A fake Twitter account recently lampooned Planned Parenthood, spawning fact-checks informing users that the abortion giant didn’t actually send out a racist tweet. But though the tweet in question was fake, satire is often rooted in reality.
The tweet, sent by a parody account labeled “Planned Parenthood,” reads:
“Are you Caucasian and would like to use your white privilege to do good? If you visit our website, you can add a note to your donation that specifically requests that your donations are used to help minority groups access abortion. Show that you care on this Giving Tuesday.”
Fake Planned Parenthood parody tweet, shared on Facebook by Memes Against Abortion.
Media outlets rushed to fact-check the tweet, including the Associated Press, and to notify the public that the tweet was not real — despite the fact that the account was openly described as a parody account in its Twitter bio.
“The messages posted from this fake social media account are not affiliated with the organization and do not reflect Planned Parenthood’s values,” Melanie Roussell Newman, Planned Parenthood’s senior vice president of communications and culture, told the Associated Press. “This account is part of a concerted effort to perpetuate abortion stigma and spread misinformation about Planned Parenthood patients, services, and values.”
But the question is, does the tweet spread misinformation about Planned Parenthood’s values?
A 2015 Live Action investigation found that Planned Parenthood was happy to accept donations racially targeting the Black community. In the recording below, a female staffer laughs as the male donor says he wants to ensure fewer Black babies are born, with her calling his sentiment “understandable.”
In fact, racist values go back to Planned Parenthood’s founding. Margaret Sanger was a known eugenicist, and the people she involved in running Planned Parenthood were similarly racist and ableist. Lothrop Stoddard, who served on the board of Sanger’s American Birth Control League (ABCL), believed that “non-white races must be excluded from America.” He was also the Exalted Cyclops of the Massachusetts chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.
Clarence Gamble (heir of the Procter and Gamble company fortune), served as a director of both Sanger’s ABCL and Planned Parenthood boards, and was also a eugenicist, supporting laws mandating the sterilization of the disabled. In a letter discussing the notorious Negro Project with Margaret Sanger, Gamble 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, and least able to rear children properly.
Sanger herself reportedly gave a speech to the Ku Klux Klan, supported the experimental testing of birth control on Puerto Rican women without their knowledge or consent, and supported the Buck v. Bell Supreme Court decision, allowing anyone deemed “unfit” to be sterilized without their consent. She also believed that “undesirables” — minorities, the poor, the disabled, and the mentally ill — were “human weeds” who shouldn’t be allowed to “breed.”
To this day, racism seems to flourish at Planned Parenthood. Recent investigations found that Black employees were routinely treated worse than white employees, were micromanaged, treated like children, and made to work longer hours. Hundreds of employees have claimed there is a culture of white supremacy and systemic racism at Planned Parenthood, with numerous affiliates actually admitting to these accusations.
Black women have been preyed upon and mistreated by the abortion industry, and they undergo a greater percentage of abortions than women of any other ethnicity in the United States, though Black people make up just 13% of the population. Black women who have sought Planned Parenthood’s services have also reported that they were pressured to be sterilized; former staffers admitted to promoting the use of long-term contraceptives like IUDs to children in minority schools.
While this specific tweet was from a parody account, it still shines a light on some very uncomfortable truths about America’s largest, most profitable abortion chain.
