You can listen to an audio version of this article here.
Abortion is one of the evilest stains in our modern world. According to the World Health Organization, roughly 73 million induced abortions occur worldwide each year, with 61% of all unintended pregnancies and 29% of all pregnancies in general ending with an abortion. That’s more than 1 in 4. Think about that – globally, when you look around or are considering a group of your peers, if there are at least 4 of you, there should be another person there who is missing but has been snuffed out by abortion. The current generation is missing about a quarter of its population due to this culture of death. That’s children made in the image of God who could have grown up to be doctors, lawyers, scientists, artists, and business people who may have changed the world, or invented a new technology to benefit mankind or cured disease. Each new life is bristling with unknown potential and is a gift from God.
Statistically, in Canada, 15.2 women out of every 1000 women aged 15-44 will have an abortion. In the US, it’s 20.8 women and in Russia, it’s 53.7 women will choose to murder their baby in their womb. And yes, that’s the correct term – murder. That is what the premeditated, unjustified taking of innocent life is called. And while there may be different levels of culpability in regards to the murder of the child in the womb – like the difference between the assassin who carries out the murder, and the ones who are accomplices to murder – that is the way we should be framing the discussion. There is a difference in terms of people’s level of understanding of what they are doing. However, too often euphemisms are used to try to soften the blow or obscure the truth of the matter – calling abortion “healthcare” for example.
But abortion is healthcare about as much as a bullet to the head is a cure for a migraine.
Too often we want to skirt the issue to protect people’s feelings – and particularly with the sins of women, the modern church is often too afraid to speak plainly to confront them and call them to repentance. But women sin as well. Women are also affected by the Fall and capable of much evil. However, our #MeToo culture tends to make women out to be perpetually innocent and incapable of evil acts. But as we will see in this episode, this is not true. This is not to villainize women, but only to say that we all are Fallen in Adam. Only when we correctly diagnose the issue can we hope to make proper and appropriate prescriptions. Only when we understand that abortion is murder can we hope to think rightly about the legal questions and also about Christ’s offer of amazing and undeserved grace for even murderers! It is against the darkness of abortion that the light of the Gospel can and does shine brightest – offering true hope and not just false platitudes to people who are lost and in need of reconciliation with God.
In this episode, we’ll be taking a look at the beginnings of the modern abortion movement by looking at one of its key founders, Margaret Sanger – abortion’s Killer Angel.
Now, before we jump in, let’s clear up some things about the abortion debate. Many people who advocate for the woman’s right to choose murder usually bring up the situation of rape. What about a woman who was raped? Should she have to suffer to bring a baby to term and deliver it and then be reminded of her rapist every time she looks at the baby? Well, aside from the fact that committing another injustice never accomplished actual justice, let’s take a look at the actual statistics. In the US, a 2004 Guttmacher survey showed that 25% of women having an abortion were simply because they weren’t ready to have a child, 23% were because they said they couldn’t afford a child, 19% because they were done having children, 8% didn’t want to be single moms, 7% didn’t think they were mature enough to raise a child, 4% didn’t want to interfere with their education or career, 4% had health problems and 3% claimed health problems with the baby in the womb. Less than 0.5% were victims of rape. Less than 0.5%!
So, these pro-choice activists want to make a rule out of the exception – a very small exception of cases – less than 0.5%! These numbers hold true too. For example, in Florida in 2020, only 0.16% of abortions were in a case of rape or incest. So, we’re dealing with a minority of cases. The majority of abortions are done for reasons of convenience. Now, the inconsistency of the pro-abortion side can be plainly shown at this point. Because if one were to suggest that ONLY in cases of rape or incest could abortions be allowed, the pro-choice side would never concede that argument because that’s not their goal. That was just a distraction argument to throw you off. Really when it comes down to it, they want the right to murder their babies because they’re sinful and don’t want to deal with the consequences of their actions. It’s not like we don’t know how women get pregnant. The solution to the majority of unwanted pregnancies is not complicated, it’s just undesirable for those who love their sin.
Abortion is modern-day child sacrifice. Just as the ancient pagans sacrificed their children to evil gods like Molech for the sake of prosperity, abundant crops and good fortune, modern civilized pagans sacrifice their children for the sake of their college education, climbing the corporate ladder and keeping that bikini bod. Even though our methods have become more hidden in the sterile environment of a clinic, the sacrifice of the innocent still cries out. We look back on ancient cultures that practiced human sacrifice and think, “how brutal and savage.” Yet, when we look at the actual procedure for late-term surgical abortions, are we much different? Are we much different when an abortion doctor takes a Sopher clamp or forceps and dismembers the live baby limb from limb while it writhes in agony?
