealth, Weapons, Welfare, Wisdom, Writing | Tags: 17 July 2015, Abby Johnson, Abortion Statistics, Abortions, America, articles, Audio, Auschwitz The Nazis and the Final Solution, Breaking News, Brenda Lee, Broadcasting, Butchering Babies, capitalism, Cartoons, Cecile Richards, Charity, Citizenship, Clarity, Classical Liberalism, Collectivism, Commentary, Commitment, Communicate, Communication, Concise, Convincing, Courage, Culture, Current Affairs, Current Events, Die Wannseekonferenz (1984), Discussing The Final Solution for The Jewish Question, economic growth, economic policy, Economics, Edmund Burke, Education, eugenics, Eugenics Movement, Evil, Evils of Agenda 21, Experience, Faith, Family, First, fiscal policy, Fit vs. UnFit, free enterprise, freedom, freedom of speech, Friends, Give It A Listen, God, Good, Goodwill, Growth, Hanna Arendt, Harvesting Babies Organs, Henry David Thoreau, Hope, I'm Sorry, Individualism, Jr, Justice Antonin Scalia, Killing Babies, Knowledge, liberty, Life, Love, Lovers of Liberty, MAAFA 21 THE BLACK HOLOCAUST, Margaret Sanger, Martin Luther King, monetary policy, MPEG3, Music, Nazis (National Socialist German Workers' Party), News, Number One Killer of Blacks -- Abortions, Opinions, Partial-Birth Abortions, Peace, Photos, Planned Parenthood, Podcasts, Political Philosophy, Politics, Progressives, Promoting Black Genocide in US, prosperity, Racism, Radio, Raymond Thomas Pronk, Representative Republic, Republic, Resources, Respect, rule of law, Rule of Men, Saint Augustine, Selling Baby Parts, Senator Lankford, Show Notes, Songs, Stephen Ambrose, Sterilizing Undesirables, Talk Radio, Targeting Blacks, The Final Solution, The Pronk Pops Show, The Pronk Pops Show 507, The Silent Scream, Thomas Hardy, Tone, Truth, Tyranny, U.S. Constitution, Undercover Video Exposes Planned Parenthood, United States of America, Videos, Virtue, War, Wisdom |
The Pronk Pops Show Podcasts
Pronk Pops Show 507: July 17, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 506: July 16, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 505: July 15, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 504: July 14, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 503: July 13, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 502: July 10, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 501: July 9, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 500: July 8, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 499: July 6, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 498: July 2, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 497: July 1, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 496: June 30, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 495: June 29, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 494: June 26, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 493: June 25, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 492: June 24, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 491: June 23, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 490: June 22, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 489: June 19, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 488: June 18, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 487: June 17, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 486; June 16, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 485: June 15, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 484: June 12, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 483: June 11, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 482; June 10, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 481: June 9, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 480: June 8, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 479: June 5, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 478: June 4, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 477: June 3, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 476: June 2, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 475: June 1, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 474; May 29, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 473: May 28, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 472: May 27, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 471: May 26, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 470: May 22, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 469: May 21, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 468: May 20, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 467: May 19, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 466: May 18, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 465: May 15, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 464; May 14, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 463; May 13, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 462: May 8, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 461: May 7, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 460; May 6, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 459: May 4, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 458: May 1, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 457: April 30, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 456: April 29, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 455: April 28, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 454: April 27, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 453: April 24, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 452: April 23, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 451: April 22, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 450: April 21, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 449: April 20, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 448: April 17, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 447: April 16, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 446: April 15, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 445: April 14, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 444: April 13, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 443: April 9, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 442: April 8, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 441: April 6, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 440: April 2, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 439: April 1, 2015
Story 1: Planned Parenthood’s Evil of Killing, Butchering and Selling Baby Parts Regrets Their Tone Not Their Actions– Reminds Me of The Nazis (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) Discussing The Final Solution for The Jewish Question — The Killing of Babies Supported By Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Progressives and Ruling Political Elites — Stop Killing Babies And Lying To The American People — Videos
He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
~Hannah Arendt
Planned Parenthood: Cecile Richards’ Official Video Response
Brenda Lee – I’m Sorry
Senator Lankford Speaks about the Planned Parenthood Video on the Senate Floor
Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts
What So-Called Pro-Choicers Cannot Watch From Start To Finish
The Silent Scream (Full Length)
FULL FOOTAGE: Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts
Abby Johnson Exposes The Lie of Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards’ Attempt To Dismiss Viral Video Backfires!
Caught on Camera: Planned Parenthood Harvesting Babies Organs
Die Wannseekonferenz (1984)
A real time recreation of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which leading SS and Nazi Party officials led by SS-General Reinhard Heydrich gathered to discuss the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”.
MAAFA 21 THE BLACK HOLOCAUST
Abortion Inc: Promoting Black Genocide in US?
Planned Parenthood Banks on Fraud
Planned Parenthood’s New Image
Fit vs. UnFit, Eugenics, Planned Parenthood & Psychology, Mind Control Report
Sex Control Police State, Eugenics, Galton, Kantsaywhere, Mind Control Report
Mind Control Hate Propaganda, Hate Speech & Crime, Black PR
Mind Control, Psychology of Brainwashing, Sex & Hypnosis
Margaret Sanger: Eugenicist (1/3)
Margaret Sanger: Eugenicist (2/3)
Margaret Sanger: Eugenicist (3/3)
Eugenics Glenn Beck w/ Edwin Black author of “War Against the Weak” talk Al Gore & Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s Racist Founder
Justice Antonin Scalia talks about Roe v. Wade
Auschwitz The Nazis and the Final Solution complete
Auschwitz: The Nazi and the Final Solution (1/5)
AUSHWITZ:THE FINAL SOLUTION CLIP 2/5
Auschwitz: The Nazi and the Final Solution (3/5)
Auschwitz: The Nazi and the Final Solution (4/5)
Auschwitz: The Nazi and the Final Solution (5/5)
Science and the Swastika: The Deadly Experiment
Sterilizing Undesirables: Did The USA Inspire The Nazis?
Keeping Dems Honest: CNN’s Anderson Cooper Puts Truth First and Challenges DNC Abortion Lies
Glenn Beck : Agenda 21 is not a fiction, it’s implemented right now in US and all over the World !
Glenn Beck – Ted Cruz Discusses the Evils of Agenda 21
Bill Whittle What We Believe Full Version
Brenda Lee – I’m Sorry (Live from Canada 1980)
Planned Parenthood head apologizes for ‘tone’ of doctor in covert video
The president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America on Thursday apologized for remarks captured on video that show Deborah Nucatola, an executive of the organization, casually discussing abortion techniques aimed at preserving the internal organs of fetuses for use in research.
In a video posted on Planned Parenthood’s Web site, Cecile Richards called the tenor of the remarks “unacceptable,” and said the organization strives as its top priority to provide compassionate care.
“In the video, one of our staff members speaks in a way that does not reflect that compassion,” she said. “This is unacceptable, and I personally apologize for the staff member’s tone and statements.”
[Undercover video shows Planned Parenthood official discussing fetal organs used for research]
But Richards also emphatically defended the organization’s tissue donation program, which she said is purely voluntary for the women and does not yield a profit for Planned Parenthood. And she condemned the group that covertly recorded Nucatola’s remarks, which she said heavily edited the video to make “outrageous claims.”
“We know the real agenda of organizations behind videos like this, and they have never been concerned with protecting the health and safety of women,” she said. “Their mission is to ban abortion completely and cut women off from care at Planned Parenthood and other health centers.”
