A little history: Planned Parenthood was founded in the late 1940s. It was
the outgrowth of Margaret Sanger's Birth Control League, which, yes, was
explicitly eugenicist. The motto of the league, published since 1919 in
her newsletter, was: "More children from the fit, less from the unfit--
that is the purpose of birth control," where "unfit" meant people of color
and the poor in general. The group received most of its funding and academic
support from confirmed eugenicists, even convening a conference on the
advantages of eugenic birth control in Germany in 1938.
After Nazism made explicit eugenics unpopular, Sanger canned the Birth Control
League and formed Planned Parenthood, and later International Planned Parent-
hood. Up until the early 1960s, the organization was dominated by eugenic
thinkers. It began turning its focus to the Third World instead of the U.S.
poor, using grants from eugenic research facilities and large corporate
think-tanks (Ford Foundation, Rockefellers, Mellons, etc.) to begin a program
of Third World "depopulation." The Planned Parenthood line was that Third
World poverty wasn't the result of colonialism, corporate exploitation, or
internal class tensions, but the result of too many babies--effectively
removing the blame from the very corporate and government institutions that
were pillaging these lands (and who funded Planned Parenthood). It was
blaming the victim, writ large.
The corporate agenda of Planned Parenthood was well known, especially after
Sanger married on oil tycoon in the 30s. But PP's links to government
imperialism only were revealed in the 1970s. Classified documents show
that the U.S. government aided PP in many ways as a part of Cold War
containment doctrine. Starting with the Eisenhower years, studies began
emerging that, if you let the Third World have too many people, they start
realizing their strength, and turn to radical ideologies (eg, communism).
This, too, has been documented in many sources (most recently, The Progressive
magazine, September 1989).
Planned Parenthood has willingly gone along with the politics of population
control, which have been primarily to excuse corporate plunder and serve
U.S. imperial interests. It has approved dangerous contraceptives (eg,
Norplant, Depo Provera, and without reservation the pill) for use in Third
World populations, whose ability to cope with the dangerous side effects is
unfortunately less than here--in part because PP has encouraged Third World
medical facilities to defund their preventative and catastrophic care
medicine, and instead funnel their money into birth control clinics. The
result is a system that benefits no-one except pharmaceutical companies
and imperial agencies.
Of course women should have free access to any form of birth control they
choose. But for white feminists to talk about "pro-choice" only in terms
of the ability to get birth control, they miss the point. Black and other
non-white feminists have been saying this for years. Birth control is
nothing more than "control" of a population if it is offered as a solution
to poverty, if it is sold as an alternative to economic and political
restructuring--in short, if it is the only program the powers that be are
willing to finance, it is purely and simply genocide.
Here are some good books on the topic:
Betsy Hartmann REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AND WRONGS: THE POLITICS OF GLOBAL
POPULATION CONTROL
Bonnie Mass POPULATION TARGET: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF POPULATION CONTROL
IN LATIN AMERICA
Angela Davis WOMEN, RACE AND CLASS (see the second to last chapter, which
talks about white feminists pushing population programs essentially
designed to exterminate Blacks)
A series of articles in RADICAL AMERICA, 1976, by Linda Gordon
(NOTE: all of the above are "feminists." Winona LaDuke of the Indigenous
Women's Network has written about this issue a lot, too).
Allan Chase THE LEGACY OF MALTHUS
Murray Bookchin "The Population Myth" GREEN PERSPECTIVES
Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins FOOD FIRST
Also, I've done three extensive research papers on the history and motives
of population control in Latin America. If anyone wants these, just reply
to this message and drop me a note.
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Chris