More billboard controversy: Michigan pro-life group, Flint Area Right to Life, was denied by billboard owner CBS Outdoor in their attempt to put up a billboard with an alleged quote from Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger reading: "We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population." Flint Area Right to Life Director and pseudo-historian, Judy Climer, explained:
"If you read her biography, she was very much tied to the Ku Klux Klan, to the Nazis, to Hitler. She very much wanted thoroughbreds. That's the word she used, thoroughbreds, and the way to make that happen was to eliminate minorities. She called them weeds in the garden of life. Those are her words. It's an accurate historic quote."
For the record, she also didn't care for puppies and rainbows.
Planned Parenthood shot back saying that the charges leveled against Ms. Sanger by these anti-choice groups are based on taking words out of context, though they admitted she had subscribed to some ideas that are considered unsavory today.
Sanger was a nurse known for her promotion of birth control, and actually set up the first birth-control clinic in the U.S. in 1916, for which she ended up serving thirty days in prison. She also opened a family-planning clinic in Harlem in 1930, and was supported by the African-American community. Planned Parenthood was set up in 1942.
The point here is, whether their accusations are libelous or not, these kinds of organizations will employ a scary range of tactics to advance their agenda. And they lose more credibility by using an apocryphal quote to inflame emotion. Kudos to CBS Outdoor for not dealing with that noxious garbage.