Richards’s apology came a day after a little-known anti-abortion group called the Center for Medical Progress unveiled the video as part of what its leader said was a 30-month investigation into Planned Parenthood’s tissue donation program. The group alleges Planned Parenthood illegally sells fetal body parts to companies that use the tissue for research.
While the video did not prove this claim, it still painted Planned Parenthood in an unflattering light that reignited controversy over the women’s health organization, the nation’s largest abortion provider and a longtime target of anti-abortion activism. It showed Nucatola, the organization’s senior director of medical services, discussing graphically the ways in which abortions can be completed to preserve a fetus’s liver, lungs, heart and other materials for research.
“I’d say a lot of people want liver,” she says in the video, drinking wine and eating salad with anti-abortion activists posing as medical company representatives.
Later in the video, she continues: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
The Center for Medical Research distilled the video into a nine-minute clip, but also posted a longer cut lasting more than two-and-a-half hours showing a fuller context of the discussion. It also posted some supporting documents on its site, and the group’s leader has promised more evidence in the coming weeks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/07/16/planned-parenthood-head-apologizes-for-tone-of-doctor-in-covert-video/
Planned Parenthood chief apologizes after video
By Eugene Scott, CNN
Planned Parenthood’s president apologized Thursday for a top official’s tone in a controversial video, but she also denied the clip’s allegation that her organization profits from tissue donation.
“Our top priority is the compassionate care that we provide. In the video, one of our staff members speaks in a way that does not reflect that compassion. This is unacceptable, and I personally apologize for the staff member’s tone and statements,” said Cecile Richards, the group’s president, in a video out Thursday. “As always, if there is any aspect of our work that can be strengthened, we want to know about it, and we take swift action to address it.”
Since the video’s release on Breitbart earlier this week, conservative elected officials have slammed its contents and called for congressional hearings on the incident, including House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
“I hope that everyone in the country watches it,” said Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Missouri, who called the video “the most horrifying and heartbreaking undercover video I have ever seen” during a Capitol Hill news conference on Wednesday.
But allegations that Planned Parenthood sells baby body organs and tissue are unfounded, she said.
“I want to be really clear: The allegation that Planned Parenthood profits in any way from tissue donation is not true. Our donation programs — like any other high-quality health care providers — follow all laws and ethical guidelines.”
On Wednesday, Richards used Twitter to criticize lawmakers and presidential candidates
“GOP leaders, including most of the ’16 field, are tripping over themselves to attack PP because they think that’s how to win elections,” organization president Cecile Richards said in a series of related tweets Wednesday. Her comments were her first addressing a video showing one of the organization’s top officials discussing the organs and tissue or aborted fetuses.
Congressional leaders and Republican presidential hopefuls slammed Planned Parenthood on Wednesday and called for congressional hearings on the incident.
RELATED: Lawmakers call for Hill hearings on Planned Parenthood
Richards said political attacks are nothing new for her organization, the country’s largest abortion provider.
“Spreading false information is an age-old strategy of people hell-bent on denying women care & shaming them for exercising their rights,” she tweeted.
Several Republican candidates have promised to defund federal dollars to Planned Parenthood if elected. Richards argued that would keep millions from breast exams, sexually transmitted infection exams and sex education.
“Reminder: 1 out of every 5 women has been to PP in her life. Threatening our patients’ care & rights will get politicians nowhere real fast,” she tweeted. “We’ve fought for our patients before, and we’ll fight for them again and again.”
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/16/politics/planned-parenthood-president-criticizes-gop-candidates/
Planned Parenthood exec, fetal body parts subject of controversial video
By Steve Almasy and Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN
An anti-abortion group has released an online video that it says documents how Planned Parenthood is selling fetal organs for a profit, a felony, while violating medical ethics by altering normal abortion procedures so as to preserve the organs.
Planned Parenthood has countered that it donates the tissue for scientific research and receives only reimbursement for its expenses, which is legal. The group also says it helps people donate tissue “with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards,” according to a statement from spokesman Eric Ferrero.
Later, Ferrero issued another statement saying, “These outrageous claims are flat-out untrue, but that doesn’t matter to politicians with a longstanding political agenda to ban abortion and defund Planned Parenthood. Women and families who make the decision to donate fetal tissue for lifesaving scientific research should be honored, not attacked and demeaned.”
The group leveling the accusation, the Irvine, California-based Center for Medical Progress, says it shot the video a year ago at a California restaurant. On it, two people purporting to be with a human biologics company speak with a Planned Parenthood doctor over what appears to be a lunch meeting. The Center for Medical Progress says the pair, who are off-camera and never seen, are paid actors.
The video, which is almost three hours long, was released Tuesday along with a heavily edited eight-minute version, which has drawn more than 1 million views on YouTube, as opposed to about 40,000 for the the full-length footage. The group has also released a transcript of the longer video.
“Planned Parenthood’s criminal conspiracy to make money off of aborted baby parts reaches to the very highest levels of their organization,” said statement from David Daleiden, who led the undercover project.
The video has drawn the ire of GOP lawmakers in Washington, with House Speaker John Boehner calling for hearings on Planned Parenthood’s abortion practices.
“When anyone diminishes an unborn child, we are all hurt, irreversibly so. When an organization monetizes an unborn child — and with the cavalier attitude portrayed in this horrific video — we must all act,” he said.
On the video, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, the senior director of medical services at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, is seen talking matter-of-factly about the organization’s participation in tissue-donation programs.
Though Planned Parenthood has described the Center for Medical Progress footage as a hit piece by “a well-funded group established for the purpose of damaging Planned Parenthood’s mission and services,” Nucatola acknowledges in the video that Planned Parenthood’s national office sees the potential for controversy.
“So, we tried to do this, and at the national office we have a Litigation and Law Department that just really doesn’t want us to be the middle people for this issue right now,” she said. “And so we had a conversation, and we said, ‘What if we go out and find everyone who is doing this and present everybody with a menu?’ And at the end of the day they just decided that right now, it’s just too touchy an issue for us to be an official middleman.”
In another part of the video, the doctor tells the undercover actors that “behind closed doors,” Planned Parenthood’s affiliates are discussing how to handle the matter.
“Every provider has had patients who want to donate their tissue, and they absolutely want to accommodate them. They just want to do it in a way that is not perceived as ‘This clinic is selling tissue. This clinic is making money off of this,’ ” she said.
The edited version of the video appears to be missing important context that’s provided in the longer video. For instance, one of the actors asks Nucatola about prices for the organs.
“OK, so when you are, or the (Planned Parenthood) affiliate is determining what that monetary … so that it doesn’t raise any question of ‘This is what it’s about; this is the main,’ what price range would you …” the woman asks, her question trailing off.
Nucatola responds that the price would be between $30 and $100 per specimen, with consideration for what facility is used and “what’s involved.” It’s not clear if a specimen constitutes the entire organ or only samples of it.
Nucatola doesn’t specifically say that the price is for the purchase of the tissue, but the comment troubled bioethicist Art Caplan of New York University, who said after watching the edited version of the video it sounds like Planned Parenthood might be trying to make a profit.
But in the longer version of the video, Nucatola elaborates and appears to say the price is related to the cost of performing the procedure and shipping.
“It just has to do with space issues. Are you sending someone there who is going to be doing everything or is their staff going to be doing it? What exactly are they going to be doing? Is there shipping involved or is someone coming to pick it up?”
