News

WASHINGTON DC, November 14, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One of the United States’ leading pro-life organizations, the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA), is calling on Planned Parenthood to repudiate their founder by cancelling its annual “Margaret Sanger Award.”

The organization has been issuing the award since 1966. Past recipients have included Martin Luther King, Jr., President Lyndon Johnson, John D. Rockefeller III, Katharine Hepburn, Ann Landers, Jane Fonda, Ted Turner, and Hillary Clinton.

The SBA announced this week that it had sent a letter to Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards challenging her to “officially bring to an end any further glorification of Margaret Sanger.”

Image

Sanger’s background as a prominent member of the eugenics movement has been in the national spotlight since presidential contender Herman Cain charged that her population control efforts deliberately targeted the black community. Cain unleashed a firestorm of controversy by referring to the national abortion giant as “Planned Genocide.”

Veronica Byrd, director of African American media at Planned Parenthood, denounced Cain’s comments in a statement, saying: “For all her positive work, Margaret Sanger made statements some 80 years ago that were wrong then and are wrong now. Those statements have no bearing on the high quality health care Planned Parenthood provides today.”

In its letter to Richards, the SBA said that Bryd’s comments were “hardly consistent with the praise and veneration Planned Parenthood has afforded this well-known eugenicist.”

“Each year Planned Parenthood Federation of America awards its “highest honor,” the Margaret Sanger award, as recognition of “leadership, excellence, and outstanding contributions to the reproductive health and rights movement,” the letter read.

“Planned Parenthood’s annual tribute to Sanger, despite her appalling and deplorable statements, as well as your organization’s mission of population control, as explained in your Mission Statement found on IRS tax returns, can only lead one to logically conclude that Planned Parenthood was in fact founded and designed in part for the purpose of preventing specifically targeted groups of people from having children.”

The letter challenged Richards to not only cancel or rename the award but to also remove all “affirmative mention” of Sanger from Planned Parenthood’s website and publications.