OPINION:
Oct. 16, 1916 began like any other day in New York City, but it marked the beginning of a new era in Western Civilization, for it was on that day Margaret Sanger opened the doors of the first birth control clinic in America. Most people didn’t notice the new operation; fewer partook of the services offered there. And after just nine days in business, police raided the clinic and arrested Sanger for providing contraceptive advice, a practice then prohibited by federal law.
So, that was it. Just a blip on the radar. Nothing changed except Sanger’s criminal record, right? If this had been any other progressive, perhaps. But Margaret Sanger imbibed a special kind of evil. She didn’t open her clinic because she cared for the poor or because she was an early champion or women’s rights or any other liberal talking point that’s been repeated ad nauseum by her modern fanbase. Sanger opened that little clinic in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn as the opening shot in a war against American culture — a war we’re still fighting today.
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If you want to understand how we got to third-trimester abortions, infanticide, euthanasia, pornographic sex-ed, critical race theory, transgenderism, drag-queen-story-hour for children, arresting pro-life sidewalk counselors, and labeling parents who speak at school board meetings “domestic terrorists,” you have to go back to 1916, to that first birth control clinic in Brownsville.
But first, let’s go back a bit further.
Sanger spent the first decade of the 20th century mixing with Marxists and socialists in Greenwich Village’s labor movement scene. There, she embraced the idea that social transformation required a collapse of the moral order. That’s because, as she learned, moral people tend to be immune from radical thought. Therefore, to gain political control, there must first be sexual liberation far and wide.
Traditional marriage would have to be undermined. The consequences of sex — namely, children — would need to be eliminated. She only needed to convince traditional American women that they were little more than slaves in need of freedom. So, in 1914, Sanger published her first magazine, “The Woman Rebel,” which carried the slogan “No Gods, No Masters.”
Eight issues in, the magazine was shut down and Sanger was arrested. It was illegal to send sexually explicit content through the mail, and “The Woman Rebel” certainly qualified with its graphic descriptions of contraception methods, which she termed birth control. When Sanger was indicted, she decided to flee the country rather than stand trial.
While in England, Sanger shacked up with a slate of notable progressives, including H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett, and Havelock Ellis. It was with the married Ellis that Sanger kept the longest company. Besides being a physician and writer, Ellis was a passionate connoisseur of all things sexually deviant. He hosted elaborate orgies, lured his wife, Edith, into lesbianism so he could watch, and published more than 50 books exploring sexual perversion. Ellis was also a disciple of Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. While Darwin is known for his theories of natural selection and the survival of the fittest, Galton promoted a movement in which the fittest select who will survive: eugenics.
Eugenics is built upon the Malthusian belief that the human population will one day outgrow the planet’s food supply; therefore, the only way forward is to decide now who should die, rather than wait for starvation to choose. Eugenicists believed the sick, the addicted, the poor, and those of so-called “lower” races should be sterilized or eliminated for the greater good.
This is the murderous swill Sanger was swimming in for a year and a half during her self-imposed exile. When combined with the Marxist-flavored brew of the sexual revolution she’d already been drinking, it made for a potent cocktail. She carried it back with her to the United States, ready to renew her quest to change society, and it became the fuel for her first failed birth control clinic in Brownsville, a location chosen because of its dense population of Slavs, Latinos, Italians, and Jews.
When Sanger lost the legal battle, she appealed the decision. And while the original verdict was upheld and Sanger spent 30 days in prison, the court did rule that contraceptives could be prescribed by doctors for medical reasons, giving Sanger the loophole she needed to begin her assault on the family in earnest. Her prison sentence also made her something of a martyr, and she used her newfound celebrity to push birth control and eugenics into the mainstream.
In the years that followed, Sanger’s American Birth Control League, later renamed Planned Parenthood, became a close ally of the American Eugenics Society, sharing the same office building and several board members. Of note are Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant. Stoddard’s writings on race were featured in Nazi textbooks, and he was held in such high esteem by the Third Reich, he was granted a meeting with the Führer himself. Not to be outdone, Grant’s book “The Passing of the Great Race” was said to be Hitler’s “Bible.” In 1934, Nazi intellectual and race anthropologist Hans Gunther described both men as the “spiritual fathers” of Nazi Germany. And Sanger was their supporter and friend.
Today, Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the world, but its roots sink deep into the same dirt that grew the Third Reich. In many ways, Margaret Sanger is America’s Adolf Hitler, although to be fair to the Nazis, Sanger’s programs have killed far more people.
“The 1916 Project” unearths the how and why of our “progressive” culture shift. In 1916, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, opened her first clinic and launched America into a moral revolution that would have far-reaching consequences worldwide. Seth Gruber traces a direct path from Planned Parenthood to the Nazis to the current Democratic Party. Get a copy of the book here and host a screening of the film at your church or catch our tour dates here.
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Seth Gruber is one of the most trusted and influential voices today, driving change in the battle for Life. With a clarion call, he exposes the chilling realities of America’s “Culture of Death” while urging the church to rise and lead the charge on the front lines of our cultural war. As the host of the Seth Gruber Podcast, he reaches tens of thousands with his impassioned message. Additionally, he serves as the Executive Producer on the groundbreaking documentary The 1916 Project, shedding light on the twisted history of today’s modern abortion crises. Seth Gruber is on a journey to empower others to stand against the tide of darkness and fight for a culture of life. Seth and his wife, Olivia, have three children and live in Kansas City.
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