Selling fetal body parts — or any body parts — is against federal law, but Planned Parenthood said it makes no profit.
“In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field,” the group said.
Another part of the video also raised concerns for Caplan. Nucatola talks about doctors performing abortions in which ultrasound is used to ascertain the best location to grab the fetus with forceps.
“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver because we know that, I’m not going to crush that part,” she says.
Altering procedures in order to get tissue in the best condition would be a “big no-no,” the bioethicist said, because the patient’s health is paramount and that should be the only concern for doctors. Caplan did not comment specifically on whether the ultrasound procedure would endanger the mother, but he made it clear that any deviation from normal procedures is unacceptable.
“In abortion the primary goal is to give the safest abortion possible,” Caplan said. “Your sole concern has to be the mother and her health.”
There’s a parallel in patient care, he said. When someone is dying, doctors shouldn’t change how they treat the patient in order to harvest good tissue for donation after death.
Doctors should treat the patient as they normally would, and then use whatever is available after death. If a provider is considering how to get the tissue that’s in the best shape, “that’s a huge conflict of interest. … If you modify how someone dies, that’s unethical.”
The Center for Medical Progress also alleges that Nucatola describes a method — using ultrasound to manipulate the fetus so it comes out feet first, or breech presentation, instead of head first, or vertex presentation — that “is the hallmark of the illegal partial-birth abortion procedure.”
Partial birth abortions are illegal, according to U.S. law, which defines them as procedures “in which the person performing the abortion deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother, for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus.”
On the video, Nucatola describes the best strategy to extract calavarium, or skulls, intact, but it is not clear if she is speaking in general terms or if she is describing Planned Parenthood’s methods. And then, she says nothing about whether the fetus is still alive when it’s delivered.
“And with the calvarium, in general, some people will actually try to change the presentation so that it’s not vertex, because when it’s vertex presentation, you never have enough dilation at the beginning of the case, unless you have real, huge amount of dilation to deliver an intact calvarium. So if you do it starting from the breech presentation, there’s dilation that happens as the case goes on, and often, the last, you can evacuate an intact calvarium at the end.”
The Center for Medical Progress responded to Planned Parenthood’s written statement about the video and accused Planned Parenthood of lying about obtaining consent from patients and not making a profit on the tissue transactions. It did not offer any further evidence of either claim.
GOP calls for Hill hearings on Planned Parenthood video
Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, said the anti-abortion group was the one that was lying.
“A well-funded group established for the purpose of damaging Planned Parenthood’s mission and services has promoted a heavily edited, secretly recorded videotape that falsely portrays Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research,” it said.
The statement continued, “Similar false accusations have been put forth by opponents of abortion services for decades. These groups have been widely discredited and their claims fall apart on closer examination, just as they do in this case.”
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/15/health/planned-parenthood-undercover-video/
Cecile Richards
Austin, Texas, U.S.
Cecile Richards (born 1958)[1] is an American activist and has been the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America since 2006.[2] She is a member of the Democratic Party.[3] In 2010, Richards was elected to the Ford Foundation board of trustees.
Contents
Political involvement
Richards previously founded and served as president of America Votes, a coalition of national Democratic Party-affiliated organizations.[4] Before that, she was deputy chief of staff to the U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives.[5] She has also worked at the Turner Foundation.[6] In 1996, she founded the Texas Freedom Network, a Texas organization formed to counter the Christian right.[7]
Personal life
Richards is the daughter of former Texas governor Ann Richards (née Dorothy Ann Willis) and David Richards.[3] She attended St. Stephen’s Episcopal School for high school, and graduated from Brown University in 1980.[8] She is married to Kirk Adams, a labor organizer with the Service Employees International Union, and has three children.[9] She currently lives in New York City.[10]
Awards and honors
References
External links
Gloria Feldt
2006–present
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecile_Richards
Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), commonly shortened to Planned Parenthood, is the U.S. affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and one of its larger members. PPFA is a non-profit organization providing reproductive health and maternal and child health services. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Inc. (PPAF) is a related organization which lobbies for pro-choice legislation, comprehensive sex education, and access to affordable health care in the United States. In recent years, Planned Parenthood has begun to move away from the pro-choice label to words and phrases that more accurately reflect the entire range of women’s health and economic issues.[3]
Planned Parenthood is the largest U.S. provider of reproductive health services, including cancer screening, HIV screening and counseling, contraception, and abortion.[4][5][6] Contraception accounts for 34% of PPFA’s total services and abortions account for 3%; PPFA conducts roughly 300,000 abortions each year, among 3 million people served.[7][8][9]
The organization has its roots in Brooklyn, New York, where Margaret Sanger opened the country’s first birth-control clinic. Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which in 1942 became part of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Since then, Planned Parenthood has grown to have over 820 clinic locations in the U.S., with a total budget of US $1 billion. PPFA provides an array of services to over three million people in the United States, and supports services for over one million clients outside the United States.
History
Early history
Margaret Sanger (1922), the first president and founder of Planned Parenthood
The origins of Planned Parenthood date to October 16, 1916 when Margaret Sanger, her sister Ethel Byrne, and Fania Mindell opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York.[10] All three women were immediately arrested and jailed for violating provisions of the Comstock Act– for distributing “obscene materials” at the clinic. The “Brownsville trials” brought national attention and support to their cause, and although Sanger and her co-defendants were convicted, their convictions were eventually overturned. Their campaign led to major changes in the laws governing birth control and sex education in the United States.[11]
In 1938, the clinic was organized into the American Birth Control League, which became part of the only national birth control organization in the US until the 1960s, but the title was found too offensive and “against families” so the League began discussions for a new name.[12] By 1941, the organization was operating 222 centers and had served 49,000 clients.[13] By 1942 the League had become part of what became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.[12]
By 1960, the Federation’s grassroots volunteers had provided family planning counseling in hundreds of communities across the country.[13] Planned Parenthood was one of the founding members of the International Planned Parenthood Federation when it was launched at a conference in Bombay, India in 1952.[13][14]
After Sanger
Following Margaret Sanger, Alan Frank Guttmacher became president of Planned Parenthood and served from 1962 till 1974.[15] During his tenure, the Food and Drug Administration approved the sale of the original birth control pill, giving rise to new attitudes towards women’s reproductive freedom.[13] Also during his presidency, Planned Parenthood lobbied the federal government to support reproductive health, culminating with President Richard Nixon‘s signing of Title X to provide governmental subsidies for low-income women to access family planning services.[16] The Center for Family Planning Program Development was also founded as a semi-autonomous division during this time.[17] The center became an independent organization and was renamed the Guttmacher Institute in 1977.[17]
Faye Wattleton was the first woman named president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1978 and served till 1992.[18] She was the first African-American to serve as president, and the youngest president in Planned Parenthood’s history.[19] During her term, Planned Parenthood grew to become the seventh largest charity in the country, providing services to four million clients each year through its 170 affiliates whose activities were spread across 50 states.[20]
A Planned Parenthood supporter participates in a demonstration in support of the organization.
