Planned Parenthood Turns 100

Planned Parenthood turned a century old this Sunday. Read on to see why it still matters very much today.

Just a century ago, Margaret Sanger (along with Ethel Byrne and Fania Mindell) opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in Brooklyn, New York. Thanks to the Comstock Law of 1873, this was highly illegal. Even information about contraception was banned; it was considered “obscene”. All three women were arrested for distributing this information, along with birth control, to women in the neighborhood.

Thanks to the subsequent trial of Sanger, Byrne, and Mindell, national attention focused on the issues of women’s health and birth control. Though the convictions were not overturned, the judge changed the existing law to allow for physician-provided birth control.

That original clinic transformed into the American Birth Control League. By 1942, the League became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, as it is still known today.

Sanger helped begin this movement largely because of her experiences as a nurse in the slums of New York’s Lower East Side. There, she saw women suffering the effects of self-induced abortions. These desperate measures were often undertaken because these impoverished women could not cope with another child in already large families. Sanger also reported high rates of infant mortality, at nearly 40 percent in the slums.

Margaret Sanger during her trial in Federal Court over her book The Woman Rebel

Women of the time were subject to “biological slavery”, as Sanger put it. They could hardly work to fulfill their own dreams when they were beholden to the demands of ever-increasing families.

While Planned Parenthood closely associated with legal battles over abortion rights, it actually didn’t start providing abortions until 1970. Sanger’s focused on birth control rather than abortion. In fact, she was adamantly against abortion, a fact that may be surprising to modern readers. She provided birth control for low-income women who could not access the resources available to higher-class American women.

In some ways, Sanger was remarkably progressive for her time. She advocated for freedom of speech and more candid discussions of sexuality. She also worked with well-known African American leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois. Martin Luther King, Jr. praised her in a later speech.

However, she also pushed for eugenicism, though she adamantly opposed euthanasia and denounced Nazi eugenics practices. Pro-life opponents of abortion have often pointed to Sanger’s eugenicist leanings in order to discredit her work.

Today, Planned Parenthood provides a variety of services, according to individual locations. Just over half of Planned Parenthood sites provide abortions. Clear data about the exact number of abortions performed at Planned Parenthood is not clear, though it appears to hover somewhere just below ten percent (depending on how you collect data and what you define as an “abortion”).

Other health care services provided at affiliates includes birth control, emergency contraception, cancer screenings, pregnancy testing and counseling, STI testing and treatment, vasectomies, LGBT community services, and sex education.

Planned Parenthood also often acts as an advocate for reproductive rights within legal and political systems. Given the current state of reproductive rights for women in the United States, this is an ongoing battle. Representatives of Planned Parenthood also promote widespread access to emergency contraception. The organization has also received funds from the Obama administration to help promote the Affordable Care Act.

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Planned Parenthood has benefited a significant number of women. Thanks in part to increased access to birth control and sex education, more women can make informed decisions about their reproduction. It is far easier to attend college, start a career, and earn your own income before you have children, rather than after. Planned Parenthood also offers many health services to men and members of the LGBT community as well.

Remember that Planned Parenthood has made a major, positive difference in many lives, both female and male, young and old. That’s worth celebrating.