The Secretary of State was recently praising one of her personal heroes, Margaret Sanger, but should a feminist consider Sanger inspiring?

There have been several excellent books written on the topic of Margaret Sanger and her beliefs. (Angela Franks wrote a well documented book that I hope will be republished in a less academic format.) Yet, I guess it’s not all that suprising that Secretary Clinton would sing Sanger’s praises since the Secretary has been so supportive of the Planned Parenthood agenda. Nevertheless, Mona Charen points out some discrepancies in her latest column, details about Sanger that aren’t so savory. Like this:

Margaret Sanger was a most thoroughgoing racist. “Eugenics,” she wrote, “is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political, and social problems.” Here, from her book What Every Girl Should Know, is an example of her thoughts on human development:

In all fish and reptiles where there is no great brain development, there is also no conscious sexual control. The lower down in the scale of human development we go the less sexual control we find. It is said that the aboriginal Australian, the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets.

Definitely worth a read. The column was inspired by Rep. Chris Smith’s questioning of the Secretary over statements she’d made concerning the “need” for contraception around the world. The State Department, according to Charen, has yet to confirm the details that the Secretary offered.

One aside –  I should mention that I take odds with a blanket statement that Charen makes in her piece:

As for children bearing children in Africa — obviously, birth control is necessary in poor countries, but is she really suggesting that cultures abusive enough to permit the marriage of very young girls would be open to providing them with birth control?

I’m not sure what’s so “obvious” about the necessity of birth control in poor countries. In fact, it seems like a band-aid solution. Proponents spend all this time and energy on contraception (and getting into other people’s bedrooms, which I thought were private, btw) instead of focusing on the real issues: corrupt government, failing economies, lack of education, lack of healthcare, etc. We can shower the developing world with contraception (as we have in many cases), but women and men will still be poor, still be lacking basic education, still not have a viable means of earning a living. I’ve yet to see how contraception helps this. Sure, one can argue that fewer people might suffer the injustices; but it doesn’t address the fundamental problems.