From 1996 to 2006, Planned Parenthood was led by Gloria Feldt.[21][22] Feldt activated the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the organization’s political action committee, launching what was the most far reaching electoral advocacy effort in its history.[23] She also launched the Responsible Choices Action Agenda, a nationwide campaign to increase services to prevent unwanted pregnancies, improve quality of reproductive care and ensure access to safe and legal abortions.[13] Another initiative was the commencement of a “Global Partnership Program” with the aim of building a vibrant activist constituency in support of family planning.[13]
On February 15, 2006, Cecile Richards became president of the organization.[24]
Margaret Sanger Awards
In 1966, PPFA began awarding the Margaret Sanger Award annually to honor, in their words, “individuals of distinction in recognition of excellence and leadership in furthering reproductive health and reproductive rights.” In the first year, it was awarded to four men, Carl G. Hartman, William H. Draper, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Martin Luther King.[25][26][27][28] Later recipients have included John D. Rockefeller III, Katharine Hepburn, Jane Fonda, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Ted Turner.[29][30][31]
Services and facilities
Location in Houston, Texas
PPFA is a federation of 85 independent Planned Parenthood affiliates around the U.S.[1] These affiliates together operate more than 820 health centers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.[1][32] The largest of these facilities, a $26 million, 78,000-square-foot (7,200 m2) structure was completed in Houston, Texas in May 2010.[33] This serves as a headquarters for 12 clinics in Texas and Louisiana.[33] Together, they are the largest family planning services provider in the U.S. with over four million activists, supporters and donors.[34][35][36] Planned Parenthood is staffed by 27,000 staff members and volunteers.[37]
They serve over five million clients a year, 26% of which are teenagers under the age of 19.[38] According to Planned Parenthood, 75% of their clients have incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level.[37]
Services provided at locations include contraceptives (birth control); emergency contraception; screening for breast, cervical and testicular cancers; pregnancy testing and pregnancy options counseling; testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases; comprehensive sexuality education, menopause treatments; vasectomies, tubal ligations, and abortion.
In 2009, Planned Parenthood provided 4,009,549 contraceptive services (35% of total), 3,955,926 sexually transmitted disease services (35% of total), 1,830,811 cancer related services (16% of total), 1,178,369 pregnancy/prenatal/midlife services (10% of total), 332,278 abortion services (3% of total), and 76,977 other services (1% of total), for a total of 11,383,900 services.[9][37][39][40][41][42] The organization also said its doctors and nurses annually conduct 1 million screenings for cervical cancer and 830,000 breast exams.
Funding
Planned Parenthood headquarters on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C.
Planned Parenthood has received federal funding since 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed into law the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act, amending the Public Health Service Act. Title X of that law provides funding for family planning services, including contraception and family planning information. The law enjoyed bipartisan support from liberals who saw contraception access as increasing families’ control over their lives, and conservatives who saw it as a way to keep people off welfare. Nixon described Title X funding as based on the premise that “no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition.”[43]
In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2011, total (consolidated) revenue was $201 million: clinic revenue totaling $2 million, grants and donations of $190 million, investment income of $2 million, and $7 million other income.[44] Approximately two-thirds of the revenue is put towards the provision of health services, while non-medical services such as sex education and public policy work make up another 16%; management expenses, fundraising, and international family planning programs account for most of the rest.
Planned Parenthood receives about a third of its money in government grants and contracts (about $360 million in 2009).[45] By law, federal funding cannot be allocated for abortions,[46] but some opponents of abortion have argued that allocating money to Planned Parenthood for the provision of other medical services “frees up” funds to be re-allocated for abortion.[4][47]
A coalition of national and local pro-life groups have lobbied federal and state government to stop funding Planned Parenthood, and as a result, Republican federal and state legislators have proposed legislation to reduce the funding levels.[46][48] Some six states have gone ahead with such proposals.[4][49][50][51] In some cases, the courts have overturned such actions, citing conflict with federal or other state laws, and in others, the federal executive branch has provided funding in lieu of the states.[50][51][52] In other cases, complete or partial defunding of Planned Parenthood has gone through successfully.[53][54]
Planned Parenthood is also funded by private donors, with a membership base of over 700,000 active donors whose contributions account for approximately one quarter of the organization’s revenue.[55] Large donors also contribute a substantial portion of the organization’s budget; past donors have included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Buffett Foundation, Ford Foundation, Turner Foundation, the Cullmans and others.[56][57][58][59] The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s contributions to the organization have been specifically marked to avoid funding abortions.[56] Some, such as the Buffett Foundation, have supported reproductive health that can include abortion services.[56] Pro-life groups have advocated the boycott of donors to Planned Parenthood.[60]
Stand on political and legal issues
Planned Parenthood and its predecessor organizations have provided and advocated for access to birth control. The modern organization of Planned Parenthood America is also an advocate for reproductive rights.[61] This advocacy includes contributing to sponsorship of abortion rights and women’s rights events[62] and assisting in the testing of new contraceptives.[63] The Federation opposes restrictions on women’s reproductive health services, including parental consent laws. Planned Parenthood has cited the case of Becky Bell, who died following a septic abortion after failing to seek parental consent, to justify their opposition.[64][65] Planned Parenthood also takes the position that laws requiring parental notification before an abortion is performed on a minor are unconstitutional on privacy grounds.[66] The organization also opposes laws requiring ultrasounds before abortions, stating that their only purpose is to make abortions more difficult to obtain.[67] Planned Parenthood has also opposed initiatives that require waiting periods before abortions,[68] and bans on late-term abortions including intact dilation and extraction, which has been illegal in the U.S. since 2003.[69]
Planned Parenthood argues for the wide availability of emergency contraception (EC) measures.[70] It opposes conscience clauses, which allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense drugs against their beliefs. In support of their position, they have cited cases where pharmacists have refused to fill life saving drugs under the laws.[71] Planned Parenthood has also been critical of hospitals that do not provide access to EC for rape victims.[72] Planned Parenthood supports and provides FDA-approved abortifacients such as mifepristone.[73]
Citing the need for medically accurate information in sex education, Planned Parenthood opposes abstinence-only education in public schools. Instead, Planned Parenthood is a provider of, and endorses, comprehensive sex education, which includes discussion of both abstinence and birth control.[74]
Political Action Committee
Planned Parenthood also has a political action committee called Planned Parenthood Action Fund. The committee was founded in 1996 by then new president Gloria Feldt for the purpose of maintaining reproductive health rights and supporting political candidates of the same mindset. In 2012 election cycle the committee gained prominence based on its effectiveness of spending on candidates.[75]
Before the U.S. Supreme Court
Former Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt with Congressman Albert Wynn in front of the U.S. Supreme Court
Planned Parenthood regional chapters have been active in the American courts. A number of cases in which Planned Parenthood has been a party have reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Notable among these cases is the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the case that sets forth the current constitutional abortion standard. In this case, “Planned Parenthood” was the Southeast Pennsylvania Chapter, and “Casey” was Robert Casey, the governor of Pennsylvania. The ultimate ruling was split, and Roe v. Wade was narrowed but upheld in an opinion written by Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter. Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens concurred with the main decision in separately written opinions. The Supreme Court struck down spousal consent requirements for married women to obtain abortions, but found no “undue burden”—an alternative to strict scrutiny which tests the allowable limitations on rights protected under the Constitution—from the other statutory requirements. Dissenting were William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Byron White. Blackmun, Rehnquist, and White were the only justices who voted on the original Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 who were still on the Supreme Court to rule on this case, and their votes on this case were consistent with their votes on the original decision that legalized abortion.[76] Only Blackmun voted to maintain Roe v. Wade in its entirety.
