Margaret Sanger’s Ghost: Planned Parenthood Terminates More Black Lives Than Any Other Demographic

Let me tell you about a woman who believed that certain human beings were weeds — her word, not mine — and who built an institution to pull them out of the earth. Her name was Margaret Sanger, and the institution she founded in 1916 is still operating today, still pulling, still funded by your tax dollars, still defended by the organizations that claim to speak in your name.

The institution is Planned Parenthood.

And if you are Black in America, the statistics of what it has accomplished in your community are so staggering, so relentless, so disproportionate, that if any other entity produced the same numbers, every civil rights leader in the country would call it exactly what it is — a targeted destruction of Black life.

But because this particular destruction comes wrapped in the language of choice and empowerment, because it is funded by the political allies of the civil rights establishment, because the money flows in the right direction and the endorsements follow the money — the silence is absolute.

And the silence is killing us.

The Founder’s Own Words

Margaret Sanger was not a closeted eugenicist. Eugenics is the belief that you can breed “better” humans by controlling who reproduces. Sanger was a proud advocate of it.

She served on the board of directors of the American Eugenics Society. She spoke at Ku Klux Klan rallies — a fact she documents herself in her autobiography, writing that she accepted an invitation to speak to the women’s branch of the KKK in Silver Lake, New Jersey, and that the visit was so successful she received “a dozen invitations to speak to similar groups” (Sanger, An Autobiography, 1938, Chapter 29, p. 366).

Her publication, The Birth Control Review, which she edited from 1917 to 1938, regularly featured articles by prominent eugenicists. In November 1921, the magazine published “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda” by Sanger herself, in which she argued that birth control was “the most constructive and necessary of the means to racial health” (Sanger, The Birth Control Review, October 1921).

In April 1932, she published her “Plan for Peace” in the same journal, which called for the segregation and sterilization of those she deemed “unfit” — including the “illiterate” and the “paupers” (Sanger, “A Plan for Peace,” The Birth Control Review, April 1932, pp. 107–108).

In her 1922 book The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger wrote explicitly about the “menace” of what she called the “unfit” reproducing. She called for the elimination of “human weeds,” for the cessation of charity because it enabled the “defective and diseased” to breed, and for a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted.

“Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly. Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to the maintenance of those who should never have been born.” — Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (1922), Chapter 8

The Negro Project

In 1939, Sanger launched what she called “The Negro Project” — a campaign to bring birth control services to Southern Black communities. The project’s stated goal was to reduce the Black birth rate.

Sanger wanted Black ministers involved for strategy, not for their ideas. She needed a Black face for a white agenda. In a December 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, heir to the Procter & Gamble fortune and a fellow eugenicist, Sanger wrote the sentence that has haunted her legacy ever since —

“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” — Margaret Sanger, letter to Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, December 10, 1939 (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Document #MS 320, Reel 73)

Planned Parenthood’s defenders have spent decades trying to recontextualize this sentence. They say Sanger was merely expressing concern about misperception. Read the letter yourself — it is available in the Smith College archives. Read the full context of the Negro Project. Read the proposal documents, which describe Black people in the South as a population that “breeds carelessly and disastrously.”

What is not debatable is this — the Negro Project was designed, from its inception, to reduce the number of Black children born in America. That was its purpose. That was the justification for its funding. That was its operational goal. And the institution that grew from it is still operating, still in the same communities, still producing the same result — at a scale that Margaret Sanger could not have dreamed of.

The Modern Numbers

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes annual abortion surveillance data. The numbers are not ambiguous. They are not open to interpretation. They are the most damning evidence against any institution in the Black community today.

Black women have abortions at 3.5 times the rate of white women (CDC, Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2021, MMWR Surveillance Summaries, Vol. 72, No. SS-9, Table 5). Black women account for approximately 33 percent of all abortions performed in the United States. Black Americans constitute approximately 13 percent of the total population.

This means abortion ends more Black lives than heart disease, cancer, accidents, HIV, and murder combined.

In New York City, the numbers cross a threshold that should stop every conversation in the room. According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Vital Statistics reports, in multiple recent years more Black babies were aborted than were born alive. In 2018, there were 25,889 Black non-Hispanic live births and 23,116 Black non-Hispanic abortions in the city (NYC DOHMH, Summary of Vital Statistics 2018 — Pregnancy Outcomes, Table 1). For every 1,000 Black babies born alive in New York City, approximately 893 were aborted.

Read those numbers again. Let them settle.