If you want to get an animated look at what abortion actually is like, check out the videos from Live Action or the animated short “The Procedure” by Choice42. Just earlier this year, on March 25, 2022, videos (warning, graphic content) of containers holding the dismembered bodies of several babies were discovered at an abortion clinic in Washington, DC. Many of them were viable and had injuries which showed evidence of traumatic death. Pro-Life activists are asking for investigations as to whether these were actual abortions or infanticides. Add to that the known history of child sex abuse and sex trafficking cover-ups at Planned Parenthood clinics in the US and I think you’ll start to understand why I said that abortion is the most heinous and wretched stain on our modern societies. It is a testimony to God’s amazing patience and longsuffering that He has not obliterated us for such gross sins when He has literally wiped out entire cities in the Bible for similar injustices.
Margaret Sanger
Our minds are boggled to understand how we could come to such a moment of evil today. In this article, we’re going to explore some of the roots of the abortion industry by examining the life of its main figure, the woman who is credited as the founder of Planned Parenthood – which is one of the largest abortion providers in the world. Her name is Margaret Sanger, and she has been praised by many on the left as a patron saint of feminism and women’s rights. Yet, her actual story is quite dark.
Much of the material for this episode is taken from the book, Killer Angel: A Biography of Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger by George Grant. Citations with only page numbers are from this book.
When we hear names like Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler, their barbarism and evil are synonymous with their infamy. Yet, for some reason, Margaret Sanger has escaped such a fate even though her crimes against humanity are no less heinous than even the most bloody butchers of history. Even though she identified herself with Stalin’s Sobornostic Collectivism, with Hitler’s Eugenic Racism, and with Mussolini’s Agathistic Facism, her followers and minions have somehow managed to sanitize her name today. However, we cannot divorce her private character from her public life and accomplishments – the fruit springs up from the root. Sin does not just happen, sinners sin and Jesus says it comes out of the heart.
Margaret Sanger is the founder of Planned Parenthood, one of, if not, the largest provider of abortions in the world, a multi-billion dollar corporation with programs in over 130 nations. In the US alone, it has over 20,000 staff and volunteers spread out over its 900+ clinics in virtually every metropolitan city across the States. In 1992 it had earnings of over $23 million with over $190 million in cash reserves and over $108 million in capital assets. With a combined annual budget of over $1 billion dollars, Planned Parenthood is one of the most profitable non-profit organizations in history.
Biography
Born on September 14, 1879, in upstate New York, Margaret Sanger was the sixth of eleven children. Her father was an Irish Catholic immigrant who was hardened and embittered after military service where he committed and saw inhuman acts from which he never fully recovered. He was in and out of manual labour jobs, either unwilling or unable to provide properly for his large family.
He would regularly beat his sons “to make men of them” and treated his wife and daughters like slaves. He would drink as often as he could afford it and his temper and presence grew all the more oppressive with the help of alcohol. He mocked spiritual devotion (especially in his own children and Margaret) and openly embraced socialism and atheism, having little tolerance for the slightest of morality his wife tried to instill in their children. Her mother did both Margaret’s baptism and confirmation in secret from her father. She would for a time show some zeal for spiritual things, but eventually, her father’s cynicism took its toll. After her mother’s passing, and being left vulnerable to her father’s undermining (which eventually left Margaret bitter, lonely, and grief-stricken), she developed a bitter hatred of the church. This would forever mark her life afterward.
She eventually fled her hometown to get away via Claverack College where she had her first taste of freedom – plunging into radical politics, feminism and unfettered sex. She soon fell behind in her academics. As it often happens, Margaret became most like the person she was most bitter against, emulating her father’s erratic personality. After dropping out because she could not longer afford tuition, she moved in with her sister and took a job as a kindergarten teacher – “A youth corrupted became a youth corruptor” Thankfully, she quit after just two short terms.
Next, she applied for a job as a nurse-probationer, but hospital work proved to be even harder than teaching for her and she never finished her training. However, she would later claim to be a trained and practiced nurse – a flat-out lie. Her actual exposure to medicine was basically nonexistent. She ran errands, changed sheets, and emptied bedpans. These details haven’t prevented her supporters to herald her as a qualified “nurse” to bolster her “expertise”.