Other related cases include:
Controversy and criticism
Abortion
Planned Parenthood has occupied a central position in the abortion debate in the U.S., and has been among the most prominent targets of U.S. pro-life activists for decades. Congressional Republicans have attempted since the 1980s to defund the organization,[45] nearly leading to a government shutdown over the issue in 2011.[86] The federal money received by Planned Parenthood is not used to fund abortion services, but pro-life activists have argued that the funding frees up other resources which are, in turn, used to provide abortions.[45]
Planned Parenthood is the largest single provider of abortions in the U.S.[7] In 2009, Planned Parenthood performed 332,278 abortions (for comparison, 1.21 million abortions were performed in the US in 2008[87]), from which it derives about $164,154,000, or 15% of its annual revenue as of their 2008–2009 calculations.[88] According to PPFA’s own estimates, its contraceptive services prevent approximately 612,000 unintended pregnancies and 291,000 abortions annually.[37][89] Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards has argued that the organization’s family planning services reduce the need for abortions.[90] Megan Crepeau of the Chicago Tribune said that, because of its birth control and family planning services, PPFA could be “characterized as America’s largest abortion preventer.”[91] Anti-abortion activists dispute the evidence that greater access to contraceptives reduces abortions.[92]
Margaret Sanger and eugenics
In the 1920s various theories of eugenics were popular among intellectuals in the United States. For example, 75% of colleges offered courses on eugenics.[93] Sanger, in her campaign to promote birth control, teamed with eugenics organizations such as the American Eugenics Society, although she argued against many of their positions.[94][95][96] Scholars describe Sanger as believing that birth control, sterilization and abortion should be voluntary and not based on race.[97] She advocated for “voluntary motherhood”—the right to choose when to be pregnant—for all women, as an important element of women’s rights.[98][99] Opponents of Planned Parenthood often refer to Sanger’s connection with supporters of eugenics to discredit the organization by associating it, and birth control, with the more negative modern view of eugenics.[100][101] Planned Parenthood has responded to this effort directly in a leaflet acknowledging that Sanger agreed with some of her contemporaries who advocated the voluntary hospitalization or sterilization of people with untreatable, disabling, hereditary conditions, and limits on the immigration of the diseased. The leaflet also states that Planned Parenthood “finds these views objectionable and outmoded” but says that it was compelled to discuss the topic because “anti-family planning activists continue to attack Sanger . . . because she is an easier target” than Planned Parenthood.[102]
Recorded stings by pro-life activists
Planned Parenthood supporters in Columbus, OH
Periodically pro-life activists have tried to demonstrate that Planned Parenthood does not follow applicable state or federal laws. The groups called or visited a Planned Parenthood health center posing as victims of statutory rape,[103] minors who would need parental notification for abortion,[104][105] racists seeking to earmark donations for abortions for black women to abort black babies,[106] or pimps who want abortions for child prostitutes.[107] Edited video and audio productions of these dialogues seem to capture employees being sympathetic to potentially criminal acts, leading to allegations that the health centers in question are violating the law. An official federal inspection in 2005 by the Bush administration‘s Department of Health and Human Services “yielded no evidence of clinics around the nation failing to comply with laws on reporting child abuse, child molestation, sexual abuse, rape or incest.”[104]
In 2011, the organization Live Action released a series of videos that they said showed Planned Parenthood employees at multiple affiliates actively assisting or being complicit in aiding the underage prostitution ring of actors posing as a pimp and a prostitute. Planned Parenthood conducted a frame-by-frame analysis of the recordings, and said they found instances of “editing that dramatically alter[ed] the meaning of the recorded conversations.”[108]
None of these stings have led to criminal conviction.[109] However, a small number of Planned Parenthood employees and volunteers were fired for not following procedure, and the organization committed to retraining its staff.[106][110]
State and local court cases against Planned Parenthood
In some states, anti-abortion Attorneys General have subpoenaed medical records of patients treated by Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood has gone to court to keep from turning over these records, citing medical privacy and concerns about the motivation for seeking the records.[111]
In 2006, Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, a strongly anti-abortion Republican, released some sealed patient records obtained from Planned Parenthood to the public. His actions were described as “troubling” by the state Supreme Court, but ultimately Planned Parenthood was compelled to turn over the medical records, albeit with more stringent court-mandated privacy safeguards for the patients involved.[111] In 2007, Kline’s successor, Paul J. Morrison, notified the clinic that no criminal charges would be filed after a three-year investigation, as “an objective, unbiased and thorough examination” showed no wrongdoing. Morrison stated that he believed Kline had politicized the attorney general’s office.[112] In 2012, a Kansas district attorney dropped all of the remaining criminal charges against the Kansas City-area Planned Parenthood clinic accused of performing illegal abortions, citing a lack of evidence of wrongdoing.[113] In all, the Planned Parenthood clinic had faced 107 criminal charges from Kline and other Kansas prosecutors, all of which were ultimately dropped for lack of evidence.[113]
In Indiana, Planned Parenthood was not required to turn over its medical records in an investigation of possible child abuse.[114] In October 2005, Planned Parenthood Minnesota/North Dakota/South Dakota was fined $50,000 for violating a Minnesota state parental consent law.[115]
On December 31, 2012, Judge Gary Harger ruled Texas may exclude otherwise qualified doctors and clinics from receiving state funding if they advocate for abortion rights.[116]
Anti-abortion violence
Planned Parenthood clinics have been the target of many instances of anti-abortion violence, including (but not limited to) bombing, arson, and attacks with chemical weaponry.[117][118][119][120][121][122][123][124][125][126][127]
1994 Brookline shootings
In 1994, John Salvi entered a Brookline, Massachusetts Planned Parenthood clinic and opened fire, murdering receptionist Shannon Elizabeth Lowney and wounding three others. He fled to another Planned Parenthood clinic where he murdered Leane Nichols and wounded two others.[128]
See also
Notes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood
Margaret Sanger
September 14, 1879
Corning, New York,
United States
Tucson, Arizona,
United States
James Noah H. Slee (1922–1943).
Margaret Higgins Sanger (September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Sanger was also a writer. She used this method to help promote her way of thinking. She was prosecuted for her book Family Limitation under the Comstock Act in 1914. She was afraid of what would happen, so she fled to Britain until she knew it was safe to return to the US.[citation needed] Sanger’s efforts contributed to several judicial cases that helped legalize contraception in the United States. Sanger is a frequent target of criticism by opponents of abortion and has also been criticized for supporting eugenics, but remains an iconic figure in the American reproductive rights movement.[2]
In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, which led to her arrest for distributing information on contraception. Her subsequent trial and appeal generated controversy. Sanger felt that in order for women to have a more equal footing in society and to lead healthier lives, they needed to be able to determine when to bear children. She also wanted to prevent unsafe abortions, so-called back-alley abortions, which were common at the time because abortions were usually illegal. She believed that while abortion was sometimes justified it should generally be avoided, and she considered contraception the only practical way to avoid the use of abortions.[citation needed]
In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In New York City, she organized the first birth control clinic staffed by all-female doctors, as well as a clinic in Harlem with an entirely African-American staff. In 1929, she formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, which served as the focal point of her lobbying efforts to legalize contraception in the United States. From 1952 to 1959, Sanger served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. She died in 1966, and is widely regarded as a founder of the modern birth control movement.