In America’s most progressive city, the rate of Black termination is nearly one for one. For every Black child who draws breath, another does not — and the institution facilitating this result is celebrated by the civil rights establishment as a guardian of freedom.

The Geography of Targeting

In 2012, the Protecting Black Life initiative published a comprehensive mapping analysis of Planned Parenthood surgical abortion facilities in the United States. Their finding — 79 percent of Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities are located within walking distance of African American or Hispanic neighborhoods (Protecting Black Life / Studnicki et al., 2020).

Consider what this means.

• If a fast-food chain placed 79% of its locations in minority neighborhoods, public health advocates would call it predatory targeting
• If a payday lending operation concentrated its offices at this rate in communities of color, the NAACP would demand investigation
• If a tobacco company distributed its products at this geographic concentration in Black neighborhoods, the Congressional Black Caucus would hold hearings
• But when the institution performing this targeting is Planned Parenthood, the response from the civil rights establishment is not investigation — it is endorsement

Why? Follow the money.

The Funding and the Silence

Planned Parenthood’s political action committees and affiliated organizations contribute millions of dollars each election cycle to political campaigns. In the 2020 cycle alone, Planned Parenthood’s political spending exceeded $45 million, virtually all of it directed to Democratic candidates and progressive organizations (OpenSecrets, Planned Parenthood Political Spending Summary, 2020).

The financial architecture is simple.

• Planned Parenthood funds the politicians
• The politicians fund Planned Parenthood — the organization receives more than $600 million annually in government funding, primarily through Medicaid reimbursements
• The civil rights organizations endorse the politicians
• The politicians protect Planned Parenthood from scrutiny

And the circle closes, seamless, lubricated by money, insulated by endorsements, defended by an establishment whose loyalty to its donors exceeds its loyalty to the community it claims to represent.

Every major civil rights organization in America — the NAACP, the National Urban League, the Congressional Black Caucus — defends Planned Parenthood. Not one of them has publicly asked the question the data demands. Why does an institution founded by a eugenicist, placed disproportionately in Black neighborhoods, terminating Black life at rates that exceed every other group, enjoy the protection of every organization that claims to advocate for Black life?

The Voices That Will Not Be Silenced

Not everyone has accepted the silence. Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the daughter of civil rights activist A.D. King, has spent decades speaking against what she calls “the great deception.” King has argued publicly and repeatedly that her uncle’s vision of justice is incompatible with an institution that disproportionately eliminates Black children.

She has pointed out that the Planned Parenthood “Margaret Sanger Award” was given to Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966. Planned Parenthood has used this fact for decades to claim his endorsement. But King never spoke publicly in support of abortion. The award was accepted on his behalf by his wife, Coretta Scott King, for his work on family planning broadly defined (King, A. C., Testimony before U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, 2011).

The late Dr. Mildred Fay Jefferson, the first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School, spent decades fighting Planned Parenthood’s presence in minority communities. She served as president of the National Right to Life Committee and argued, with the precision of a surgeon and the fury of a prophet, that the targeting of Black communities with abortion services was the continuation of the eugenics movement by other means.

These voices exist. They are documented. They are credentialed. They are ignored — not because their arguments lack merit, but because their arguments threaten the financial and political infrastructure that benefits from the silence.

The Question That Must Be Asked

Since the legalization of abortion in 1973 with Roe v. Wade, an estimated 20 million Black pregnancies have been terminated in the United States (Guttmacher Institute, Abortion Incidence and Service Availability In the United States, 2020; CDC Abortion Surveillance racial proportion data, 1973–2020; U.S. Census Bureau population totals).

Twenty million. The entire Black population of the United States in 1960 was 18.9 million.

The abortion industry has eliminated a number of Black lives that exceeds the total Black population of America at the dawn of the civil rights movement.

Every institution, every organization, every leader that defends the status quo must answer this question — if Margaret Sanger could see the current numbers — the disproportionate termination rates, the strategic facility placement, the elimination of Black life at a pace that exceeds every other demographic in America — would she be horrified, or would she be satisfied?

Read her writings. Read the Negro Project proposal. Read the letter to Clarence Gamble. Read the plan for peace. Read the language about weeds and the unfit and the menace of the feebleminded. And then look at the numbers — the CDC numbers, the New York City numbers, the geographic mapping data, the funding flows, the endorsements.

And ask yourself whether what is happening is an accident or a fulfillment.

