this is about an hour and 20 minutes. >> would evening, ladies and gentlemen. i think we will get started. we are expecting lots more people, that we don't know what the traffic or the subway situation is. i am susan jones, i am also the director of the museum of the city of new york. i am so delighted to welcome you all here for this program. women rebels, margaret sanger and the birth-control movement at 100, tonight, author and journalist katha pollitt will lead a conversation with activists and scholars. a singer viagra for, loretta ross and historian linda gordon. to mark the 100th anniversary of the movement possible origin in 1914, table discuss sanger's legacy and the birth-control movement for activists today. i really do thank c-span for recognizing the importance, and being here to record tonight's program. this is part of our ongoing activist new york series. all of which are sponsored by the puffin foundation. our series is done in conjunction with an exhibition on the second floor called "activist new york which looks at new york city history from 1654 right up until 2009. it looks at new york city's history through the lens of social activism. i see that you do not know about this, do we have an open afterwards sarah? not tonight? can we do it? can angel open it? for anybody who has not seen it, you have to see this. this is terrific. we do have courageous women in that gallery. but i also think that i have to tell you we have a courageous woman right here in our curator for social activism, sarah s ideman. we may be the only museum in the country -- maybe that is too broad -- to have a curator of social activism on staff full. it is really wonderful. that is by virtue of the puffin foundation. today, activism is not only historical. we witnessed widespread activism last night, and i am certain that something is going on now. my husband is in foley square, and he says there are thousands of people there. i am delighted. activism is an essential democratic function. we are so very happy here at the museum to celebrate responsible activism in the history of our state. tonight, we have a great cosponsor in planned parenthood new york. i thank them. i also want to thank the margaret sanger papers project at nyu for their cosponsorship as well. tonight's speakers, ellen kessler is right here to my left ellen is a senior fellow at the roosevelt institute, the partner to the roosevelt library in hyde park, new york. she is the author of the critically celebrated "woman of valor, margaret sanger and the birth-control movement in america," published in 1992 and we released in 2000 seven as a paperback. she was co-editor of "where human rights begin, health sexuality and women in the new millennium." she is currently at work on a new book about the history of women's writes as fundamental human rights. alan and i -- ellen and i were classmates together at a woman's college, no longer a woman's college, vassar college. i am thrilled to have ellen on this podium. linda gordon, a famed professor of history and the university professor of humanities at nyu her wrist book, "woman's body women's rights, co a history of birth control in america, was published in 1970 six and later revised and republished as "the moral property of women, co in 2007. it is a history of birth-control politics in the united states. her more recent books are "the great arizona orphan objection", which has won a bancroft prize. katha pollitt is the author of "reclaiming abortion rights," she is a poet, essayist, and columnist. she has won many prizes and awards. including the national book critics circle award and to bank national magazine awards. loretta ross is a nationally renowned expert on women's issues, racism, and intolerance human rights and violence against women. she has served as the national coordinator of the sister song women of color reproductive justice collective and director of the women of color program for the national organization for women. she has written extensively on the history of african-american women and reproductive justice activism, including as co-author of "undivided rights, women of color organize for reproductive justice." i will now introduce, in one heartbeat, alex sanger margaret sanger's grandson. before i do that, i always want to say that i want everybody here to remember this museum, so we can sign you up tonight and if we sign you up tonight we would love to give you, as a free book, "reclaiming abortion-rights," and i bet katha would autograph the book. if you don't want to join but you want the book, it is available for sale in the museum shop. next week, we have a women's program going on here too. it is a panel discussion called "today's modern woman." it is about working women in media and public conversation. it is with npr correspondent ashleigh milne tight and leslie yazell. it is next week, in conjunction with an exhibition for an illustrator in the 1940's, 50's, and 60's. he created an idealized view of the modern american women, so we could all know how to dress ourselves and behave and wear our gloves and hats. alexander sanger will introduce tonight's topic and get us going. in addition to being margaret sanger's grandson alex is chair of the international planned parenthood council. he has also served as a goodwill ambassador for the u.n. population fund as well as the president of planned parenthood of new york city and its international arm, the margaret sanger center international. he is the author of "beyond choice, reproductive freedom