Her first husband was William Sanger, who was a financially secure up-and-coming architect. He met Margaret at a party and was smitten by her girlish red-headed beauty. He promised her his devotion, leisure and a beautiful home, lavishing her with flowers, candy, jewelry and more. They eventually married, but Margaret quickly became discontented with housekeeping life. Her doting husband would try everything to resolve her restlessness, sending her for long vacations, hiring maids, buying expensive presents, and building an extravagant home in Long Island – but all to no avail. Nothing satisfied his temperamental bride.
Margaret thought that having children would help bring fulfillment and they soon had two boys and a girl. But it turns out that raising children is not a hobby that a discontented woman can do with much joy. After ten years of dissatisfaction with domestic life, she convinced her husband to sell their estate to move to Manhattan where she could throw herself into cosmopolitan living – shopping, dining, going to the theatre and drowning her discontent in the “champagne of improvidence.” (19)
Marxist Radicalization
While his wife was getting herself lost in city life, William renew his old ties in radical politics, attending Socialist, Anarchist, and Communist meetings. Margaret would sometimes tag along with him but didn’t show much interest at the time. Margaret ended up becoming wowed by John Reed, a propagandist for the Bolsheviks in Soviet Russia who was a passionate and charismatic speaker who talked about idealistic visions of overturning the privileged status quo. This appealed to Margaret’s romantic extremism and the ideas and ideals of Marxism now came alive to her. Before long, it was all she could think of as she became radicalized. She read Marxist literature voraciously and the Sanger’s apartment soon became a social hub for various revolutionaries to gather. She later wrote:
“Our living room became a gathering place where liberals, anarchists, Socialists, and IWW’s could meet. These vehement individualists had to have an audience, preferably a small, intimate one. Any evening you might find visitors being aroused by Jack Reed, bullied by Bill Haywood, or led softly towards anarchism by Alex Berkman.”
Her transformation was no less than equal to becoming a religious zealot. Her every waking moment was dominated by thoughts of ushering in the great utopia by any means necessary. Her born-again left-wing fundamentalism saw violence, sabotage, assassination, subversion, insurrection and terror as mere tools toward utopia. Her radical conversion proved to be true as the rest of her life was subordinated to this cause.
At first, her husband was pleased that his wife had a new-found purpose in life. However, she was now obsessed with conspiracies, rallying people against authorities, hatching plots, and becoming more attached to radicals. Some described her as a “sycophant courtier… an omnipresent whirlwind of energy and starry-eyed adulation.” (27-28) She joined a Socialist Party and volunteered as a women’s union organizer, speaking at labour meetings and writing editorials for the Party newspaper. Margaret became impressed with the socialist party on women’s issues – how they had fought for women’s suffrage, sexual liberation, feminism and birth control. These issues became an obsession for her. “they made her commitment to ushering in a socialist revolution – regardless of the material or human cost necessary – all the more urgent.” (31)
She became enamoured with the “Red Queen of Anarchy”, Emma Goldman, who championed free love, incendiary violence, birth control, and assassination, and railed against the evils of capitalism and democracy. Sanger devoured Goldman’s message through her speeches and library of radical books, such as Havelock Ellis’s 7-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex which stirred her lust for lust. Through Goldman, Sanger was further radicalized in the works of Ibsen, Tolstoy, Voltaire and Kropotkin who taught her grassroots mobilization tactics of the revolutionary cabals and desensitizing her to the most extreme and perverse ideas. (34) Eventually,
“Margaret told her bewildered husband that she needed emancipation from every taint of Christianized capitalism – including the strict bonds of the marriage bed. She even suggested to him that they seriously consider experimenting with various trysts, infidelities, fornications, and adulteries.” (35)
He tried desperately to save their marriage but to no avail. After her sexual awakening, Margaret’s chief topic of discussion was always sex. She enjoyed fellowship with the avant-garde intellectuals who were practicing free love, taking mistresses and hopping from bed to bed. Margaret became an evangelist for sexual freedom and birth control. For her, the success of the social revolution was built upon the sexual revolution. The cause had to first prevail interpersonally through carnal passions before it would prevail more widely culturally. She reasoned that “If the workers of the world were to unite, then the antiquated morals that suppressed their true inmost feelings and inhibited their true heartfelt expressions had to be eliminated.” (38-39)
Her husband soon saw the socialist revolution as nothing more than an excuse for sexual abandon. He tried one last time to save their marriage by moving to Paris, hoping the romantic city would reignite their love. However, this backfired on him as the lure of revolutionary promiscuity beckoned her. She would eventually leave William and return to New York with her children as he bid good riddance to her.
