Customer Reviews

Killer Angel: A Short Biography of Planned Parenthood's Founder, Margaret Sanger

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This book while short, does get across the history behind Margaret Sanger and this story does need to be understood by all trying to understand the issue of abortion in the USA. It does have a lot of footnotes, but I think it could have been far more credible if it used more direct quotes from Margaret's own writings. There were too many instances where a synopsys was written on what she said when a direct quote would have had a far deeper effect for the radical views that she held. The author spends a little too much time expressing opinions on why she was such a bad person when the facts speak for themselves. The author repeatedly uses biblical quotations to support these opinions on her as a person. In a couple of situations, the book repeats information from a prior chapter, leading one to believe the book may have put together fom a series of articles. Altogether it was a good effort but could have been far better with a slightly different approach in the same number of pages.

This very short biography (~100 pages) is by Christian author, George Grant. The focus of the biography is the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger.

As is obvious from the title, this is not a flattering examination of Sanger. Grant is not trying to find common ground on which to dialogue with Sanger fans. Rather, he is presenting an exposé. Grant argues that the appellations often ascribed to Sanger (e.g., reformer, heroine, champion, saint) are tantamount to historical revisionism:

"The 'champion of birth control' and the 'patron saint of feminism' was no less horrific in her disdain for the helpless and the hapless than any of the other monsters of progressivism during the first half of the twentieth century--Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Mao. The only difference is that they have all been duly discredited, while she has not-at least, not yet." (p. 75)

And so the end to which Grant writes his brief biography is that "the proper standing of Margaret Sanger in the sordid history of this bloody century be secured." (pp. 7-8)

Grant presents Sanger as one with nonexistent sexual mores, a promiscuous woman, whose sexual life was outdone only by her intellectual life. Her views on sexual liberation and radical socialism led her down the path of Malthusianism and eugenics so that she "had openly endorsed the euthanasia, sterilization, abortion, and infanticide programs of the early Reich....She even commissioned her friend, Ernst Rudin, the director of the Nazi Medical Experimentation program, to serve the organization as an advisor." (pp. 91-92)

Grant offers several disturbing quotations from Sanger throughout his booklet:

- "The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the Minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

- "We can all vote, even the mentally arrested. And so it is no surprise to find that the moron's vote is as good as the vote of the genius. The outlook is not a cheerful one."

- "The dullard, the gawk, the numbskull, the simpleton, the weakling, and the scatterbrain are amongst us in overshadowing numbers--intermarrying, breeding, inordinately prolific, literally threatening to overwhelm the world with their useless and terrifying get."

Grant presents Sanger as a kindred spirit intellectually with those progressives in the first half of the 20th century who, for lack of a better word, have now been condemned as monsters.

Grant completes his study by asserting that the character and vision of Sanger are "perfectly mirrored in the organization that she wrought." (p. 102)

***

Again, this book is not intended to build bridges with those who are fans of Sanger. It is an exposé by an author who believes that the historical record of Margaret Sanger amounts to little more than revisionism. Those who suspect that the details of Sanger's life have been airbrushed will find this book helpful and may be interested in reading two comprehensive works on Planned Parenthood that Grant has written. Everyone else will likely hate this book.

This book is too short, and that's about my only criticism of it. I found it to be eye opening, to say the least. It wasn't just the revelations about Margaret Sanger herself. I already suspected as much about her just from what I'd gleaned over the years. The book opened my eyes about us. About our society. Our people, attitudes and ideas. It helped me into the journey of why abortion, contraception, euthenasia, and now other things like embryonic stem cells, and IVF are just so awful and wrong. Life is sacred. From conception until death. This is just one chilling story about one person who understood this on some level, but even then....didn't care. Eventualy becoming absolutely malevelolent. Her ideas and life are reprehensible. As I said, no real surprises there. But the United States, and Western Europe's willingness to hear her. To bear her. To become ruled by her ideas is mind blowing. This quick read revealed to me the slippery slope of not placing a premium on human life. You can see the seeds in here of so many evils of todays world. When just layed out page after page in such a condensed form, and at such a cadence, you actually feel grimy. You begin to realize how much we actually participate in evil. But not just because of the actions of the dispicable persons who hate life, and are open about it, such as Margaret Sanger, but because of the inaction, and complacency of all of us as a society for allowing evil to just walk right past our Government, our constitution, our inherent value systems, our discernments, and set up shop right under our noses. Shame on her. Shame on us. I pray we can one day turn the tide for life. Life for all. The unborn, the actively living, and the dependent or elderly adult. We all have the one civil right in common, and it seems to be the one most swept under the rug. The right to be. The right to become.

