In this photo taken April 26, 2014, Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards speaks in Washington. In Planned Parenthood’s first congressional appearance since being embarrassed by surreptitiously recorded videos, the organization’s president said she is “proud” of its provision of fetal tissue for research but also sought to minimize the organ donations as a small part of its work. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
(CNSNews.com) – Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards told graduates from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health that they should “get in good trouble” much like eugenicist and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.
“You are all here at Mailman because you have chosen to put your brilliance and energy to public health, which is by definition social change. And in my book there is nothing more noble than that. If there is one piece of advice I can give you today, it’s that to do this well and to disrupt the status quo, you’re going to have to get in trouble. You have to get in good trouble as the great civil rights leader Congressman John Lewis would say,” Richards said in her commencement address last month.
“The education you that you’ve had and the work that you have done already here and around the world gives you the chance and the skills and I hope the kind of attitude to be the kind of troublemakers that change lives.”
“The 100 year history of Planned Parenthood has of course, and the fight for reproductive health care, has been about standing up for what’s right even when or especially when it’s unpopular. As the dean said, we started 100 years ago when a young nurse Margaret Sanger, not only was she arrested for handing out pamphlets about birth control, which was completely illegal at the time, but the great thing is the cops busted her took her to jail and she taught all her fellow inmates about birth control, so that’s my kind of trouble maker,” Richards later added.
In 1921 Sanger wrote a paper entitled “Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda” where she praises eugenics as “the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.”
In the paper she explains the role birth control plays in eugenics.
“The eugenic and civilizational (sic) value of birth control is becoming apparent to the enlightened and the intelligent,” Sanger wrote.
The basis of birth control propaganda, Sanger said, “indicate that the campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal with the final aims of eugenics.”
Eugenics is a race-based and Darwinian-based idea that society can be improved through birth control, sterilization, and selective breeding to maximize the growth of so-called superior races and minimize the growth of so-called inferior races.
In this photo taken April 26, 2014, Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards speaks in Washington. In Planned Parenthood’s first congressional appearance since being embarrassed by surreptitiously recorded videos, the organization’s president said she is “proud” of its provision of fetal tissue for research but also sought to minimize the organ donations as a small part of its work. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) 
