Mairead McArdle

Planned Parenthood finally grapples with Margaret Sanger’s racist past

In a startling departure from its typically dogged defenses, Planned Parenthood admitted through clenched teeth this week what many have asserted for decades: that their founder Margaret Sanger was a racist eugenicist.Planned Parenthood of Greater New York announced Tuesday that it will remove the name of Margaret Sanger from its Manhattan abortion clinic and will even lobby the city to scrub her name from a street sign near its Bleecker Street location.'The removal of Margaret Sanger’s name from our building is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color,’ reads a statement from Karen Seltzer, the chair of the New York affiliate’s board.

margaret sanger

Alabama’s abortion law is a progressive leap forward

To a Greek chorus of progressives caterwauling ‘Regressive!’ on Wednesday, Republican Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed into law the country’s strictest abortion ban. Depending on your perspective, it’s either a national reckoning on the right to life or a call to arms for women’s rights.Alabama’s Human Life Protection Act criminalizes performing an abortion at any point during pregnancy with a single exception for when an ‘abortion is necessary in order to prevent a serious health risk.’ Doctors who commit the felony of performing an abortion can be punished with a prison sentence of up to 99 years.

abortion

Just how ‘settled’ is Roe v. Wade?

‘Settled law,’ an unsettling phrase when it comes to the unborn, has haunted minds since Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh appeared on the horizon last month. The words thudded into the news cycle again this week when an elated Senator Susan Collins said Kavanaugh had assured her during their two-hour meeting that he considers the 1973 landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade to be settled law. This prompted rather some unseemly celebrations from the pro-abortion side, and sighs and despair among those who hoped America might change course on this emotive and important issue.

kavanaugh roe v wade