Sanger’s Racist Legacy Lives on in New York City Schools

In 1930, Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau allied with the Urban League to bring birth control services to the women of Harlem. By 1939, Sanger had raised thousands of dollars to support an expansion of the initiative she named “The Negro Project.” Targeted toward reducing an African-American population described in Sanger’s June, 1932 edition of Birth Control Review as “breeding carelessly and disastrously,” these early birth control clinics seem to have provided a model for New York City’s School Based Health Centers.

Today, New York City’s public school students—underage and without parental knowledge—are given access to birth control pills, Depo-Provera injections, and the insertion of plastic IUDs to prevent pregnancy. In an analysis of the records of 40 school based health centers in New York City—most of them in schools with large minority populations, the New York Post revealed that about 22,400 students sought reproductive care from January, 2009 through 2012.

In addition to these routine contraceptives, the City’s schools are providing students with Plan-B, the “morning-after pill” to prevent pregnancy. The Post reports that “handouts of the morning-after pill to sexually active students have skyrocketed” from 5,039 doses given to teenage students during the 2009-10 school year, to 12,721 doses given in 2011-12. Under New York State law, minors can obtain reproductive services without their parent’s permission.

 

more info on Margaret Sanger and her thoughts on the "black race"