For as long as I’ve been involved at Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger’s legacy on race has been an open question.

What people want to know is: Was she or was she not a racist?

And we’ve answered every question but that one. https://p.ppfa.org/3x2rauQ 

Answering the binary question is convenient. It allows us to distance our current selves, and close the door — tie a neat bow around a century’s worth of conversation.

We must interrogate how organizationally, institutionally, individually, we have furthered her harms.

In pursuit of support for birth control, she created alliances that we’ve argued were for the purpose of political expediency.

But when you build alliances with people who believe in white supremacy, by default, you are devaluing — and further dehumanizing — Black women’s lives.

Sanger’s legacy has given us license to be relentless about gender — to the exclusion of other identities.

This generation has a name for this kind of behavior. Today they would call Margaret, a Karen.

But not individual Karens — I'm talking movement Karens. People who show up, take up more space, and tell you where to march.

Those who are relentless in pursuing freedom and fairness, but leverage their privilege in ways that devalue other contributions and further dehumanize.

Sometimes, this is what Planned Parenthood has acted like.

Because we’ve been so sure we’re right. We’ve been so sure we’re fair. Facing relentless attacks against abortion, we’ve been invested in protecting our turf — where we are centered.

And when we get called out — for how we’ve been fighting and its impact on Black and trans people — we cry.

We can’t afford to be a Karen or a Margaret in the face of the kind of dehumanization we are seeing right now.

We must finish what Margaret Sanger didn’t. The harms she started but couldn't heal without THIS Planned Parenthood, in THIS moment.

So let’s reckon with her. And let's interrogate every structure + process — and within ourselves — so we can stop racial hierarchy from operating.

This week, our federation voted to affirm that health equity requires race equity. To fulfill our mission, we must fight the systemic racism that creates barriers to sexual and reproductive health care.

Margaret Sanger harmed generations with her beliefs. In our second century, Planned Parenthood has a chance to heal those harms. Reckoning with Margaret Sanger is one thing. We need to reckon with ourselves.