Planned Parenthood? No Abortion? Your Choice!

Usman Siddiqui
Jul 21, 2017 · 4 min read

Uncovering the Ugly of Planned Parenthood

This saying from Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, highlights the ideology of the organization’s creation. With this being the basis of the organization, there are probably still people who think this way.

As Planned Parenthood has remained in the forefront of American politics because of its abortion services, the recent presidential campaigns have given great attention to the organization. I was of the mindset that as long as the organization is there to simply provide health services to women, it should remain open and the opposition didn’t make much sense to me. Recently I was taking a class on abortion politics, and I was exposed to the actual goals of the organization at its creation and the history of its founder, Margaret Sanger. This really opened my eyes and, while I am completely pro-choice and support women being able to control their bodies and against the idea of bringing people into the world who will not have proper support, my view has shifted and I am against supporting Planned Parenthood.

The ugly history of the organization begins with its founder and her association with the Ku Klux Klan. Sanger gave lectures on birth control and the importance of controlling women’s bodies in 1926 to the notorious hate organization. The fishiness around this comes from the question of why Sanger was talking to this organization and why specifically about birth control? As it turns out, Sanger had a very deranged goal in mind when she founded Planned Parenthood. She wanted to eliminate the black population and her avenue to do this would be to promote abortion so that the population remains under control. An account of how she felt about her speeches to the organization can be found here. The goal of controlling the population came from Sanger’s involvement in the American Eugenic Society. Hearing of the goals of this organization makes things much uglier. They aimed to “improve” the population by introducing more desirable traits so that they can have a society of people more willing to push the education agenda that they desired.

Along with these details about Sanger and the basis of Planned Parenthood, this class exposed me to a quote from a prominent feminist from the 20th century, Aubrey Lorde. This quote was from a speech in which she was speaking about feminist ideology and women’s rights in conjunction with the struggles of other oppressed and disadvantaged groups like blacks, the poor, and the elderly, among others. The excerpt from this speech that I am referring to is when she said, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” I had my attention drawn to this portion of her speech only a week ago, but it has really stuck with me and I have thought about in great depth since then.

This quote evoked thoughts of numerous things to me. At 22 years old, I have had two chances to participate in the United States primary election, but I have yet to take part in the system because I feel as if it was designed to favor a candidate from either of just two parties, giving a candidate from any other party no chance. Since I have never seen the political process as a fair system that allows people to vote their values and knowing that the candidates that hold their values have a chance to be elected, I realized that the system was flawed and set up in a certain way that perpetuates the oppressive values and actions that were instilled from the start.

Upon hearing and analyzing the quote from Lorde, I was reminded of why I do not take part in the election process. The system was created by the “master” and I do not believe there is any route to destroying the ills of the system by taking part in it or, as Lorde said, use the tools of the master to dismantle it.

There are still people in the organization with the racist framework of its inception. Just last August, as early as 2016, a contractor who was building an abortion facility for Planned Parenthood in Washington, D.C. was asked if he would be plumbing for the KKK. He responded, “I absolutely would. I’m from the South, man. I like them.”

My support for abortion stems mainly from my time working in the emergency department at the hospital. I only worked in this department for around one week and in just this one week, I saw a 14 year old girl and a 17 year old girl come inside to be checked in because they needed to deliver. Neither of these girls had any male support, making it both disturbing and alarming. I immediately began to think, “Why should we bring a child in the world who would have to be in such a horrible situation?” In addition, my concerns grew into, “Isn’t it more likely that this child could end up getting into gangs and drugs, hurting other people and, in turn, cutting into our tax dollars?” It was chilling to me that because of a mistake made by the male and female who brought about the prospect of this child, the child could have to pay by having to live an extremely disadvantageous life.

Abortion is necessary in many cases, to preserve the burden on tax-paying citizens, to prevent a child from coming into the world without the necessary support, and, in some cases, to preserve the health of the woman. In my pursuit of becoming a physician, I worked in a hospital and this was an eye-opening experience to me as I learned how a person can think from both a pro-choice and pro-life perspective. Still, I believe Planned Parenthood has to be done away with and we need a new poster-child organization for abortion that is re-branded and doesn’t have this dark history attached to it.

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