Great, eye opening read, recommended for anyone who isn't aware of how badly we've all been hoodwinked, and had our values dampened by a few horrid people. There's no difference in the ideologies and ideas of Margaret Sanger, and Adolph Hitler. None. It's the same set of principles. And of the two of them, Margaret Sanger was infinitely more successful in the accomplishment of her holocaust.

Margaret Sanger's own words should sink the ship of Planned Parenthood. I'm glad that Grant wrote such a book. His writings are needed to balance out the Planned Parenthood [material] being rammed down the throat of society. Although I do agree with the...reviewer's notes who gave the book 4 stars out of 5, I thought that my review of 5 out of 5 is more fitting...

Her views were just as monstrous as Hitler's, because they came from the same philosophical genetic line of thinking. Her own words condemn her. She indeed targeted the poor and down-trodden of society with the same views as the Third Reich. She saw the black community as hitler saw the disabled of Germany "useless eaters." Read this book to find out what she really believed. Don't just listen to the emotional-laden lies of Planned Parenthood and their misinformed rabble,[..]

I've never seen pro abortionists deal with the real facts concerning Margaret Sanger. The facts are presented in books like "Killer Angel," but they can't "handle" the facts. All they can do is appeal to the emotions-- "Oh the starving children..." etc. So... their solution is that the children are better off dead, than starving! Good argument!? No. Stupid argument -- just an appeal to the emotions. "Starving Children?" "Abused Children?" Why change the argument? No one said that anti-abortionists were pro starvation or pro abuse. What greater abuse can you have than the killing of innocent children? What you actually have is a promoting and philosophical acceptance of, and practice of genocide for convenience-sake. Shame on anyone who would try to defend what Margaret Sanger said and lived for. You may as well try to defend Hitler himself!

It's easy to understand the motives, purpose, and actions of Planned Parenthood in light of its founder. Short, easy to read, and helpful for pro-lifers who are fighting PP at any level.

This is an excellent primer and succinct summary of the truth about the origins of "Planned Parenthood." Anyone who wants to know the truth about America's disgraceful abortion mills, should begin with this book. You can trust Grant to tell you the truth, in contrast to the communist propaganda we usually get fed! Thank you George!

For many years, Maragret Sanger has revealed herself as, for the conservative movement in America, history's worst villain (if challenged by Marx and Kinsey) and because of this I was always interested to read a detailed biography of her.

"Killer Angel" was the first Sanger biography I encountered, both on the web and in print, and its hyperbolic title made me - at first - think a good deal about how bad a woman Sanger really must have been. I have over the near never been remotely immunised against extremist views and very frequently do not realise I am reading them when I am, but with "Killer Angel" the story was different. From the first it was very easy for me to see that George Grant was exaggerating every detail of Margaret Sanger's life and providing nowhere near sufficient depth about how she experienced important events during her lifetime.

This begins at the beginning with his discussion of Sanger's legacy in Planned Parenthood (which is surprisingly not referred to by one of the terms of abuse given it by many of Grant's colleagues) and comparing it to Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini, Whilst there may be some truth, given demographic conditions in Eurasia, Canada and New Zealand today, that Sanger has been destructive, Grant does not so much as provide details thereof that could have been sobering if he had tried. Rather, he makes Sanger guilty without evidence - like being convicted without trial. Again, he may be right about how Sanger's background as the daughter of a militantly socialist father spoiled her for life, but Grant provides little detail and absolutely no depth concerning how this affected Sanger's childhood. Nor does he discuss whether Sanger inherited her political radicalism from her father, who was one of the earliest supporters of female suffrage, or what happened to her father and some other family members after her mother died.

The way in which Grant lack depth continues to be seen as we move through Sanger's life, from her attempts to be educated as a teacher and nurse to her marriage and separation from husband William. Whilst Grant is not bad at saying what happened, he gives not the slightest clue as to the personal or psychological motivations that lead Margaret Sanger to do what she did. The impression one gets is that nothing could ever stop Margaret Sanger from doing what she wanted to: that she was a spoiled child of the first order who never had any thought for other people at all. If this were true, Grant could have added a great deal of richness to his biography and tremendously more imagination to the reader trying to understand her. As it is, reader will be left with a biography that may well be largely true, but like children's history textbooks with so little explanation.

