Margaret Sanger Statue Removed in Boston!
By Katherine Van Dyke
I recently wrote a call-to-action in the June 28, 2023, Wednesday STOPP Report asking concerned readers to contact the stewards of The Old South Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts, and demand they remove a statue of Margaret Sanger from their “Voices of Protest” exhibit in the meeting house.
My introduction to this statue began only last month while I was visiting Boston’s Old South Meeting House on the Freedom Trail. When I entered the historic building, known for the formation of the Boston Tea Party, I did not expect to encounter a statue and complimentary write-up of Margaret Sanger in the “Voices of Protest” exhibit in the back of the meeting house. This exhibit includes artifacts, statues, and plaques that honor figures in American history who fought for freedom by various forms of protests in the 18th-21st centuries, including Benjamin Franklin, Phyllis Wheatley, and John Hancock. However, the exhibit also included one of the most racist figures in America, Margaret Sanger, and it chose to highlight her “life’s mission to legalize birth control” in America.
One does not have to look too hard into Sanger’s past to find that she was not an advocate for true liberty, equality, or justice of all. In fact, she promoted and supported the legalization and use of birth control and sterilization as “safer” methods of decreasing and eventually eliminating populations that she found as threats and “unfit” to society. This way of thought was just one of many examples of her involvement in the eugenics movement. Even the current CEO of Planned Parenthood, Alexis McGill Johnson, could no longer deny that Planned Parenthood’s foundress was a racist and eugenicist. While it is no surprise that the foundress of what would become the largest abortion provider in the country had the mindset that some lives are more important than others, I was still disgusted to see the favorable write-up on Sanger in this space. What made the moment of seeing this statue more difficult was seeing a group of schoolchildren, almost all of whom were non-white, joyfully participating in a program right across from where her statue stood.
I wrote to Revolutionary Spaces upon returning from Boston and expressed my concerns, calling immediately for the removal of the statue. In my email, I included the specific articles written by McGill Johnson, other Planned Parenthood CEOs, and the article about their removal of Sanger’s name from their clinic in NY. What I received back a few days later was a courteous but not very encouraging response from a staff member, who said that The Old South Meeting House inherited the exhibit in early 2020 and that there was a delay in removing the exhibit because of the COVID-19 pandemic and lack of funding. However, I was not calling on the exhibit to be removed as a whole and kindly reiterated that in a follow-up email.
What I did next was research the statue to determine if anyone else had known or expressed concern about the statue being there. What I found were two very contrary stories: The first was an article written by Students for Life of America about its campaign in April 2021 to “Strike Out Sanger” statues and monuments throughout the US, including this same statue in Boston; the second was a blog post written by Alexander Sanger about his discovery of his grandmother’s statue in The Old South Meeting House back in 2022 and its “refreshingly positive summary of her life and work.” These stories showed me that the removal of Sanger’s statue had not been a priority in Boston in the past three years and that more needed to be done. That was when I discussed the idea of asking other pro-lifers to join me in using our own voices in protest to demand that Sanger’s memorial be taken out once and for all.
In a short span of eight days, the support and concern of other pro-lifers helped achieve a victory. On July 6, I received a reply from the staff member with Revolutionary Spaces, expressing their agreement that the Sanger statue had no place in the exhibit or in The Old South Meeting House and that it had been officially removed! While the prompt action in removing the statue may be unusual, this small victory will hopefully serve as one of many to come in bringing awareness to Sanger and Planned Parenthood.