Malthusian Radicalization
Now without a husband to finance her escapades, she had to find a way to provide income for herself and her children. She started a paper called The Woman Rebel with the slogan, “No Gods and No Masters” (that tells you a lot!) which was “a paper of militant thought.” Her first issue denounced marriage as a “degenerate institution”, and took aim at capitalism and sexual modesty for good measure as well.
The next issue told rebel women to “look the whole world in the face with a go-to-hell look in the eyes” and that they should claim the right to be lazy, to be an unmarried mother, to destroy and the right to love. Later issues wrote about contraception, sexual liberation, social revolution and defended political assassination. (46)
Her writing eventually landed her charges of publishing lewd and indecent articles. In order to escape the consequences, she fled the country with connections in Canada and England. But before she fled, she published and distributed 100,000 copies of a leaflet on contraception where she recommended “Lysol douches,” “bichloride of mercury elixirs,” “heavy doses of laxatives,” and “herbal abortifacients.” (48) She would spend over a year in England as a fugitive where she became influenced by Thomas Malthus, a professor of political economics who believed that overpopulation would eventually threaten the existence of humanity and that it had to be addressed by any means necessary.
“In fact, Malthus argued, to deal with sickness, crime, privation, and need in any other way simply aggravates the problems further; thus, he actually condemned charity, philanthropy, international relief and development, missionary outreaches, and economic investment around the world as counterproductive.” (50)
Malthus wrote in his magnum opus, An Essay on the Principle of Population that,
“All children born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the deaths of grown persons…. Therefore… we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and restrain those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders.”
Sound eerily familiar? Well, that’s because Malthus still lives in many of our global elites and WEF members.
Malthus believed that the physically unfit, poor, diseased, racially inferior and mentally incompetent had to be suppressed, isolated or eliminated in order to preserve Western civilization. Thus, his disciples thought that using education, contraception, sterilization and abortion would be practical and acceptable ways to achieve this goal. Now, never mind that both experience, data, time and science have disproven basically every aspect of Malthusian analysis, this doesn’t stop many progressives and cultural elites even today who continue to embrace his nonsense.
Margaret Sanger was shrewd enough to realize that her ideas of radical socialism and sexual liberation would not be widely embraced without some veneer of altruism and intellectualism to capture the moral and academic high ground. Malthusian ethics, she thought, could help toward that end by arguing for birth control on the backdrop of the threat of poverty, sickness, racial tension, and overpopulation. Many today do not know the roots of the birth control movement – born in an atheistic, socialistic, Marxist, Malthusian worldview that was opposed to a Biblical worldview where our benevolent God had commanded humanity to fill the earth. Yet Evangelical publications like Christianity Today publish articles praising Margaret Sanger saying that “Contraception Saves Lives”!
Sanger became a committed eugenicist. George Grant notes of the eugenics movement that,
“In fact, for the rest of the twentieth century, they would unleash one plague after another – a whole plethora of designer disasters – upon the unsuspecting human race. The Eugenicists unashamedly espoused an elitist White Supremacy. Or to be more precise, they espoused an elitist Northern and Western European White Supremacy. It was not a supremacy based on the crass ethnic racism of the past but upon a new kind of “scientific” elitism deemed necessary to preserve «the best of the human race” in the face of impending doom.” (54)
G.K. Chesterton once noted that, if Darwinism was the doctrine of “the survival of the fittest,” then Eugenics was the doctrine of “the survival of the nastiest.” In her book Woman and the New Race, Margaret asserted that “The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
Racist Eugenics
Now freed from marital fidelity, Sanger’s bed became the meeting place for elite leftist radicals like H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett, Arbuthnot Lane and Norman Haire due to her nymphomaniacal passion for promiscuity and perversion. She eventually returned to the US and got the charges against her dropped through clever PR. She quickly opened a back-alley birth control clinic in Brownsville, NY to target immigrants whom she thought were “unfit” such as Slavs, Latinos, Italians and Jews. That ended with her being sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse, after which she started the Birth Control League publishing the magazine, Birth Control Review which would eventually become the beginnings of Planned Parenthood.
