Planned Parenthood disavows its founder (but not abortion)

BioEdge 25 April 2021
Family First Comment: Still a racist and dangerous organisation – irresepective of their new virtue signalling
“Nearly 80% of Planned Parenthood’s clinics are located within walking distance of neighborhoods occupied predominantly by black and Hispanic residents. Despite constituting only 13 percent of the female population, black women represent more than one-third of all abortions in the U.S. each year. Black women are five times more likely than white women to obtain an abortion, and abortions are highly concentrated among low-income women. In recent years in New York City, more black babies were aborted than were born alive.”

Planned Parenthood has a founder problem. Margaret Sanger was a racist and a eugenicist. Critics of Planned Parenthood have been needling the organisation over its founder’s dark ideas for decades. Finally, under the pressure of the anti-racist movement, PP has cracked.

In an astonishing mea culpa in the op-ed page of the New York Times, Alexis McGill Johnson, the new president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, writes that

Up until now, Planned Parenthood has failed to own the impact of our founder’s actions. We have defended Sanger as a protector of bodily autonomy and self-determination, while excusing her association with white supremacist groups and eugenics as an unfortunate “product of her time.”

From now on, says, McGill Johnson, PP will tone down its association with Sanger and commit itself to combat racism and all forms of dehumanisation. It will also work for trans and non-binary rights. This, she says, might seem like virtue signalling. But it’s not. “Achieving health equity requires fighting the systemic racism that creates barriers to sexual and reproductive health care.”

Yet, as critics of McGill Johnson’s statement immediately pointed out, PP is still proudly the largest abortion provider in the United States. And black babies are over-represented. As Alexandra DeSanctis comments in the National Review:

Nearly 80 percent of Planned Parenthood’s clinics are located within walking distance of neighborhoods occupied predominantly by black and Hispanic residents. Despite constituting only 13 percent of the female population, black women represent more than one-third of all abortions in the U.S. each year. Black women are five times more likely than white women to obtain an abortion, and abortions are highly concentrated among low-income women. In recent years in New York City, more black babies were aborted than were born alive.
READ MORE: https://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/planned-parenthood-disavows-its-founder-but-not-abortion/13780