Life
Early life
Sanger was born Margaret Louise Higgins in 1879 in Corning, New York,[3] to Michael Hennessey Higgins, an Irish-born stonemason and free-thinker, and Anne Purcell Higgins, a Catholic Irish-American. Michael Hennessey Higgins had emigrated to the USA at age 14 and joined the U.S. Army as a drummer at age 15, during the Civil War. After leaving the army, Michael studied medicine and phrenology, but ultimately became a stonecutter, making stone angels, saints, and tombstones.[4] Michael H. Higgins was a Catholic who became an atheist and an activist for women’s suffrage and free public education.[5] Anne Higgins went through 18 pregnancies (with 11 live births) in 22 years before dying at the age of 49. Sanger was the sixth of eleven surviving children,[6] and spent much of her youth assisting with household chores and caring for her younger siblings. Anne’s parents took their children and emigrated to Canada when she was a child, due to the Potato Famine.
Supported by her two older sisters, Margaret Higgins attended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute, before enrolling in 1900 at White Plains Hospital as a nurse probationer. In 1902, she married the dashing architect William Sanger and gave up her education.[7] Though she was plagued by a recurring active tubercular condition, Margaret Sanger bore three children, and the couple settled down to a quiet life in Westchester, New York.
Sanger with sons Grant and Stuart, c. 1919
Social activism
In 1911, after a fire destroyed their home in Hastings-on-Hudson, the Sangers abandoned the suburbs for a new life in New York City. Margaret Sanger worked as a visiting nurse in the slums of the East Side, while her husband worked as an architect and a house painter. Already imbued with her husband’s leftist politics, Margaret Sanger also threw herself into the radical politics and modernist values of pre-World War I Greenwich Village bohemia. She joined the Women’s Committee of the New York Socialist party, took part in the labor actions of the Industrial Workers of the World (including the notable 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike and the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike) and became involved with local intellectuals, left-wing artists, socialists and social activists, including John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Mabel Dodge and Emma Goldman.[8]
Sanger’s political interests, emerging feminism and nursing experience led her to write two series of columns on sex education entitled “What Every Mother Should Know” (1911–12) and “What Every Girl Should Know” (1912-13) for the socialist magazine New York Call. By the standards of the day, Sanger’s articles were extremely frank in their discussion of sexuality, and many New York Call readers were outraged by them. Other readers, however, praised the series for its candor, one stated that the series contained “a purer morality than whole libraries full of hypocritical cant about modesty.[9] Both were later published in book form in 1916.[10]
During her work among working class immigrant women, Sanger was exposed to graphic examples of women going through frequent childbirth, miscarriage and self-induced abortion for lack of information on how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Access to contraceptive information was prohibited on grounds of obscenity by the 1873 federal Comstock law and a host of state laws. Searching for something that would help these women, Sanger visited public libraries, but was unable to find information on contraception.[11] These problems were epitomized in a (possibly fictional) story that Sanger would later recount in her speeches: while Sanger was working as a nurse, she was called to the apartment of a woman, “Sadie Sachs,” who had become extremely ill due to a self-induced abortion. Afterward, “Sadie” (whose marital status Sanger never mentioned) begged the attending doctor to tell her how she could prevent this from happening again, to which the doctor simply advised her to remain abstinent. A few months later, Sanger was called back to “Sadie’s” apartment — only this time, “Sadie” died shortly after Sanger arrived. She had attempted yet another self-induced abortion.[12][13] Sanger would sometimes end the story by saying, “I threw my nursing bag in the corner and announced … that I would never take another case until I had made it possible for working women in America to have the knowledge to control birth.” Although “Sadie Sachs” was possibly a fictional composite of several women Sanger had known, this story marks the time when Sanger began to devote her life to help desperate women before they were driven to pursue dangerous and illegal abortions.[13][14]
Accepting the connection proposed between contraception and working-class empowerment by radicals such as Emma Goldman, Sanger came to believe that only by liberating women from the risk of unwanted pregnancy would fundamental social change take place. She proceeded to launch a campaign to challenge governmental censorship of contraceptive information. She would set up a series of confrontational actions designed to challenge the law and force birth control to become a topic of public debate. Sanger’s trip to France in 1913 exposed her to what Goldman had been saying. Sanger’s experience during her trip to France directly influence The Women Rebel newsletter. The trip to France was also the beginning of the end of her marriage with William Sanger.[15]
In 1914, Sanger launched The Woman Rebel, an eight-page monthly newsletter which promoted contraception using the slogan “No Gods, No Masters“.[16][note 2][17] Sanger, collaborating with anarchist friends, popularized the term “birth control” as a more candid alternative to euphemisms such as “family limitation”[18] and proclaimed that each woman should be “the absolute mistress of her own body.”[19] In these early years of Sanger’s activism, she viewed birth control as a free-speech issue, and when she started publishing The Woman Rebel, one of her goals was to provoke a legal challenge to the federal anti-obscenity laws which banned dissemination of information about contraception.[20][21] Though postal authorities suppressed five of its seven issues, Sanger continuing publication, all the while preparing, Family Limitation, an even more blatant challenge to anti-birth control laws. This 16-page pamphlet contained detailed and precise information and graphic descriptions of various contraceptive methods. In August 1914 Margaret Sanger was indicted for violating postal obscenity laws by sending the The Woman Rebel through the postal system. Instead of standing trial, she jumped bail and fled to Canada. Then, under the alias “Bertha Watson”, sailed for England. En route she ordered her labor associates to release copies of the Family Limitation.[22]
Margaret Sanger spent much of her 1914 exile in England, where contact with British neo-Malthusianists helped refine her socioeconomic justifications for birth control. She was also profoundly influenced by the liberation theories of British sexual theorist Havelock Ellis. Under his tutelage she formulated a new rationale that would liberate women not just by making sexual intercourse safe, but also pleasurable. It would, in effect, free women from the inequality of sexual experience. Early in 1915, Margaret Sanger’s estranged husband, William Sanger, was entrapped into giving a copy of Family Limitation to a representative of anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock. William Sanger was tried and convicted, he spent thirty days in jail, while also escalating interest in birth control as a civil liberties issue.[23][24][25]
Birth control movement
This page from Sanger’s Family Limitation, 1917 edition, describes a cervical cap.