The Birth Control Review regularly published racist articles. For example, in April of 1932, it outlined Margaret’s “Plan for Peace,” which called for coercive sterilization, mandatory segregation, and rehabilitative concentration camps for all “dysgenic stocks.” In April of 1933, it published a shocking article entitled “Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need” written by Ernst Rudin, Hitler’s director of genetic sterilization who took a prominent role in the establishment of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene. In June 1933, an article by Leon Whitney entitled, “Selective Sterilization,” praised and defended the Third Reich’s pre-holocaust “race purification” programs.”
Her relationships with influential authors like H.G. Wells, Julian Huxley, Karl Menninger and Havelock Ellis, helped her garner support. She also wrote books herself like The Pivot of Civilization, which called for the elimination of human weeds, the end of charity, the segregation of “morons, misfits, and the maladjusted,” and for the sterilization of “genetically inferior races.”
She criticized charity, writing,
“My criticism, therefore, is not directed at the failure of philanthropy, but rather at its success. These dangers are inherent in the very idea of humanitarianism and altruism, dangers which have today produced their full harvest of human waste.”
and,
“The most serious charge that can be brought against modern benevolence is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents, and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression. Philanthropy is a gesture characteristic of modern business lavishing upon the unfit the profits extorted from the community at large. Looked at impartially, this compensatory generosity is in its final effect probably more dangerous, more dysgenic, more blighting than the initial practice of profiteering.”
She viewed charity to the poor and minorities as a “symptom of a malignant social disease” because it helped multiply those “defectives, delinquents, and dependents” she so obviously abhorred. She yearned for the end of the Christian “reign of benevolence” that the Eugenic socialists promised when the “choking human under-growth” of “morons and imbeciles” would be “segregated” and ultimately “sterilized.” She wanted to create a race of thoroughbreds by encouraging those considered fit to have children and those who were unfit to not – either willingly or through the tyranny of her Malthusian Eugenics program. (70) She intentionally set up clinics in the communities of the races she hated such as Blacks and Hispanics. She designed a “Negro Project” in which she said, “The mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among Whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.” (73)
Planned Parenthood did not begin to offer abortions until 1970 when New York legalized abortion. Now they are the leading abortion providers in the USA. In many ways, eugenicists of 100 years ago would be proud of their work, as their clinics are located disproportionately in poor black and Hispanic neighbourhoods. And this is on purpose. In some sections of New York, there are more black aborted babies than live births:
According to a report by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (cnsnews.com), in 2012, there were more black babies killed by abortion (31,328) in New York City than were born there (24,758), and the black children killed comprised 42.4 percent of the city’s total number of abortions. On average, 1,876 black babies are aborted every day in the United States.
The abortion industry, like its founder, Margaret Sanger, is racist against black people. Yet many black people are duped into supporting liberal and democratic policies that support abortion and feign care but really lead to more death and depression for them.
Sanger was a sly woman. She knew if her agenda was going to be successful, she would have to make use of religion as well – even though she hated it. Like a good Marxist, and what many such demonic ideologies have done, she sought to co-opt the church and dupe gullible religious ministers to help accomplish her cause. Sanger wrote,
“The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the Minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
In her first newspaper, The Woman Rebel, Margaret Sanger admitted, “Birth control appeals to the advanced radical because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian churches. I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tyranny of Christianity no less than Capitalism.” (104)
The reason Planned Parenthood targets black and minority neighbourhoods are not virtuous at all. They hated black people. They focused initially on Southern states simply because of the higher proportion of Blacks there, then later expanded North and West. One of her own project directors lamented,
“I ‘wonder if Southern Darkies can ever be entrusted with … a clinic. Our experience causes us to doubt their ability to work except under White supervision.”
The whole thing was an evil ruse to manipulate black people to cooperate in their own elimination. (74) Their clinics were soon distributing contraceptives throughout the South to Blacks and Margaret’s dreams of discouraging the reproduction of what she considered “defective and diseased elements of humanity” was being fulfilled.
Margaret Sanger said,
“The government of the United States deliberately encourages and even makes necessary by its laws the breeding – with a breakneck rapidity – of idiots, defectives, diseased, feeble-minded, and criminal classes. Billions of dollars are expended by our state and federal governments and by private charities and philanthropies for the care, the maintenance, and the perpetuation of these classes. Year by year their numbers are mounting. Year by year more money is expended… to maintain an increasing race of morons which threatens the very foundations of our civilization.” (80)
Ideas to Inspire Dictators
Sanger helped to organize a neo-Malthusian convention of dozens of representatives from around the world, composed of members of the International Federation of Neo-Malthusian Leagues and leaders in the International Eugenics Society, to deliver papers, speeches and workshops promoting their vision of eugenics. This group was composed of radical proponents of “race hygiene societies,” “birth control leagues,” “family planning associations,” and “social Eugenics committees”. They were self-consciously anti-Christian, anti-family and anti-choice from the start. They also were the beginnings of what has now come to be known as Planned Parenthood after WW2.