The Puzzle and the Solution

A puzzle master looks at that question and identifies the variable that sustains the arrangement. It is not ideology. It is not healthcare access. It is not choice. It is money. Planned Parenthood spends $45 million per election cycle funding the political allies of civil rights organizations. Those allies fund Planned Parenthood with $600 million in annual government revenue. The civil rights organizations endorse those allies. The circle is closed. The variable is financial dependency.

Top 5 Solutions That Are Already Working

1. Facing History and Ourselves (Nationwide and International). This civic education program uses the history of the Holocaust, civil rights abuses, and other documented case studies to teach students critical thinking and civic participation. It has trained more than 10,000 teachers reaching over 500,000 students. Two randomized controlled trials showed positive effects on student reasoning. A study of 346 eighth graders showed measurably reduced racist attitudes, and 86% of alumni registered to vote — a rate higher than their peers. The program demonstrates that when you teach the full documented truth of how institutions exploited vulnerable populations, students develop the critical capacity to identify when it happens again. (Facing History and Ourselves; Institute of Education Sciences/WWC)

2. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (Nationwide, 600+ Health Centers). Planned Parenthood itself has begun a public reckoning with its founder’s legacy. The organization serves more than 2 million patients annually across 600 health centers. Sanger’s work led to the legalization of birth control and the first oral contraceptive in 1960. However, the organization has now publicly denounced Sanger’s racism and eugenics beliefs, removed her name from its Manhattan health center in 2020, and created a framework for how institutions can reckon with problematic founders while continuing to serve communities. Whether this reckoning is sufficient remains the central question this article raises. (Planned Parenthood; Population Reference Bureau; Women’s History Network)

3. Nurse-Family Partnership (40+ States). In this program, registered nurses conduct home visits for low-income first-time mothers from pregnancy through the child’s second birthday. The results are extraordinary — a 48% reduction in child abuse and neglect, 18% fewer preterm births, a 45.4% decrease in infant deaths, and a 5.6% reduction in TANF dependency. The program costs $4,500 per family per year. For Black mothers facing the pressures documented in this article, the Nurse-Family Partnership provides concrete, sustained, professional support that addresses the material conditions behind reproductive decisions rather than just the decisions themselves. (Olds et al., Pediatrics, 2014; Evidence-Based Programs, 2023)

4. AVANCE Parent-Child Education (Texas, California, New Mexico). AVANCE is a two-generation program offering parenting education, early childhood development, and adult literacy over nine months, all free to participants. Results show 80% of families increased parent-child interactions, and 88% of children who completed the program met state reading standards, compared to 73% district-wide. The program directly strengthens the families that disproportionate termination rates are reducing. It operates on the principle that the answer to reproductive pressure is not slogans but material support, education, and community. (IDRA, 2005; AVANCE Dallas Impact Report, 2022-2023)

5. Harlem Children’s Zone (Central Harlem, New York City). A cradle-to-career pipeline covering more than 100 blocks in Harlem, with Baby College parenting workshops, Promise Academy charter schools, health programs, and a College Success Office. Nearly 100% of Promise Academy seniors have been accepted to college. The program has completely closed the Black-white achievement gap in math. President Obama modeled a $210 million federal grant program on its design. In a city where the Black termination rate approaches one for one, the Harlem Children’s Zone proves that investing in Black children from birth through adulthood produces measurable, documented outcomes that change the trajectory of entire communities. (Dobbie & Fryer, American Economic Journal, 2011; HCZ Annual Reports)

The Bottom Line

The numbers tell a story that no political endorsement can override.

• 3.5 times — the rate at which Black women terminate pregnancies compared to white women (CDC, 2021)
• 33% vs. 13% — Black share of all U.S. abortions vs. Black share of the population (CDC; Census Bureau)
• 893 per 1,000 — Black abortions per live births in New York City (NYC DOHMH, 2018)
• 79% — Planned Parenthood surgical facilities near minority neighborhoods (Studnicki et al., 2020)
• Roughly 20 million — estimated Black pregnancies terminated since 1973, exceeding the entire Black population at the dawn of the civil rights movement (Guttmacher; CDC)

Margaret Sanger called certain populations weeds. She built an institution to pull them. She launched the Negro Project to reduce the Black birth rate. She spoke at KKK rallies and published plans for the sterilization of the “unfit.” The institution she built now terminates more Black pregnancies than any other demographic, operates primarily in minority neighborhoods, and is funded by the political allies of every major civil rights organization in America.

The question is not whether this outcome matches the founder’s intent. The question is whether the organizations that claim to protect Black life will continue to endorse the institution that has done more to diminish it than any other force in modern American history — or whether, at last, the silence will break.