When we get to Sanger's career in the field of eugenics, a crucial reason why she is arguably the most hated person among conservatives today, Grant becomes even more hyperbolic in his language, and even less willing to use reason or evidence to back up his assertions - for instance, about the number of pseudosciences he says resulted from Malthusian population theories. The later part of Sanger's life, from her efforts to avoid being charged for publishing material on abortion, is covered in an even more shallow fashion: for instance, Grant does not provide any detail of how Sanger managed to "face up to the year-old legal charges still outstanding against her". The last years of her life, during which Western society turned in exactly the direction Sanger had wanted in the 1910s and 1920s, is barely covered at all.

"Killer Angel" might be listed as a biography, but it is better described as a children's book: the evidence is so shallow that "Killer Angel" makes the concise history books I read to study the settlement of Australia and basic twentieth-century history seem sophisticated. Even if you hate Margaret Sanger, look elsewhere.

In his book Killer Angel, George Grant repeatedly attacks Margaret Sanger and claims that her "crimes against humanity were no less heinous" than those of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini.

Wow.

Well, let's take a look at Margaret Sanger's "criminal" history and see if her "crimes" are really as "heinous" as George Grant says they were.

During Margaret Sanger's lifetime not only was abortion illegal in America, so was the distribution of birth control information and contraception. This caused great hardship for women all across America. These laws basically forced women to become baby-making machines. Sanger's own mother suffered from health problems brought on by giving birth to eleven children. And being forced to care for large numbers of children condemned millions of American women to stay in poverty, sink deeper into poverty or drop into poverty from one of the middle rungs of society.

Margaret Sanger defied the "obscenity" laws and opened health clinics to benefit poor women. She (a trained nurse) and other medical professionals gave medical advice on birth control and contraception. She made it possible for women (mostly poor women) to plan pregnancies rather than be slaves to them.

And after decades of fighting these unfair laws and going to jail for her beliefs and speaking her mind about the basic unfairness of these laws, we now live in a country where sex education is not a crime, women don't have to have eleven children, far fewer people die from sexually transmitted diseases and abortion (despite the fact that it is now legal) has actually gone DOWN, as sex education and widely available contraception has caused the NEED for abortion to go down!

Also because of Margaret Sanger's hard work and dedication, millions of women who would have died in back alley abortions or in difficult and complicated labor, are alive today and in good health.

This is what George Grant refers to as "crimes against humanity".

In this book "Killer Angel", George Grant tries to paint a picture of Margaret Sanger as a racist and a sinister woman with "genocidal intentions" to kill off all of the African-Americans and other "inferiors" in America.

It's a warped picture that gives the reader a totally inaccurate and dishonest idea of the sort of woman Margaret Sanger truly was.

A large part of his "argument" stems from Margaret Sanger's involvement in America's eugenics movement. He would have the reader believe that it would be impossible for Margaret Sanger to be involved in America's eugenics movement without being a racist.

What Mister Grant's extremely biased book fails to mention is that during Margaret Sanger's lifetime the eugenics movement was very popular and the majority of Americans were involved in it. Much of the government officials at the federal, state and local levels were supporters of the eugenics movement. Some of the more famous supporters included President Teddy Roosevelt, President Woodrow Wilson, President Calvin Coolidge, Prescott Bush and John H. Kellogg; the man who founded the Kelloggs cereal company.

Is George Grant going to write a book where he accuses Prescott Bush of being a racist?

Is he going to write a book where he accuses Calvin Coolidge of being a racist?

Is he going to write a book where he accuses John Kellogg of being a racist and demand that we stop buying Kelloggs breakfast cereals?

Or is it only women that help the less fortunate that get accused of racism?

In addition, Sanger is clearly not the founder of American eugenics; she joined it late and was, in fact, rejected by much of the movement. Race-based supporters of the eugenics movement disapproved of Margaret Sanger and her philosophies, referring to her ideas as "reform eugenics". Indeed, many of the eugenics movement's most prominent members rejected birth control because they saw Sanger's democratic vision of contraception for all who wanted or needed it as a threat to their goal of increasing the fertility rates of the "good stocks" of society.

And if Margaret Sanger was such a racist, why did she have the support of prominent African-American organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Council of Negro Women?

And if she was such a racist, why did she want her clinics in the South to be run by black doctors and nurses?

Grant also fails to note that Sanger wrote letters rebuking a railroad company that refused to sell food to her African-American cook, Daisy, and was quick to reprimand a nurse who made disparaging comments about her Black patients at a Harlem contraception clinic.

Mister Grant's book cannot be taken seriously as he can only make his exceedingly biased and dishonest claims by ignoring the available evidence.