They were lobbying for national organizations to consider the necessity of “limiting freedom of choice” through legal and economic reproductive incentives and disincentives such as a “child tax,” reduction or elimination of maternity leave, and limiting access to loans, scholarships and more for families with more than the approved number of children. Planned Parenthood even later publicly commended the brutal one-child policy of the Communist Chinese party. Planned Parenthood was even willing to side-step the law. For example in the Philippines, where abortion was illegal, they offered “menstrual extractions” and in Brazil, where sterilization was illegal, they performed as many as 20 million procedures per year. According to internal directives from their London office,
“Family Planning Associations and other non-government organizations should not use the absence of the law or the existence of an unfavorable law as an excuse for inaction; action outside the law (and even in violation of it) is part of the process of stimulating change.” (84)
Adolf Hitler himself adopted Sanger’s neo-Malthusian ideas in his administration of the Third Reich for his extermination program “the final solution” which included coercive abortion programs throughout Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. He echoed the Malthusian call to “rid the earth of dysgenic peoples by whatever means available so that we may enjoy the prosperity of the Fatherland.” And he reiterated the Planned Parenthood ideal of eliminating all Christian mercy ministries or social service programs. In 1939 Hilter said, “Let us spend our efforts and our resources on the productive, not on the wastrel.” Josef Stalin also used Planned Parenthood’s neo-Malthusian ideas in his brutal campaign against Ukraine, his collectivization of the Kulaks, and his Siberian genocide. Stalin stated that, “The greatest obstacle to the successful completion of the people’s revolution is the swarming of inferior races from the south and east” and that the only thing preventing him was “the foolhardy interference of church charity.” (85)
Reaping What She Has Sown
Even though Sanger had become very successful at what she set out to achieve, she was miserable on the inside. As Proverbs 14:1 says, “Every wise woman builds her house, but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands.” Margaret had destroyed her marriage, her daughter died during one of her long absences from pneumonia, her boys were neglected, and her beauty was becoming faded with the years of abuse. Yet even with this, she pursued more perversion and sexual promiscuity – jumping from lover to lover and experimenting with increasingly more perverse fetishes and fantasies. This is usually how sexual sin goes – it never satisfies but only leads to deeper and more depraved forms of degeneracy. She even dove into the occult and New Age looking for meaning.
Even as an old woman, she was constant in corrupting the youth, telling her 16-year-old granddaughter that kissing, petting, and even intercourse were fine as long as she was “sincere,” and that having sex about “three times a day” was “just about right.” Planned Parenthood today continues to seek to corrupt the sexual morals of youth in virtually all its literature, teaching kids to masturbate, endorsing premarital sex, approving homosexuality and everything LBGTQ+, encouraging sexual experimentation and vilifying Christian values and consciences as outdated, prude and oppressive.
Eventually, Margaret would marry into money, marrying an oil millionaire, J. Noah Slee – but not before forcing him to sign a prenuptial which stipulated that she could come and go as she pleased with no questions, have her own private apartment and servants where she could entertain “friends” behind closed doors and Slee would have to phone in advance if he wanted a dinner date with his wife… a great start to a marriage! She continued her promiscuous affairs even into old age and her health declined as she became addicted to drugs and alcohol. Sanger continued to rub shoulders (and other body parts) with the social elites of her day to promote her causes – as a woman possessed. She had as her supporters the likes of Julian Huxley, Albert Einstein, John D. Rockefeller, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, Henry Ford, and Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.
Although she was still terribly unhappy, but also terribly rich now too.
These newly acquired financial resources allowed her to open doors, exercise sway on public campaigns and have opportunities previously inaccessible. She became closely associated with the Nazi “race purification” program and endorsed the euthanasia, sterilization, abortion and infanticide programs of the Reich. She would later backpedal her positions when the Nazi programs came to light after WW2 to try to cover up.
