In a response on another thread, a regular blogger had the following to say in response to comments about Planned Parenthood:
I support Planned Parenthood. Abortion is the service that PP gets the most press about, but they also offer sliding scale fee gynecological procedures, reduced cost birth control, free pregnancy tests, free condoms, and reproductive health counseling, among other things (there are quite a few PPs that don't even provide abortions).
They have helped many women with family planning and health care services. These birth control and family planning services often serve to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and thus lessen the demand for abortion.
Let me preface my following comments by saying I respect this person's viewpoint entirely. I know the individual well enough to know that the response is a reasonable, intelligent response. But what I have witnessed of Planned Parenthood, as well as the statements of many of their more vocal followers has led me to an entirely different conclusion.
To find basis for my objection, one need look no further than the following words of Planned Parenthood's founder and icon, Margaret Sanger (following quotes were found at Link ):
"The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."
Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race
(Eugenics Publ. Co., 1920, 1923)
On blacks, immigrants and indigents:
"...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born." Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, referring to immigrants and poor people
On sterilization & racial purification:
Sanger believed that, for the purpose of racial "purification," couples should be rewarded who chose sterilization. Birth Control in America, The Career of Margaret Sanger, by David Kennedy, p. 117, quoting a 1923 Sanger speech.
On the right of married couples to bear children:
Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child, she wrote in her "Plan for Peace." Birth Control Review, April 1932
On the purpose of birth control:
The purpose in promoting birth control was "to create a race of thoroughbreds," she wrote in the Birth Control Review, Nov. 1921 (p. 2)
On the rights of the handicapped and mentally ill, and racial minorities:
"More children from the fit, less from the unfit -- that is the chief aim of birth control." Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12
On mandatory sterilization of the poor:
One of Sanger's greatest influences, sexologist/eugenicist Dr. Havelock Ellis (with whom she had an affair, leading to her divorce from her first husband), urged mandatory sterilization of the poor as a prerequisite to receiving any public aid. The Problem of Race Regeneration, by Havelock Ellis, p. 65, in Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society, p. 18. Ellis believed that any sex was acceptable, as long as it hurt no one. The Sage of Sex, A Life of Havelock Ellis, by Arthur Calder-Marshall, p. 88
Now, I have let Sanger's own words speak for themselves. I simply cannot respect an organization that holds an esteemed view of such a woman.