The Prophetic Margaret Sanger

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President Obama has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to feminist icon Gloria Steinem. Steinem, in turn, said she hopes Obama’s action “honor[s] the work of Margaret Sanger,” liberalism’s iconic racial eugenicist.

It indeed has.

Margaret Sanger longed for a time when birth control would be (as she put it) “part of the regular welfare service of the government.” In this, she was inspired by Stalin’s Soviet Union—literally. In 1934, she undertook a hope-filled, fact-finding pilgrimage to Moscow. She was greatly impressed.

Upon her return, Sanger glowingly reported that “there are no obstacles to birth control in Russia. It is accepted … on the grounds of health and human right.” She said of America: “[W]e could well take example from Russia, where there are no legal restrictions, no religious condemnation, and where birth control instruction is part of the regular welfare service of the government.”

Sanger was prophetic. She was speaking of Barack Obama’s America, where birth control is deemed a “human right” and form of “health care” with no obstacles in its way. In fact, it’s even easier than Sanger could have imagined: Not only do contemporary progressives want no obstacles … they want all Americans to forcibly pay for birth control. If you disagree, you favor a “war on women.”

But there was more to Margaret Sanger’s vision. She wanted to advance what she called “race improvement.” She lamented America’s “race of degenerates.” This meant purging the landscape of its “human weeds.” This included a “Negro Project” especially close to Sanger’s heart.

Not surprisingly, among those most impressed with Sanger’s work was the KKK. The Klan invited the progressive heroine to one of their celebrations. She accepted. Margaret Sanger addressed her hooded brethren at a KKK rally in Silver Lake, New Jersey in 1926.

Today, Sanger’s Planned Parenthood is America’s most prolific killer of black Americans.

And now, in 2013, America’s first black president honors Gloria Steinem with an award that Steinem says honors Margaret Sanger.

The Devil works in mysterious ways.

image: Margaret Sanger on the courthouse steps, New York/Wikimedia Commons 

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Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism” and “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.”

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