WASHINGTON – In a letter, lawmakers are delivering a stinging rebuke to the National Portrait Gallery for honoring Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.
“The fact that her bust has been included as a part of the Gallery’s ‘Struggle for Justice’ exhibit is an affront both to basic human decency and the very meaning of justice,” the letter states.
WND reviewed a copy of a draft of the letter, which Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, plan to circulate to other members of Congress for signatures.
Addressed to the director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, it demands that the Sanger bust be removed.
The draft begins: “We the undersigned Members of Congress demand that the bust of Margaret Sanger be immediately removed from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and not be displayed in or on any Smithsonian-operated property.”
The source who provided the draft letter is not affiliated with Cruz, Gohmert or their offices.
The letter spotlights Sanger’s of advocacy of eugenics and controversial methods of population control, including abortion, especially among minorities.
The letter also notes that the founder of Planned Parenthood has become an even more polarizing figure since the release of a series of undercover videos that have revealed the organization’s apparent practice of selling body parts from aborted babies. Eight videos have been released, and more are promised.
As WND reported Aug. 14, the Smithsonian refused to remove the bust.
WND has reported Sanger was a eugenicist who once spoke to the Ku Klux Klan.
The evidence is in her own memoir, according to Paul Kengor.
“These are the kind of great lengths to which liberals go to ignore the writings of their own icons,” said Kengor, a professor and author of “Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage.” “Pages 366 and 367 of her memoirs, published by a top New York publishing house, she talks about her 1926 speech to the Silver Lake, New Jersey, women’s chapter of the KKK. That’s right – Margaret Sanger spoke to the KKK.”
In an interview with WND, Kengor recounted Sanger’s KKK experience as documented in her memoir.
“She describes the white hoods that come through, the flaming crosses that come through,” Kengor recalled. “Then she gets up and speaks, and she spoke for so long and was such a hit that she didn’t get finished until late at night. She also said a whole bunch of additional offers to speak were proffered by her enthusiastic audience, and she finished so late that she missed the train to go back to New York. She had to spend the night there.
“And people might wonder, why would the KKK invite Margaret Sanger? Because Margaret Sanger was a racial eugenicist. She spoke openly of race improvement.”
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a radio talk-show host, speaker, WND columnist and author of the soon-to-be-released book “Antidote,” charged Sanger’s desire to control the black population led her to found the American Birth Control League, which later evolved into Planned Parenthood.
“She was a hard-core racist who hated black Americans, and unfortunately 70 percent of the Planned Parenthood abortion mills are in inner cities right now,” Peterson noted. “[Sanger] was not about freedom for all people, and she wasn’t a leader in the civil rights movement or an example for the civil rights movement.”
Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue and a leading anti-abortion activist, also supports the removal of Sanger’s likeness from the National Portrait Gallery.
“Her legacy has been one of disgusting racism and eugenics,” said Newman, author of “Abortion Free: Your Manual for Building a Pro-Life America One Community at a Time.” “Most Americans do not understand that she was more closely associated with the ideology of the Nazis than a modern-day perspective of social justice. Reading through her writings and lectures one would easily find that she would be considered a despicable racist in today society.”
Follow Garth Kant @DCgarth
