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Time Capsule: Mike Wallace hammers Margaret Sanger in 1957 interview
LifeSiteNews ^ | 12/3/10 | Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

Posted on 12/03/2010 4:23:28 PM PST by wagglebee

 
Mike Wallace interviews Margaret Sanger.

December 3, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In 1957, an aging Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and the international birth control movement, agreed to an interview with CBS News’ Mike Wallace. In stark contrast with the sympathetic reception Sanger could expect to receive today in a network television interview, Wallace hammered Sanger with difficult questions and caught her in contradictions, while Sanger squirmed, fidgeted, and denied statements she had made only a week earlier in pre-interview discussions with CBS staff.

This fascinating and sometimes chilling interview with Sanger can be found at the website of the Harry Ransom Center, which is located at the University of Texas, and which has published all of the installments of the Mike Wallace Interview from 1957 and 1958.  In the interview, Sanger expounds upon her views on a variety of topics, including birth control, eugenics, population growth, homosexuality, marriage, and religion.

Among the more revealing moments is Sanger’s explanation of the “greatest sin” of having children who violate her eugenic standards, and “have no chance ... to be a human being practically.”

Asked if she believes in sin, Sanger tells Wallace: “I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world, that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically, delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things, just marked when they’re born.  That to me is the greatest sin that a people can commit.”

However, pressed by Wallace about her beliefs about “sin,” Sanger at first refuses to answer, and then balks at recognizing infidelity as such. “I don’t know about infidelity, it has so many personalities to it, and what a person’s own belief is, I couldn’t generalize,” she says, after Wallace insists that she respond to the question.

Sanger balks even more when Wallace begins to cite statements she has made publicly, even to his own staff, claiming that she has been misquoted. At first Sanger rejects the claim made in the woman’s magazine Redbook, in reference to contraception, that “immunity from parenthood encourages promiscuity particularly when unmarried persons can so easily avail themselves of the [birth control] devices.” But Wallace then reads Sanger’s own words from a Philadelphia Daily News article from 1942, encouraging the use of birth control to avoid “illegitimacy.”

“You were not advocating Christian morality but rather ways for single women to avoid bearing illegitimate children,” Wallace tells her. “I doubt it,” Sanger responds curtly. “I don’t believe I ever made such a remark.”  Sanger also denies telling a CBS staff member that “it should be made illegal for any religious group to prohibit dissemination of birth control, even among its own members.” “I don’t think I said it quite that way,” she protests.

Given Margaret Sanger’s role in founding Planned Parenthood, one might expect the interview to mention abortion, but the topic is only addressed in passing. When the interview was conducted in 1957, abortion was illegal throughout the United States, and Sanger always claimed to oppose the practice, as did Planned Parenthood at that time.  However Planned Parenthood would go on after Sanger’s death in 1966 to become the biggest abortion provider in the world, focusing mainly on the impoverished groups whom she had once referred to as “human waste.”

Asked about her belief in God, “in a sense of a divine being that rewards or punishes after death,” Sanger responds, “I have a different attitude about the divine. I feel that we have divinity within us.  And the more we express the good part of our lives, the more the divine within us expresses itself.”  She claimed to be Episcopalian.

See the whole interview here.



TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 1957; 1966; abortion; eugenics; humanwaste; margaretsanger; moralabsolutes; plannedparenthood; pp; prolife; sanger; sin
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Asked if she believes in sin, Sanger tells Wallace: “I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world, that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically, delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things, just marked when they’re born. That to me is the greatest sin that a people can commit.”

This monster is surely burning in Hell.

1 posted on 12/03/2010 4:23:33 PM PST by wagglebee
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To: cgk; Coleus; cpforlife.org; narses; Salvation; 8mmMauser
Pro-Life Ping
2 posted on 12/03/2010 4:24:25 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: 185JHP; 230FMJ; AKA Elena; Albion Wilde; Aleighanne; Alexander Rubin; Amos the Prophet; ...
Moral Absolutes Ping!

Freepmail wagglebee to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.

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3 posted on 12/03/2010 4:24:55 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee

I can’t imagine Mike Wallace doing a similar interview 30 years later.


4 posted on 12/03/2010 4:27:35 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
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To: wagglebee

Bump for later.