The name Planned Parenthood was chosen to help redeem her public image as it connoted a positive program which was family oriented. This helped to divert attention from its revolutionary eugenics aims by focusing attention on birth control. She managed to garner tremendous financial support through her tenacious search for donors and grants. But, as George Grant notes,
“From its earliest days, the Planned Parenthood movement had been involved in financial scandal. Despite the fact that she received generous donations from some of the richest philanthropies in the world, Margaret kept her organization on the brink of bankruptcy for years, failing to pay her bills and refusing to give an account of her mismanagement.” (95)
She would often spend Planned Parenthood’s money for her own extravagant lifestyle and invested its funds in the black market. She wasted money on many frivolities and vanities. Because of this, she was quietly removed from Planned Parenthood’s board several times. Proverbs 1:8-9 teach us that violence and greed are inseparable, and Planned Parenthood’s wicked violence against women and children cannot be separated from its roots of material greed from its founder.
A seed will always yield its own kind (see Gen. 1:11). Bad seed brings forth bitter harvest (see Ezra 9:2; Isa. 1:4; 14:20). You reap what you sow (see Gal. 6:7). A nation or an organization that is sown, nurtured, and grown by deceit, promiscuity, and lawlessness, cannot help but be evil to the core (see Hos. 8:7). Planned Parenthood has not changed since then because its root still remains wicked. Dr. Alan Guttmacher, Margaret’s successor as president of Planned Parenthood proudly said, “We are merely walking down the path that Mrs. Sanger carved out for us.” Faye Wattleton, the organization’s president in the 1980s said that she was “proud to be walking in the footsteps of Margaret Sanger.” And indeed, they continue on that path to this day.
The same is true in Canada and in other nations where abortion is legalized and continues on a grand scale. We cannot expect those who run organizations dedicated to the murder of the most innocent in society to somehow magically be ethical in other areas of their business dealings. Stories of body parts of aborted babies being sold for profit, or killing babies born alive in botched abortions and embezzlement of funds which are gained tax-free because these organizations are non-profit should not surprise us. A bad tree brings forth bad fruit. It must be cut down and rooted out to never spring up again.
This is our Battle
Every generation of Christians has its battles to fight against the Dragon. Just when you think the Beast’s head has been fatally wounded, it arises again to torment the saints. This would not be the first time in history that Christians have had to rise up to defend the rights of the unborn and babies. Abortion, infanticide, and abandonment to the elements was common practice in Roman society in the first centuries. Greco-Roman culture had little regard for the weak and helpless, and children were seen as disposable – particularly by a father who deemed the offspring undesirable.
Charles Eldridge, in his book, Christianity’s Contributions to Civilization, notes that,
“Occasionally benevolent persons might rescue such children. Sometimes witches would take them and use their bodies for incantations. Some of them died from exposure, while the majority were taken and reared by lewd persons and finally sold as slaves or prostitutes.” (Eldridge, 33)
One of the charges that early Christians, like the apologist Justin Martyr, had to deal with was that they were cannibals. This is because they would be seen picking up the children who had been abandoned or thrown into dumps. Pagans looking on and hearing about the Christians’ “love feasts” where they “ate the flesh and drank the blood” assumed that they were devouring the infants when they were really adopting them into their families and raising them at their own expense. As Christianity expanded in the Roman Empire, so did their pro-life work. We need to regain this as the Church again today – with many more Christians being willing to adopt and foster, to provide homes for abandoned children and to provide an alternative for mothers who cannot care for their children.
We must also be bold about doing this work founded on Gospel proclamation. It must be a distinctly Christian work. Why? Because although there are all these great secular arguments against abortions because the science is unarguable (as Nancy Pearcey has noted – “virtually no professional bioethicist denies that life begins at conception”), only Christians can offer true forgiveness and hope for mothers who have murdered their children or fathers who have pushed their woman to do so. Sinners need to be called to repentance and given the offer of true hope. The secular pro-life movement cannot do this.
Eldridge continues,
“The Church councils, Christian emperors, and law-makers sought by declarations and legislation to combat the crime. As early as 323 the Council of Nice decreed that hospitals should be established in the chief cities and towns, and exhorted that these hospitals should make provision to take care of abandoned children.nHouses of Mercy were provided by the Church for these foundlings. A marble vessel was placed at each church to receive exposed infants. These children were sometimes adopted by members. Those not cared for by some private family were taken under the charge of the Church.” (Eldridge, 34)
Oh, that we would regain this Christian heritage and once again slay this Beast of abortion! We are to be salt and light to preserve and illuminate a decaying and dark world by seeking the Kingdom’s establishment and expansion here. We’ve gotten to where we are today because Christians had checked out of public engagement for far too long – thinking that their pietistic holy huddles were somehow a virtuous strategy. Meanwhile, their Lord had already said that no one with any common sense hides a lamp under a basket.
