Family planning from Greater New York (PPGNY) announced on Tuesday It will remove the name of Margaret Sanger, who founded the national organization, due to her racist legacy and her connections to the eugenic movement.
Planned Parenthood’s Manhattan Margaret Sanger Health Center will be renamed, and city officials are working to rename the nearby Margaret Sanger Plaza. The organization said the new name would be announced soon.
Sanger, who was a nurse, established the first birth control clinic in the United States, which would eventually become the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
PPGNY said the decision stemmed from “a public commitment to having its founder’s damaging connections to the eugenic movement.”
Eugenics is a discredited and racist theory that the human race can be “improved” by selective breeding of those with “desirable” traits. The theory often targeted poor people, people of color, people with disabilities, and other marginalized groups.
The organization said in a statement that the building’s name change was a “backward step” in recognizing the legacy of Planned Parenthood’s damage to communities of color.
“Margaret Sanger’s reproductive health concerns and advocacy have been clearly documented, but so has her racist legacy,” said Karen Seltzer, chair of the PPGNY board.
A 2016 Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet on Sanger she highlights her accomplishments, while acknowledging that “while she was a woman of heroic achievement, Margaret Sanger had some beliefs, practices, and associations that we recognize, denounce, and work to rectify today.”
The fact sheet noted that Planned Parenthood “denounces” Sanger’s involvement in the eugenic movement and his endorsement of Buck v. 1927’s decision. Bell that allowed states to sterilize citizens who were deemed “unfit” without their consent.
In its announcement Tuesday, PPGNY said the decision “reflects the first of many organizational changes to address Sanger’s legacy and system of institutional racism, which negatively affects the well-being of PPGNY’s patients, staff and broader communities. ”
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