5 posted on 12/03/2010 4:27:42 PM PST by Mr. Silverback (Anyone who says we need illegals to do the jobs Americans won't do has never watched "Dirty Jobs.")
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To: Paleo Conservative
He would have asked if she was afraid of pro-life "terrorists."
6 posted on 12/03/2010 4:31:30 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee

She is now as famous as Che’ in the eyes of the leftists. Truly one of their icons.


7 posted on 12/03/2010 4:34:47 PM PST by umgud
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To: Paleo Conservative
Not with the up front commercial!

Best Natural Smoke You Ever Tasted - Phillip Moris

8 posted on 12/03/2010 4:41:37 PM PST by Red_Devil 232 (VietVet - USMC All Ready On The Right? All Ready On The Left? All Ready On The Firing Line!)
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To: wagglebee

Back in the late 50’s, Mike’s interview chair was the hottest seat in television. No matter who you were, you had to be crazy to go on his interview show.


9 posted on 12/03/2010 4:43:43 PM PST by Erasmus (Personal goal: Have a bigger carbon footprint than Tony Robbins.)
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To: wagglebee

bookmarking this one for later! I have to say, what an iconic Phillip Morris cigarette commercial lead-in to the show! Makes me miss the 50’s & 60’s. Hey...didn’t Don Draper have the Phillip Morris account at Sterling, Cooper? Wonder if that was his brain child? ;)


10 posted on 12/03/2010 4:47:46 PM PST by FrdmLvr (Death to tyrants)
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To: wagglebee; rkjohn; PadreL; Morpheus2009; saveliberty; fabrizio; Civitas2010; Radagast the Fool; ...
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Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.

11 posted on 12/03/2010 4:54:29 PM PST by narses ( 'Prefer nothing to the love of Christ.')
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To: wagglebee

She was a racist as well.

Yep, she is the perfect icon for the scumbag left.


12 posted on 12/03/2010 4:56:03 PM PST by Lancey Howard
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To: wagglebee

Back when Mike Wallace ALMOST knew what it was like to be a journalist...


13 posted on 12/03/2010 4:57:19 PM PST by patriot preacher
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To: wagglebee

I listened to the interview. There was no mention of her eugenics issue. She seemed to say that adults that did not want to have children should be given that choice.


14 posted on 12/03/2010 5:19:07 PM PST by Bronzy (We Remembered In November.)
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To: Paleo Conservative
...although the leading questions are still the same as these days! “You're not giving me the answer I want...don't you mean...”

Caliche is hard but isn't “harder than any rock” but I have to say that she comes across better in this interview than she does in many writings. Mike Wallace's presentation of her 1942 words doesn't match what she said. By her words, the violation of Christian morality would occur either way, but the use of birth control would prevent birth or abortion.

The things Mike Wallace presents as the Roman Catholic Church position on natural law would mean that the Church should be against low-calorie foods, or perhaps poor-nutrition foods like cotton candy (as violating natural law of “eating is for an organism to gain nutrition”). And how can anyone say with a straight face in the next breath that celibacy is in accordance with natural law?!?

15 posted on 12/03/2010 5:31:09 PM PST by Gondring (Paul Revere would have been flamed as a naysayer troll and told to go back to Boston.)
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To: Bronzy
I listened to the interview. There was no mention of her eugenics issue.

Only obliquely, when discussing the sin issue.

She seemed to say that adults that did not want to have children should be given that choice.

Yes, and such a decision is not for them to have. That right is to be co-opted by the heirarchy of the Catholic Church, according to some.

16 posted on 12/03/2010 5:31:47 PM PST by Gondring (Paul Revere would have been flamed as a naysayer troll and told to go back to Boston.)
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To: FrdmLvr

And how about her comment on picking up smoking?!


17 posted on 12/03/2010 5:32:37 PM PST by Gondring (Paul Revere would have been flamed as a naysayer troll and told to go back to Boston.)
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To: wagglebee

I especially enjoyed Mike Wallace’s testimonial for Phillip Morris.


18 posted on 12/03/2010 5:42:24 PM PST by rabidralph
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To: Gondring

Perhaps. But Sanger was more intersted in the government interfering in that decision by couples.


19 posted on 12/03/2010 5:50:01 PM PST by Lorianne (During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. ___ George Orwell)
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To: wagglebee

Intersting interview.
Thanks for posting this.


20 posted on 12/03/2010 5:50:48 PM PST by Lorianne (During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. ___ George Orwell)
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