“Words are inadequate for me to say how honored I was to be the recipient of the Margaret Sanger Award. This award will remain among my most cherished possessions.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
The quotation is from a 1966 letter Dr. King wrote to Cass Canfield, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s “World Population Emergency Campaign.” Civil rights commitments kept Dr. King from attending the prestigious ceremony, as did illness for Sanger. King sent his wife Coretta to offer a message on his behalf. The acceptance speech, titled “Family Planning – A Special and Urgent Concern,” was full of glowing praise for the work of Sanger and Planned Parenthood.
King wrote:
There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger’s early efforts. She, like we, saw the horrifying conditions of ghetto life. Like we, she knew that all of society is poisoned by cancerous slums. Like we, she was a direct actionist — a nonviolent resister. She was willing to accept scorn and abuse until the truth she saw was revealed to the millions.
King had likely never read a copy of Sanger’s Dec. 10, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, commenting on the plans for her “Negro Project.”
“[We propose to] hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. And 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.” -Margaret Sanger
King fit the bill as a Planned Parenthood puppet. He was genuinely concerned for the welfare of his people yet unaware of the organization’s hidden agenda. He bought into the twisted ideology that destroys the very people group he fought to protect. As his niece and pro-life activist Alveda King said:
Dr. King was not aware that the population control agenda aimed primarily at Negroes during his lifetime, included sterilization, abortion, and chemical birth control that would ultimately be linked to stroke, heart attack and breast cancer. He was mislead to believe that he would be “helping his people.” Such help would lead to mass genocide.
King showed signs of being against abortion. Pro-life leader Ryan Bomberger wrote, “In an advice column he wrote for Ebony magazine, from 1957-1958, King recognized the wrong of abortion in a response to a young man who compelled his girlfriend to the crime. He advised, in part: ‘One can never rectify a mistake until he admits that a mistake has been made.'”
Dr. King knew that some people in society feared a growing black population. He wrote:
Some commentators point out that with present birth rates it will not be long before Negroes are a majority in many of the major cities of the nation. As a consequence, they can be expected to take political control, and many people are apprehensive at this prospect.
Yet he strangely believed Planned Parenthood’s concerns for growth stemmed from compassion:
They (Negroes) are instinctively sympathetic to all who offer methods that will improve their lives and offer them fair opportunity to develop and advance as all other people in our society. For these reasons we are natural allies of those who seek to inject any form of planning in our society that enriches life and guarantees the right to exist in freedom and dignity.
Time would reveal that King’s allies were closer to enemies. In a interview on the history of Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg admitted:
Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.
Martin saw Planned Parenthood in the same light as many do today. The organization was backed by the wealthy elite and seemed to shine as a savior to poor, downtrodden minorities. That’s part of the reason why people admire Bill and Melinda Gates. Bill pours millions into aiding underdeveloped countries while Melinda is on a mission to bring family planning and birth control to the poor of the earth. As the Gates Foundation 2012 annual letter proclaims, “[t]he idea is that as parents bring their family size down, countries can invest more in educating young people.”
They warn us:
Over the next 40 years, the global population is projected to grow at just .8 percent per year. It just passed 7 billion and will reach 9.3 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations’ medium estimate. However, the populations of most poor countries, which have the hardest time feeding and educating their citizens, will more than double between now and 2050. If we compare population by continent now and in 2050, we see that Africa will more than double in population (from 1 billion to 2.2 billion) while Asia and the Americas will grow by 25 percent and Europe will hardly grow at all!
Isn’t that interesting? Africa could double in population, and Europe might not grow at all! Not if the Gates can help it. Bill continues:
Nigeria, which has the biggest population in Africa, will grow from 163 million to 392 million—an increase of 140 percent. This will likely make the lives of people in that very poor country even more difficult. Melinda and I believe, though, that if the right steps are taken—not just helping women plan their families but also investing in reducing child mortality and increasing nutrition—populations in countries like Nigeria will grow significantly less than projected. Almost all the foundation’s global programs focus on goals that will help with this.
He may have a comic book, but that doesn’t make him a hero. The Gates goals are conveniently aligned with Planned Parenthood’s. Not surprising, as Aaron Dyke points out:
Bill Gates’ real legacy is that of a second generation eugenicist committed to lowering the global population. His father, William Gates, Sr., has long been on the national board for Planned Parenthood and numerous other depopulation efforts, including financial donations and board positions at PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health), the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the Department of Population Dynamics at Johns Hopkins University and, of course, the United Nations. The family are de facto captains of the Rockefeller-founded health-related eugenics operations, now in full continuation through targeted, global stealth kill programs, updated for the 21st Century by the world’s first voluntarily dethroned richest man in the world. Bill Gates the younger made clear his goal to lower the population through vaccines at his infamous 2010 TED talk.
A season in Mozambique, Africa and a visit to Nepal in 2010 opened my eyes to the plight of the poor in third-world nations. I wholeheartedly support efforts for clean water, nutrition, education, housing, and positive forms of social justice. What I will never support is a eugenics-based birth control/abortion movement that disguises itself as a friend to the people it plots to systematically eliminate.
I believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. cared deeply for the black population. There are countless others who have a similar call to help both the African-American community and those in Africa. However, as LifeNews states, the call for population control is a “false alarm.” There are real crises throughout our world, but the answer will be found not in killing or preventing life from taking place. If we take that road, we will end up at the same conclusion Hitler did. Wrap it in a pretty bow and call it a gift to the poor, but eugenics’ final aim is clear – decrease an undesirable population.
I refuse to repeat Dr. King’s mistake. The answer to solving poverty’s ills is never found in the elimination of the poor.