Just recently, I was made aware by a Canadian MP that the topic of euthanasia for babies was brought up in the Canadian Parliament! Dr. Louis Roy of the Quebec College of Physicians recommended expanding euthanasia to “babies from birth to one year of age who come into the world with severe deformities and very serious syndromes.” Let’s be clear here – he’s advocating for straight-up infanticide to be legal in Canada. Let that sink in. That’s where this culture of death is going if Christians continue to stay silent. We’re going to and are currently inheriting Margaret Sanger’s dystopian vision of the future where life is not valued anymore and those with power can deem certain lives expendable.
God Requires that we Pursue Justice for the Unborn
In Scripture, one of the reasons that God rejects His people’s prayers and worship services is because of their neglect of justice. In Isaiah 1:13-17, God says,
“Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”
Could it be that one of the reasons the church today has been so powerless and its prayers unanswered is because of its neglect of true justice for the fatherless? This is exactly the target group of abortions. Yet this neglect is what God threatens His judgment for in Malachi 3:5 and commands that we do no violence to the fatherless nor shed innocent blood in Jeremiah 22:3. There has been much of that in our Modern Western societies, and I think is part of the reason for the weakness of the church here – where we even have the means and ability to do something about it without risking our lives but are too lazy, ignorant or apathetic about it. After we adopted our son, this whole issue got a lot more personal as I look into his beautiful face and think that this is what some people want the right to murder and dismember. Wickedness! Like of the sort that we should rend our clothes and pour ash on our heads over.
You know, many Christians today think they would have been part of the movement of Evangelicals who lobbied to bring an end to the evils of slavery in England and eventually the Western world. However, then as now, there were many Christians who knew about the issues but stood on the sidelines – thinking things would never change, the culture was too far gone, and slavery was an accepted norm. They didn’t approve of slavery personally but sat back not wanting to cause trouble. If we won’t raise a godly raucous for the horrible evil of our day in abortion – what makes you think you would have been with the abolitionists during slavery?
The point of this episode is not just to give you some information. What I’m praying for is that it would help to stir up the next generation of pro-life, Gospel-cantered warriors, who will storm Hell’s gates because they’re guaranteed by our Lord not to prevail. May it be said of us what was said of Jason and the disciples in Acts 17 that they were men who turned the world upside down and acted “against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” And this is not some social Gospel sort of thing – we must do this self-consciously and consistently as Biblical Christians, not laying down our Christian worldview to make supposedly “neutral” arguments appealing only to natural law. No. We have a clear Word from the King of kings and it is upon that infallible and authoritative Word that we take our marching orders to tear down strongholds, arguments and every lofty opinion against Christ and bring every thought captive to him. We must not stop until abortion is aborted.
It must be abolished and legal protections must be put into place for life from the womb to the tomb. Incremental laws may have some help in reducing abortions – such as heartbeat bills – but they are not enough, nor are they consistent with a Biblical view of the issue. How ridiculous is it that we legislate to simply reduce murders? Oh, could you just maybe murder a little less? Or not beyond this age? Too much of the pro-life movement has settled for mere pragmatism which only incrementally seeks harm reduction instead of annihilating the threat altogether. Some incrementalist laws even tend to make the situation worse by simply legislating Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers’ competition out of business. Aside from the barbaric dismemberment abortions, there also exists chemical abortions and home abortions which must be dealt with. This is a battle that is extensive, and like any good war strategy to win, victory must be comprehensive to ensure the enemy does not rise up again and regroup.
So, let me give you some tangible, practical next steps and places you can go for more info and action steps to take.
- Check out CHOICE42.COM – a consistently Christian Pro-Life organization run by Laura Klassen – who used to work in the film industry. They put out some amazing animated info videos and provide resources and encouragement for moms to choose life, not murder.
- Check out WENEEDALAW.CA – this is a ministry arm of ARPA Canada (I believe) that works on the end of advocacy and petitioning the Civil government. Contact them, offer your time to volunteer, donate, write MPs, and rally your church together.
- Check out the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, another pro-Life group in Canada that works in public education around the dark truth of abortion and helping people see it for what it is.
- Check out your local Pregnancy Care Centre and see how you can volunteer, donate, get trained, or help out.
Let’s not sit back, but go forward, saints. Seek justice for the fatherless, because we’re children of the Father who has adopted us into His family.
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