Planned Parenthood financier Charles Munger died on November 28, 2023, at age 99, after “spending more than four decades as [Warren] Buffett’s second-in-command and foil atop Berkshire Hathaway Inc.,” according to Reuters. The two men met in Omaha in 1959.
Like Buffett, Charles Munger (or “Charlie,” as he was often called) was also an abortion philanthropist, who served on Planned Parenthood’s board and even helped Buffett create a ‘church’ to help women get illegal abortions.
Charles Munger
Who was Charles Munger?
InsidePhilanthropy.com previously noted how Munger “worked in real estate for several years before starting a successful investment firm that eventually caught the eye of Warren Buffett, who brought him into Berkshire Hathaway.” There, he eventually became the company vice chairman. Buffett once credited Munger as one of his top three investment influencers.
Munger was described by Forbes as “Buffett’s sidekick” and Berkshire’s “largest shareholder, with 1.8% of the stock.”
“[F]ew people realize that for more than 30 years Buffett has had a not so-silent partner who is as much the creator of the Berkshire Hathaway investment philosophy as is the master himself,” Forbes wrote.
Warren Buffett and Charles Munger
Munger and Abortion ‘Rights’
Live Action News previously documented that Warren Buffett’s pro-abortion activism can largely be attributed to Munger.
“Munger…staunchly supported abortion rights, with far reaching consequences,” Economist.com reported.
“It was emotionally hard for me to become pro-choice because I do have reverence for human life,” Munger once stated, according to Janet Lowe in her book “Damn Right! Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charles Munger.” He added, “but when I thought through the consequences, I found it necessary to overrule that part of my nature.”
Munger agreed with Buffett “on population control and abortion rights,” Forbes wrote in 2014. In 1969, Munger “convinced Buffett to join him in paying the legal defense of Dr. Leon Belous, who was convicted of referring a woman to an illegal abortionist.
Munger “persuaded many top lawyers to sign a friend-of-the-court brief, and the doctor was acquitted in a reversal of California’s anti-abortion law. This case was one of the building blocks for the Roe v. Wade case three years later,” stated Economist.com.
Forbes wrote:
During the 1960s Munger helped California women obtain abortions in Mexico by paying for their trips. Later he was a driving force in helping persuade the California Supreme Court to make the first decision overturning, on constitutional grounds, a law prohibiting abortions.
Recalls Buffett: ‘Charlie took over the case. He solicited the deans of leading medical and law schools to enter amicus briefs. Charlie did all the work on it night and day, even writing some of the briefs himself.
Munger also agreed with Buffett on population control.
According to biographer Lowe, “In 1990, Munger fired off a stinging letter to Fortune, claiming that a review of Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s book, The Population Explosion, had missed the point. The book reviewer, said Munger, ‘argues that human welfare will continue to improve as a result of desirable population growth accompanied by even faster technological development. Alas, it is not so simple. In a finite world system, subject to the laws of physics, two variables (population and per capita welfare) can’t both be maximized forever.'”
In 1994, Lowe cited Buffett as declaring that the world would have far fewer problems “if you could make every child born in this country and this world a wanted child … the closest thing we have to that is Planned Parenthood. Until women have that right to determine their reproductive destiny, we’re in an unequal society.”
Buffett and Munger Create ‘Church’ to Mask Abortion Underground
Warren Buffett and Charles Munger also financed the Los Angeles Clergy Consultation Services (CCS), an underground network of ministers which assisted women in obtaining illegal abortions, according to author David J. Garrow in his book “Liberty and Sexuality.” It was during this time, writes Lowe in her “behind the scenes” book about Munger, that “Munger and Buffett sponsored a ‘church’ called the Ecumenical Fellowship that counseled women on family planning.”
“The church, run by a legitimate minister who got in trouble with his own denomination for his pro-abortion activities, sometimes helped women get safe abortions outside the United States,” Lowe wrote.
