A matter of consequence

In the frenzied campaign for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations, it can be difficult to separate the weeds from the wheat.

The two remaining Democrats are history makers -- Senator Barach Obama could be the first African-American occupant of the White House, while Senator Hillary Clinton could be the first woman president. On the Republican side, Senator John McCain is a genuine American hero, having proved his mettle as a prisoner of war at Hanoi Hilton for five years, two and a half in solitary confinement. Governor Mike Huckabee is a staunch conservative gifted with a refreshing sense of humor, and of history.

The United States, at this particular period in its 232-year history, is faced with serious issues -- the global threat of terror from Jihadists, a resurgent arms race from Putin’s Russia, the economic ascendancy of a China which trivializes human rights, AIDS epidemic and genocides in Africa and many other problems competing for supremacy on the world stage. On the domestic front, recession looms large as the housing industry takes a nosedive; the nation is polarized on the war in Iraq, on ways to solve the health care crisis, on the issue of illegal immigration, on education access, etc.

It almost seems irrelevant to consider the abortion issue and how the presidential contenders stand on the matter. Why worry about reproduction rights and Roe v. Wade, if the next president of the United States will have to contend with matters of more serious consequences?

The New York Times publicizes what is well known. Democrats Clinton and Obama are on the pro-abortion or pro-choice side. Republican Senator McCain, Gov. Huckabee, and Congressman Ron Paul (who is an Ob-Gyn physician) are on the pro-life side. Furthermore, pro-life McCain is pro war, while pro-abortion Obama is anti-war. Clinton is staunchly pro-abortion but is backtracking on her original support of the war in Iraq.

Should the views of presidential contenders on the subject of abortion really matter? They do because, for the most part, their position, and how they regard the most vulnerable and defenseless members of human society, are reflective of their moral philosophy.

“The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion”, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta pointed out. If we dismiss the sanctity of life as an irrelevant issue, then we allow a woman by the name of Margaret Higgins Sanger to cast a deceptive veil over our collective eyes.

Born in 1879 in Corning, New York, Margaret Higgins was the sixth of eleven children of an agnostic father and a Catholic mother. After her mother’s death, she attended practical nursing school, and in 1902 married architect William Sanger. Separated from her husband in 1913, she started a career in political activism that spanned half a century. Via a monthly newsletter, called the Woman Rebel , with the motto: “No Gods, No Masters”, Sanger incessantly advocated birth control, encouraging women to take “complete control of their reproductive functions”.

In October 1916, Sanger opened the first American birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York. In 1917, she founded the Birth Control Review, touting the benefit of eugenics “to create a race of thoroughbreds” because “the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit’ (is) the greatest present menace to civilization”.

In the 1920s, the idea of contraception and eugenics was anathema across all segments of society. It was widely opposed by the Catholic and Protestant churches, by Congress, by the Judiciary, by the medical profession, by the media, etc. Unfazed, Sanger set out to break the opposition methodically.

In 1926, Sanger fought to amend section 211 of the U.S. criminal code to allow for the transport and mailing of contraceptives among drug manufacturers, pharmacists, and physicians. She gathered a core group of congressional representatives and senators to push for birth control legislation. Blaming Catholics for blocking her legislative efforts, she encouraged her readers to be single-issue voters: “ Make your political interest this year a vote for the man who will support Birth Control Legislation”.

Ironically, Planned Parenthood, which Sanger later founded, is quick to dismiss pro-lifers as single-issue voters.

Opposed not only by the Catholic Church, but also by the American Federation of Labor, the American Medical Association, and other well-respected institutions, Sanger cleverly shifted the debate on birth control from morality to medicine, arguing that limiting families promoted health and well-being. Meeting resistance in Congress, she focused on judicial legislation where her arguments found receptive judges, particularly when the debate bore down on the constitutional right of the mother versus that of her unborn child.

To counter the impression that her eugenics-inspired movement aimed to limit the growth of the Afro-American population, a National Negro Advisory Council was created. Drafting “Suggestions for Negro Project” in 1939, Dr. Clarence Gamble, heir of Procter and Gamble company, strategized with Sanger to make birth control acceptable in black communities. When eugenics became associated with Nazi Germany, Planned Parenthood quickly dropped the discredited term.

Sanger achieved maximum success when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt endorsed her ideas

as later enshrined in the agenda of Planned Parenthood. Traditionally, Christianity regards children as God’s blessings, as gifts for the family. Sanger and Planned Parenthood regard them instead as harmful to a woman’s health and detrimental to the family’s financial status. While Christianity considers the unborn to be a human being created in God’s image and likeness, Planned Parenthood views the fetus as a nuisance.

As Sanger’s movement gained national prominence, corporations such as American Airlines, American Express, Bank of New York, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Exxon, etc. became regular financial contributors. The New York Times, The New York Post, CBS remain stalwart supporters. So is the Rockefeller Foundation.

In effect, according to statistics gathered by the Guttmacher Institute (an affiliate of Planned Parenthood), 1,200,000 babies are aborted each year in the United States. A total of over 49 million abortions have been carried out from 1973 to 2007.

This is not an insignificant nor irrelevant matter.

Reference: Robert Marshall and Charles Donovan. Blessed Are The Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood. Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1991.