Margaret Sanger Interview – Bringing Children into the World is a Sin
Interviewer: Do you believe in sin? When I say believe, I don’t mean to believe in committing sin. Do you believe there is such a thing as a as sin?
Margaret Sanger – Planned Parenthood Founder: Well, I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically, delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things, just marked when they’re born. That to me is the greatest sin that people can commit.
Interviewer: But sin in the ordinary sense that we regard it, do you believe or do you not believe? Do you believe that infidelity is a sin?
Margaret Sanger – Planned Parenthood Founder: Well, I’m not going to specify what I think is sin. I’ve stated what I think is the worst sin.
Interviewer: Yes, but then you asked me to say what, and I said what, and you refused to answer me.
Margaret Sanger – Planned Parenthood Founder: Yes, I didn’t know about infidelity. It has so many personalities to it and what a person’s own belief is. You can’t, I couldn’t generalize on any of those things.
Second Interview with Margaret Sanger – Women Who Want Babies
Interviewer: What about the women who want babies now and in 10 years will not be able to have babies?
Margaret Sanger – Planned Parenthood Founder: It’s rather impractical, don’t you think? I should think that instead of being impractical, it is really very practical and intelligent and humane. From my view, I believe there should be no more babies.
Jewish Women’s Archive – Website Link
In the 1910s, Margaret Sanger sparked the family planning movement in the U.S. Even though Sanger wasn’t Jewish, the Jewish community significantly influenced her activism, leaving a lasting mark on the lives of Jewish women across the country. In 1916, she took a bold step by opening the nation’s first birth control clinic. Then, in 1921, she established the American Birth Control League, which later transformed into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. By 1923, Sanger set up the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau. She brought on many Jewish women doctors and social workers who faced hurdles in finding jobs elsewhere. Fast forward to the 1950s, where she teamed up with an American Jewish collaborator to create the birth control pill. A decade later, a Jewish gynecologist took the helm as president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Jewish Currents – Margaret Sanger’s Jewish Allies – Website Link
KEY JEWISH ALLIES:
- Feminist birth control movement were Fania Mindell: JEWISH – Brownsville Clinic in Brooklyn, which led to their arrest for “distribution of obscene materials” (including Yiddish birth-control pamphlets).
- Another Jewish ally was Anna Lifschiz, Sanger’s secretary from 1916 to the early 1920s; JEWISH
- Emma Goldman – who was arrested several times for defending Sanger’s work – JEWISH
- Rose Pastor Stokes – a celebrity activist by virtue of her marriage to a man of great wealth – JEWISH
- Dr. Hannah Meyer Stone, director of the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau – JEWISH
- Gertrude Weil, a suffragist and civil rights activist in North Carolina, who was a lifelong financial supporter of Planned Parenthood. – JEWISH