Garrow confirmed this, writing, “Munger and Buffett were continuing to finance the Los Angeles clergy referral service, even to the point of helping the principal clergyman, J. Hugh Anwyl, start a new church after being dismissed from his previous pulpit….”
According to Lowe, Munger stated: “Warren and I were revolutionaries. We created a church that was used as an underground railroad. We supported the Clergy Counseling Service. The minister running it was cashiered by his own church for helping women get abortions.”
Munger added, “First I tried to persuade the church to let him continue. That failed. I called Warren and asked him to help me establish our own church. That we did. For years this minister ran the thing. That was our contribution, trying to help so that society didn’t force women to give birth — to be held in a system [NARAL founder] Garrett Hardin called ‘mandatory motherhood.’”
Live Action News further details the founding of this so-called “church” here.
Warren Buffett and Charles Munger, A Wealth of Wisdom report
Charles Munger’s ‘Church’ Merges into Planned Parenthood
Munger became a trustee and chief financial officer of the Los Angeles chapter of Planned Parenthood, where, according to Forbes, Munger “contributed liberally to Planned Parenthood,” including donating Berkshire Hathaway stock, claimed InsidePhilanthropy.com.
When Munger joined PPLA, the organization was described by Lowe as “small and thinly financed.”
“We were chronically short of money,” stated Otis Booth, who served on the PPLA board with Munger.
Munger told Lowe, “We were way ahead of the national office of Planned Parenthood in arranging abortions. The Planned Parenthood chapter in Los Angeles wanted to get into that business, but we didn’t know how.”
“We merged our church, the Ecumenical Fellowship, headed by the same guy who headed the Clergy Consultation Service (CCS), into the Los Angeles chapter of Planned Parenthood,” Munger claimed of himself and Warren Buffett.
Authors Doris Andrea Dirks and Patricia A. Relf confirmed the merger of CCS with Planned Parenthood in their book about the history of the CCS, “To Offer Compassion.”
“Initially, Planned Parenthood had not been cooperative with the clergy group in terms of providing abortion… In 1971, Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles (PPLA) – with CCS supporter Charlie Munger on the board – decided to expand its services to include abortion,” Dirks and Relf wrote. “In April 1971, the CCS became a division of Planned Parenthood with Anwyl taking the title of associate director of PPLA. In 1972, he became executive director of PPLA, a position he then held for seventeen years….”
Charles Munger honorary Board member of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles AR 2012 to 2013
Munger Remained a Supporter of Abortion
In her book, Lowe recounted an odd toast given by Munger to Keith P. Russell, who served as ACOG president until April 30, 1969. Russell had “led medical professionals in their fight to liberalize the California abortion law in 1967,” the Los Angeles Times noted upon his death. Russell was also on the board of Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles for several years. Russell, Lowe wrote, “had been Charlie’s stalwart ally in the abortion rights struggle.”
During a party, a patient of Russell’s toasted him for “all the babies he’d delivered,” wrote Lowe. But when “Charlie raised his glass, he declared, ‘I want to toast Dr. Russell for the thousands of babies he didn’t deliver.‘”
Lowe claimed that Munger remained a supporter of abortion, writing that so-called reproductive rights was among the charities listed in Munger’s “circle of competence.”
Following his death, Warren Buffett paid tribute to his long-time business ‘sidekick’ and population control comrade, telling the Wall Street Journal, “Charlie thinks about business economics and investment matters better than anyone I know, and I’ve learned a lot over the years by listening to him.”
“Charlie and I think pretty much alike,” Buffett stated in a 2022 annual letter. “But what it takes me a page to explain, he sums up in a sentence. His version, moreover, is always more clearly reasoned and also more artfully—some might add bluntly—stated.”
Buffett stated in a press release about Munger’s death: “Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie’s inspiration, wisdom and participation.”
In 2000, Lowe summed up what would turn out to be Munger’s legacy, writing, “To those who support women’s rights, Munger is a hero. To those who oppose abortion rights, Munger is a powerful nemesis.”
