Planned Parenthood's Return To Its Roots

This is one of those stories that just amazes me. It started out as a UCLA student newspaper (one apparently on the pro-life side--yes, at UCLA!) had a "donor" call Planned Parenthood operations around the country, and offer money to them with the proviso that it would be used just to abort black babies--and for an explicitly hate-filled reason. The February 28, 2008 Idaho Statesman, shockingly enough, actually ran a story about it, and included the amazing transcript of the conversation with the Planned Parenthood representative here in Idaho:

Autumn Kersey of Planned Parenthood in Boise: Good afternoon, this is Autumn.

Donor: Hello, Autumn, I'm interested in making a donation today.

Kersey: Fantastic!

Donor: What about abortions for the underprivileged minority groups?

Kersey: Oh, absolutely. We have, um, in fact, uh wonderful, fantastic news. We just received a very generous donation to our women in need fund.

Donor: Wonderful. I want to specify that abortion to help a minority group - would that be possible?

Kersey: Absolutely.

Donor: Like the black community for example?

Kersey: Certainly.

Donor: OK, so the abortionI can give money specifically for a black baby, that would be the purpose.

Kersey: Absolutely. If you wanted to designate that you wanted your gift to be used to help (an) African-American woman in need, then we would certainly make sure that that gift was earmarked specifically for that purpose.

Donor: Great. Because I really face trouble with affirmative action, and I don't want my kids being disadvantaged, you know, against black kids. I just had a baby; I want to put it in his name, you know.

Kersey: Mmhmm, absolutely.

Donor: So that's definitely possible.

Kersey: Oh, always, always.

Donor: So I just wanna - can I put this in the name of my son?

Kersey: Absolutely.

Donor: Yeah, he's trying to get into colleges, and he's going to be applying, you know, he's justwe're just really bighe's really faced troubles with affirmative action.

Kersey: Mmhmm.

Donor: And we don't, you know, we just think, you know, the less black kids out there the better.

Kersey: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable. ... Um David, let me, if I may, just get some sort of specific general information so we can set this up the right way. You said you wanted to put it in your son's name, and you would like this designated specifically to assist (an) African-American woman who's looking to terminate a pregnancy.

Donor: Exactly, and yeah, I wanna protect my son, so he can get into college.

Kersey: All right. Excuse my hesitation, um, um, this is the first time I've had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I'm excited, and I wanna make sure I don't leave anything out.

It wasn't just Idaho where they found someone at Planned Parenthood willing to accept a donation for an explicitly racist reason.

Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood's founder, saw her objective as (in part) reducing the supply of inferior races--not just blacks and Hispanics, but also southern Europeans. Nor was she alone. I am always astonished, when I read through newspapers of the 1910-25 period, how many progressive sorts were explicitly pushing birth control as a method for keeping blacks from outbreeding whites.

But I find it very hard to believe that Planned Parenthood offices are staffed by the modern version of this. I am more inclined to think that what we are seeing is:

1. An enthusiasm for abortion that transcends everything else--including standards of decency that I thought were pretty universal in America.

2. A generation that has grown up with so little exposure to ferocious racism, and so little knowledge of history, that they don't find statements like the one above repugnant.