DAY 27: Who is Margaret Sanger?

Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) was a controversial political activist, writer, sex educator and nurse who pioneered the women’s reproductive rights movement in the United States.

In 1916, she opened the world’s first birth control clinic in New York City.  And then in 1921 she founded the organization that later became known as the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

The reason we should be familiar with Sanger is because her ideology is the corrupt root of the Planned Parenthood tree.  Here are a few things she believed, contrasted with the teaching of Scripture…

Margaret Sanger: Believed all people are entitled to sexual pleasure and fulfillment.

Bible: “It is God’s will that you should be holy: You must abstain from sexual immorality; each of you must know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God…” (1Thes 4:3-5)

Margaret Sanger: Believed in “eugenics” – selectively breeding humans through birth control and sterilization to eliminate undesirable conditions in the population.

In her speech My Way To Peace, she wrote: “The first step would be to control the intake and output on morons, mental defectives, epileptics…  The second step would be to take an inventory of the second group, such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection and segregate them on farms and open spaces.”  (These physically and mentally “defective” people would only be allowed to return to mainstream society if they underwent sterilization.)

Bible: All people have equal dignity and value regardless of their physical or mental condition, because all people are created in the image of God (Gen 1:27).

Margaret Sanger: Believed having many children should be discouraged.  (“I associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jails with large families.”)

Bible: “Children are indeed a heritage from the LORD, and the fruit of the womb is His reward.  Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are children born in one’s youth.  Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them (Ps 127:3-5).

Margaret Sanger: Rejected the Biblical definition of sin.  When asked by a reporter if she believed there is such a thing as sin, she replied: “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 mark when they’re born.  That to me is the greatest sin.”

Bible:

“Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness” (1Jn 3:4).

“All unrighteousness is sin” (1Jn 5:17).

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 6:23).

Suggested things to pray for:

• Pray for the Spirit of God to convict people of sin and reveal their true and desperate need for a Savior.  
• Pray that people would see Planned Parenthood for what it is – a wicked organization that destroys human babies for money and promotes harmful sexual practices that devastate people’s lives.