Some countries in northwestern Europe had more liberal policies towards contraception than the United States at the time, and when Sanger visited a Dutch birth control clinic in 1915, she learned about diaphragms and became convinced that they were a more effective means of contraception than the suppositories and douches that she had been distributing back in the United States. Diaphragms were generally unavailable in the United States, so Sanger and others began importing them from Europe, in defiance of United States law.[8]
In 1917, she started publishing the monthly periodical Birth Control Review.[note 3]
On October 16, 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic at 46 Amboy St. in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States.[26] Nine days after the clinic opened, Sanger was arrested. Sanger’s bail was set at $500 and she went back home. Sanger continued seeing some women in the clinic until the police came a second time. This time Sanger and her sister, Ethel Byrne, were arrested for breaking a New York state law that prohibited distribution of contraceptives, Sanger was also charged with running a public nuisance.[27] Sanger and Ethel went to trial in January 1917.[28] Byrne was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse but went on hunger strike. She was the first woman in the US to be force fed.[29] Only when Sanger pledged that Byrne would never break the law, she was pardoned after ten days.[30] Sanger was convicted; the trial judge held that women did not have “the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception.”[31] Sanger was offered a more lenient sentence if she promised to not break the law again, but she replied: “I cannot respect the law as it exists today.”[32] For this, she was sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse.[32] An initial appeal was rejected, but in a subsequent court proceeding in 1918, the birth control movement won a victory when Judge Frederick E. Crane of the New York Court of Appeals issued a ruling which allowed doctors to prescribe contraception.[33] The publicity surrounding Sanger’s arrest, trial, and appeal sparked birth control activism across the United States, and earned the support of numerous donors, who would provide her with funding and support for future endeavors.[34]
Sanger became estranged from her husband in 1913, and the couple’s divorce was finalized in 1921.[35] Sanger’s second husband was Noah Slee. He followed Sanger around the world and provided much of Sanger’s financial assistance. The couple got married in September 1922, but the public did not know about it until February 1924. They supported each other with their pre-commitments.[36]
American Birth Control League
Sanger published the Birth Control Review from 1917 to 1929.[note 4]
After World War I, Sanger shifted away from radical politics, and she founded the American Birth Control League (ABCL) in 1921 to enlarge her base of supporters to include the middle class.[37] The founding principles of the ABCL were as follows:[38]
Sanger’s appeal of her conviction for the Brownsville clinic secured a 1918 court ruling that exempted physicians from the law that prohibited the distribution of contraceptive information to women—provided it was prescribed for medical reasons—she established the Clinical Research Bureau (CRB) in 1923 to exploit this loophole.[8][39] The CRB was the first legal birth control clinic in the United States, and it was staffed entirely by female doctors and social workers.[40] The clinic received a large amount of funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his family, which continued to make donations to Sanger’s causes in future decades, but generally made them anonymously to avoid public exposure of the family name,[41] and to protect family member Nelson Rockefeller‘s political career since openly advocating birth control could have led to the Catholic Church opposing him politically.[42] John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated five thousand dollars to her American Birth Control League in 1924 and a second time in 1925.[43] In 1922, she traveled to China, Korea, and Japan. In China she observed that the primary method of family planning was female infanticide, and she later worked with Pearl Buck to establish a family planning clinic in Shanghai.[44] Sanger visited Japan six times, working with Japanese feminist Kato Shidzue to promote birth control.[45] This was ironic since ten years earlier Sanger had accused Katō of murder and praised an attempt to kill her.[46]
In 1926, Sanger gave a lecture on birth control to the women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey.[47] She described it as “one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing,” and added that she had to use only “the most elementary terms, as though I were trying to make children understand.”[47] Sanger’s talk was well received by the group, and as a result, “a dozen invitations to similar groups were proffered.”[47]
In 1928, conflict within the birth control movement leadership led Sanger to resign as the president of the ABCL and take full control of the CRB, renaming it the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB), marking the beginning of a schism in the movement that would last until 1938.[48]
Sanger invested a great deal of effort communicating with the general public. From 1916 onward, she frequently lectured—in churches, women’s clubs, homes, and theaters—to workers, churchmen, liberals, socialists, scientists, and upper-class women.[49] She wrote several books in the 1920s which had a nationwide impact in promoting the cause of birth control. Between 1920 and 1926, 567,000 copies of Woman and the New Race and The Pivot of Civilization were sold.[50] She also wrote two autobiographies designed to promote the cause. The first, My Fight for Birth Control, was published in 1931 and the second, more promotional version, Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography, was published in 1938.
During the 1920s, Sanger received hundreds of thousands of letters, many of them written in desperation by women begging for information on how to prevent unwanted pregnancies.[51][52] Five hundred of these letters were compiled into the 1928 book, Motherhood in Bondage.[53][54]
Planned Parenthood era
Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau operated from this New York building from 1930 to 1973.
In 1929, Sanger formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control in order to lobby for legislation to overturn restrictions on contraception.[55] That effort failed to achieve success, so Sanger ordered a diaphragm from Japan in 1932, in order to provoke a decisive battle in the courts. The diaphragm was confiscated by the United States government, and Sanger’s subsequent legal challenge led to a 1936 court decision which overturned an important provision of the Comstock laws which prohibited physicians from obtaining contraceptives.[56] This court victory motivated the American Medical Association in 1937 to adopt contraception as a normal medical service and a key component of medical school curriculums.[57]
This 1936 contraception court victory was the culmination of Sanger’s birth control efforts, and she took the opportunity, now in her late 50s, to move to Tucson, Arizona, intending to play a less critical role in the birth control movement. In spite of her original intentions, she remained active in the movement through the 1950s.[57]
In 1937, Sanger became chairman of the newly formed Birth Control Council of America, and attempted to resolve the schism between the ABCL and the BCCRB.[58] Her efforts were successful, and the two organizations merged in 1939 as the Birth Control Federation of America.[59][note 5] Although Sanger continued in the role of president, she no longer wielded the same power as she had in the early years of the movement, and in 1942, more conservative forces within the organization changed the name to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a name Sanger objected to because she considered it too euphemistic.[60]
In 1946, Sanger helped found the International Committee on Planned Parenthood, which evolved into the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1952, and soon became the world’s largest non-governmental international family planning organization. Sanger was the organization’s first president and served in that role until she was 80 years old.[61] In the early 1950s, Sanger encouraged philanthropist Katharine McCormick to provide funding for biologist Gregory Pincus to develop the birth control pill which was eventually sold under the name Enovid.[62]
Death
Margaret Sanger Square, at the intersection of Mott Street and Bleecker Street in Manhattan
Sanger died of congestive heart failure in 1966 in Tucson, Arizona, aged 86, about a year after the event that marked the climax of her 50-year career: the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized birth control in the United States.[note 6] Sanger is buried in Fishkill, New York, next to her sister, Nan Higgins, and her second husband, Noah Slee.[63] One of her surviving brothers was College Football Hall of Fame player and coach Bob Higgins.[64]
Legacy
Long after her death, Sanger has continued to be regarded as a leading figure in the battle for American women’s rights. Sanger’s story has been the subject of several biographies, including an award-winning biography published in 1970 by David Kennedy, and is also the subject of several films, including Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story.[65] Sanger’s writings are curated by two universities: New York University‘s history department maintains the Margaret Sanger Papers Project,[66] and Smith College‘s Sophia Smith Collection maintains the Margaret Sanger Papers collection.[67]
Sanger has been recognized with many important honors. In 1957, the American Humanist Association named her Humanist of the Year. Government authorities and other institutions have memorialized Sanger by dedicating several landmarks in her name, including a residential building on the Stony Brook University campus, a room in Wellesley College’s library,[68] and Margaret Sanger Square in New York City’s Greenwich Village.[69] In 1993, the Margaret Sanger Clinic—where she provided birth control services in New York in the mid twentieth century—was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service.[70] In 1966, Planned Parenthood began issuing its Margaret Sanger Awards annually to honor “individuals of distinction in recognition of excellence and leadership in furthering reproductive health and reproductive rights.”[71]
Due to her connection with Planned Parenthood, many who are opposed to abortion frequently condemn Sanger by criticizing her views on racial supremacy, birth control, and eugenics.[72][73][note 7] In spite of such controversies, Sanger continues to be regarded as an icon for the American reproductive rights movement and woman’s rights movement.
