The Lesson of Our Legacy: Planned Parenthood at #100YearsStrong
Just a few months ago, the NFL man of the year, Baltimore Ravens’ Benjamin Watson said, “the whole idea with Planned Parenthood and Sanger in the past was to exterminate blacks.” As a resident of Baltimore, I was especially saddened to hear this. Since time immemorial, women of color have been relentlessly working to secure their reproductive autonomy — and society has just as aggressively tried to strip them of it. So I wasn’t surprised. Because if you do a cursory search online, or listen to any number of abortion opponents, including some who hold office or other leadership positions, you will see and hear this lie repeated. It’s been intentionally pushed into Black communities in an effort to create fear and mistrust of Planned Parenthood. These accusations are nothing more than a dangerous deception perpetrated by opponents of abortion rights and the social conservative movement that has otherwise paid scant attention to the actual lives and health care needs of women of color.
On the contrary, at the core of Planned Parenthood’s mission is the fundamental belief that all individuals have the right to make their own reproductive health care decisions. And as such, Planned Parenthood has been and will continue to be committed to providing high-quality health care, including abortion, with dignity and respect to all people, including Black women.
Anti-abortion groups, often led by white males, have gone to extraordinary lengths to shame Black women about their reproductive health care decisions, especially when it comes to their right to seek and choose abortion, taking away agency and autonomy that Black women have been fighting for since the days of slavery. This shaming is public and brutal. It has included running demeaning billboard campaigns designed to make women of color feel ashamed about exercising their legal right to have an abortion. These attacks have even gone as far as accusing women of participating in genocide of their own race. What is most clear is that these individuals don’t believe that Black women can be trusted with their own health care decisions.
Misconceptions about Planned Parenthood are dangerous, but understandable, considering the number of years that those opposed to safe and legal abortion have tried to malign Planned Parenthood’s legacy by vilifying the transformative work of Margaret Sanger, who founded the organization 100 years ago in her pursuit to ensure access to birth control.
Numerous brilliant Black scholars, writers, organizers and leaders have set the record straight on these lies, including the founders of the important Reproductive Justice movement, and organizations like SisterSong and Trust Black Women, among others. On October 16, Planned Parenthood turns 100 years strong, and I’m adding my voice. Because our patients and the communities we serve deserve not only the high-quality care that Planned Parenthood provides, they deserve the facts about the past, the present, and especially what we plan to do in the future.
Our founder, Margaret Sanger was a trailblazing visionary. And like all visionaries, she was flawed. In her relentless pursuit to help women control their reproduction, and thus their lives, Sanger would speak to anyone who would listen, including groups whose views were racist and ableist. This singular focus on birth control led Sanger to engage with eugenicists — many of whom applied their theory in racist ways. And yes, she also spoke to the women of the KKK, in an effort to spread her message to this group of women too. But to claim that Sanger was racist is inaccurate and completely ignores how ahead of her time she was on matters of race.
That said, while Sanger uniformly rejected the racist exploitation of eugenics principles, she wasn’t as forward thinking on matters of ableism. In fact, she supported the 1927 Supreme Court decision, Buck v. Bell, which affirmed states’ rights to sterilize those deemed to have low-intelligence or disabilities. It’s clear that Sanger was an imperfect heroine of our movement.
Margaret Sanger taught us the importance of ensuring all women have access to the sexual and reproductive care they need. But her legacy has also taught us the dangers of getting swept up in the public health trends of the day — at the expense of individual autonomy. And it’s this understanding of past mistakes that is at the center of my work today. As a Black woman and a physician who is serving as the Chief Medical Officer at Planned Parenthood, I have a tremendous opportunity to shape and drive the care that we provide in our second century. And I am heartened by what I see every day — women of color taking charge of their health care, showing up at our health centers just as their forbearers did — unapologetic, determined, and proud.
Over the past 100 years, we’ve seen tremendous progress in women’s health — yet we still have work to do. While maternal and infant mortality rates are mere fractions of what they were in 1916, for women of color the rates are still too high. People have more access to birth control and information, and rates of unintended pregnancy are at a 30-year low — yet we still have to fight for women of color to have agency over their bodies.
We will use our past as our guide to do even better in the future. We will not rest until access to high-quality health care and rights is a reality for all people regardless of income, race, or geographic location. We will not stand for ill-informed opponents of reproductive health care using racist, untrue propaganda to shame women from seeking the care they need. And most importantly, we will build on our proud legacy and launch our second century with clarity and conviction — ensuring we’re centering the needs of those far too often left behind — so that all people have full control of their bodies and can determine their own destinies. Planned Parenthood is determined to fight for this vision, now and always.
