S09E04 - Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger
Show notes
DEEP DIVE
On this episode we get up to our elbows into the extraordinary, highly controversial and often wildly contradictory story of one of America's most dichotomised social and cultural figureheads; and the organisation she founded to do many more things than the abortions it is now infamous for, this time, we are talking about Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger.
Sanger began her crusade for birth control after working as a nurse among impoverished women in New York, witnessing endless pregnancies, dangerous abortions, miscarriages and women with almost no control over their lives and reproductive health. This was all transpiring at a time when even distributing information about contraception could get you arrested and jailed; banged up instead of knocked up! Sanger became one of America's most relentless advocates for women and their sexual destiny; not just with abortion or contraception though.
Alongside ideas and writings about sexual freedom, bodily autonomy and reproductive technology that sound astonishingly modern, Sanger was also deeply involved in the eugenics movement and wrote openly about the “feeble-minded” and the scourge of hereditary degeneracy. She was mad for a bit of compulsory sterilisation and discussed at length the qualifications and categories of segregation of people considered unfit to reproduce.
On the episode we discuss her literary work; Family Limitation, Motherhood in Bondage, The Pivot of Civilization; and we also hash out the finer details of the American eugenics movement, Roe v. Wade and the infamous Negro Project; asking whether the modern conspiracy notion of a programme designed to eliminate black Americans actually survives contact with the historical record, or whether it my have even done more good than harm.
This is a story where reproductive freedom, race, poverty, religion, sex, state power and social engineering become so tangled together that every time you think you've found the good guy or the bad guy, you turn the page and are met with an entirely new set of impossible circumstances.
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Joining me on this episode are Betsy Speer and Claire Fox.
You can find Betsy at betsyspeer.com and across most social media under @betsyspeercomedy and she also performs live and online comedy regularly so follow for info and updates on upcoming shows
You might find Claire, in a somewhat private capacity, on IG @TCGClaire but in general she is a civilian, not in want of an audience :D Not like us comedians desperately looking for attention! :)
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CHAPTERS
00:00:00 - Start
01:00:46 - Sanger, I Hardly Knew Her?
01:50:35 - I Genics, Eugenics, We All Genics
02:12:22 - The Feminist Revolution
02:31:18 - Family Limitation
03:05:55 - Eugenics Please
03:31:17 - Motherhood in Bondage
03:44:29 - The Pivot of Civilisation
04:05:54 - The Negro Project
04:39:54 - The Case for Birth Control
04:54:34 - Texas Says No
04:57:46 - Off The Fence
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