Controversies
Sexuality
While researching information on contraception Sanger read various treatises on sexuality in order to find information about birth control. She read The Psychology of Sex by the English psychologist Havelock Ellis and was heavily influenced by it.[74] While traveling in Europe in 1914, Sanger met Ellis.[75] Influenced by Ellis, Sanger adopted his view of sexuality as a powerful, liberating force.[76] This view provided another argument in favor of birth control, as it would enable women to fully enjoy sexual relations without the fear of an unwanted pregnancy.[77] Sanger also believed that sexuality, along with birth control, should be discussed with more candor.[76]
However, Sanger was opposed to excessive sexual indulgence. She stated “every normal man and woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and women who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells thinking deeply, are never sensual.”[78][79] Sanger said that birth control would elevate women away from a position of being an object of lust and elevate sex away from purely being for satisfying lust, saying that birth control “denies that sex should be reduced to the position of sensual lust, or that woman should permit herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction.”[80] Sanger wrote that masturbation was dangerous. She stated: “In my personal experience as a trained nurse while attending persons afflicted with various and often revolting diseases, no matter what their ailments, I never found any one so repulsive as the chronic masturbator. It would not be difficult to fill page upon page of heart-rending confessions made by young girls, whose lives were blighted by this pernicious habit, always begun so innocently.”[81] She believed that women had the ability to control their sexual impulses, and should utilize that control to avoid sex outside of relationships marked by “confidence and respect.” She believed that exercising such control would lead to the “strongest and most sacred passion.”[82] However, Sanger was not opposed to homosexuality and praised Ellis for clarifying “the question of homosexuals… making the thing a—not exactly a perverted thing, but a thing that a person is born with different kinds of eyes, different kinds of structures and so forth… that he didn’t make all homosexuals perverts—and I thought he helped clarify that to the medical profession and to the scientists of the world as perhaps one of the first ones to do that.”[83] Sanger believed sex should be discussed with more candor, and praised Ellis for his efforts in this direction. She also blamed the suppression of discussion about it on Christianity.[83]
Eugenics
Sanger’s 1920 book endorsed eugenics.
As part of her efforts to promote birth control, Sanger found common cause with proponents of eugenics, believing that they both sought to “assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit.”[84] Sanger was a proponent of negative eugenics, which aims to improve human hereditary traits through social intervention by reducing the reproduction of those who were considered unfit. In “The Morality of Birth Control,” a 1921 speech, she divided society into three groups: the educated and informed class that regulated the size of their families, the intelligent and responsible who desired to control their families however did not have the means or the knowledge and the irresponsible and reckless people whose religious scruples “prevent their exercising control over their numbers.” Sanger concludes “there is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.”[85] Sanger’s eugenic policies included an exclusionary immigration policy, free access to birth control methods and full family planning autonomy for the able-minded, and compulsory segregation or sterilization for the “profoundly retarded”.[86][87] In her book The Pivot of Civilization, she advocated coercion to prevent the “undeniably feeble-minded” from procreating.[88] Although Sanger supported negative eugenics, she asserted that eugenics alone was not sufficient, and that birth control was essential to achieve her goals.[89][90][91]
In contrast with eugenicist William Robinson, who advocated euthanasia for the unfit,[note 8] Sanger wrote, “we [do not] believe that the community could or should send to the lethal chamber the defective progeny resulting from irresponsible and unintelligent breeding.”[92] Similarly, Sanger denounced the aggressive and lethal Nazi eugenics program.[87] In addition, Sanger believed the responsibility for birth control should remain in the hands of able-minded individual parents rather than the state, and that self-determining motherhood was the only unshakable foundation for racial betterment.[89][93]
Sanger also supported restrictive immigration policies. In “A Plan for Peace”, a 1932 essay, she proposed a congressional department to address population problems. She also recommended that immigration exclude those “whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race,” and that sterilization and segregation be applied to those with incurable, hereditary disabilities.[86][87][94]
Race
W. E. B. Du Bois served on the board of Sanger’s Harlem clinic.[95]
Sanger’s writings echoed her ideas about inferiority and loose morals of particular races. In one “What Every Girl Should Know” commentary, she references popular opinion that Aboriginal Australians were “just a step higher than the chimpanzee” with “little sexual control,” as compared to the “normal man and Woman.”[78] Elsewhere she bemoaned that traditional sexual ethics “… have in the past revealed their woeful inability to prevent the sexual and racial chaos into which the world has today drifted.”[93]
Such attitudes did not keep her from collaborating with African-American leaders and professionals who saw a need for birth control in their communities. In 1929, James H. Hubert, a black social worker and leader of New York’s Urban League, asked Sanger to open a clinic in Harlem.[96] Sanger secured funding from the Julius Rosenwald Fund and opened the clinic, staffed with black doctors, in 1930. The clinic was directed by a 15-member advisory board consisting of black doctors, nurses, clergy, journalists, and social workers. The clinic was publicized in the African-American press and in black churches, and it received the approval of W. E. B. Du Bois, founder of the NAACP.[97] In 1939 Sanger wrote, “We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the 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.” She did not tolerate bigotry among her staff, nor would she tolerate any refusal to work within interracial projects.[98] Sanger’s work with minorities earned praise from Martin Luther King, Jr., in his 1966 acceptance speech for the Margaret Sanger award.[99]
From 1939 to 1942 Sanger was an honorary delegate of the Birth Control Federation of America, which included a supervisory role—alongside Mary Lasker and Clarence Gamble—in the Negro Project, an effort to deliver birth control to poor black people.[100] Sanger wanted the Negro Project to include black ministers in leadership roles, but other supervisors did not. To emphasize the benefits of involving black community leaders, she wrote to Gamble “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.” This quote has been cited by Angela Davis to support her claims that Sanger wanted to exterminate black people.[101] However, New York University’s Margaret Sanger Papers Project, argues that in writing that letter, “Sanger recognized that elements within the black community might mistakenly associate the Negro Project with racist sterilization campaigns in the Jim Crow South, unless clergy and other community leaders spread the word that the Project had a humanitarian aim.”[102]
Freedom of speech
Sanger opposed censorship throughout her career, with a zeal comparable to her support for birth control. Sanger grew up in a home where iconoclastic orator Robert Ingersoll was admired.[103] During the early years of her activism, Sanger viewed birth control primarily as a free-speech issue, rather than as a feminist issue, and when she started publishing The Woman Rebel in 1914, she did so with the express goal of provoking a legal challenge to the Comstock laws banning dissemination of information about contraception.[21] In New York, Emma Goldman introduced Sanger to members of the Free Speech League, such as Edward Bliss Foote and Theodore Schroeder, and subsequently the League provided funding and advice to help Sanger with legal battles.[104]
Over the course of her career, Sanger was arrested at least eight times for expressing her views during an era in which speaking publicly about contraception was illegal.[105] Numerous times in her career, local government officials prevented Sanger from speaking by shuttering a facility or threatening her hosts.[106] In Boston in 1929, city officials under the leadership of James Curley threatened to arrest her if she spoke—so she turned the threat to her advantage and stood on stage, silent, with a gag over her mouth, while her speech was read by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.[107]
Abortion
Sanger’s family planning advocacy always focused on contraception, rather than abortion.[108][note 9] It was not until the mid-1960s, after Sanger’s death, that the reproductive rights movement expanded its scope to include abortion rights as well as contraception.[note 10] Sanger was opposed to abortions, both because she believed that life should not be terminated after conception, and because they were dangerous for the mother in the early 20th century. In her book Woman and the New Race, she wrote: “while there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.”[111]
Historian Rodger Streitmatter concluded that Sanger’s opposition to abortion stemmed from concerns for the dangers to the mother, rather than moral concerns.[112] However, in her 1938 autobiography, Sanger noted that her opposition to abortion was based on the taking of life: “[In 1916] we explained what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun.”[113] And in her book Family Limitation, Sanger wrote that “no one can doubt that there are times when an abortion is justifiable but they will become unnecessary when care is taken to prevent conception. This is the only cure for abortions.”[114]
Works
See also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger
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