in the 21st century." please welcome alex and all of our panelists. thank you. [applause] >> good evening and welcome. the issues of social justice racial justice, humanitarian justice, i know, are on our minds this evening. the movements to correct the world's many inequities and injustices take many forms. there are so many root causes to be addressed. the symptoms of the inequity that my grandmother saw 100 years ago on the lower east side when she was nursing were an epidemic of maternal death unsafe abortions infant deaths and rampant disease. maternal and infant mortality statistics of the united states 100 years ago are the equivalent of the least developed countries in the world today. to her, and to us at planned parenthood, these deaths are and front to settle -- civilization and decency, and they are preventable. her solution, birth control, which allowed women to control the number of births contributed to a massive improvement in public health that we have seen in the last 100 years. but still worldwide over 290,000 women die every year from pregnancy-related causes. that is 800 women a day. including 43,000 women dying annually from unsafe abortions. 5.6 million babies die at birth or are stillborn. 1.5 million men and women die annually from aids. 35% of women worldwide have been the victims of intimate partner violence. this carnage is an affront to decency and civilization. note prize, there are those today, as there were 100 years ago, who oppose our efforts to prevent this carnage and save these lives. 100 years ago, anthony comstock, whose live -- laws criminalize contra be -- contraception said, sexual pleasure within marriage is be still and race -- bestial and base. the judge who sentenced my grandmother to jail for opening a birth control clinic said, a woman has no right to copulate without fear of pregnancy. some men continue this dubious tradition. in the last week, listen to this litany. the male president of turkey said women would never be equal to men and they should stay at home and have three, preferably five, children. the male minister of education in russia declared sex education would never be taught in russia. isis band birth control -- banned birth control. gambia enacted a drug coney and anti-gay law. and the id -- another leader said birth control was equal to -- >> is reproductive freedom a male versus female thing? do women win and men lose? no, it is not. our women universally in favor of reproductive rights and men universally opposed? in this country, not even close. in the united states women favor reproductive freedom only slightly more than men. so, do not leave men out of the solution. not all men are hopeless. 100 years ago, my grandmother was in exile in europe for publishing "the woman rubble," there was a trial going downtown of an unsuspecting individual who was entrapped into handing to an undercover police officer a copy of one of my grandmother's pamphlets. "family limitation," 16 pages of birth control advice. the accused, on the witness stand, declared that comstock was a religious and pornographic fanatic. and, a victim of incurable sex- phobia. heath further declared i deny the right of the state to exercise dominion over the souls and bodies of our women by compelling them to go into unwilling motherhood. the defendant was found guilty. the presiding judge said, in sentencing, your crime is not only a violation of the laws of man, it is a violation of the laws of god. to circulate pamphlets like these is a menace to society. many believe it is a crime to have children. if some of the women advocating suffered would advocate having children, they would do a service. the defendant was my grandfather, william sanger. the first person to go to jail for advocating birth control in my grandmother's crusade was not my grandmother, it was my grandfather. thank you. [applause] >> i am katha pollitt, i want to welcome you to this panel. thank you, susan, alex for these wonderful remarks. so fascinating one hundred years later, margaret sanger still stirs my blood. the way we will work this is, every panelist speak for five minutes and five minutes only. some area of this that interests them. we will have a general discussion and questions afterward. after a half an hour, it will be your turn to ask questions. we will go in alphabetical order. ellen, kick us off. >> it is a pleasure to be here especially because susan runs this wonderful institution in new york, she is a half-century friend of mine. also because i have been talking about margaret sanger for a half-century and i never tire of the subject. i thought i would say five things that defined margaret sanger and to find the movement, and frame the debate with our -- which are ongoing today, i will essentially put! some things she said. margaret sanger was a nurse. she had an unquestioning and from our perspective, and almost naive concept of alleviating suffering, which fueled her interest in birth control. as a tool not only for women, it also of social better -- betterment. margaret sanger was a sec -- a secularist. she was the daughter of a protestant mother and a secular catholic father. one encourage the other to defy one died at the age of 50 after multiple pregnancies, and a bout of tuberculosis. the other lived to a ripe old age, squandering his artistic and intellectual talent on too much talk and drink. it was a powerful, potent combination to inspire rebellion. sang -- sanger lifted the religious shroud that had encased reproduction in mystery, and replaced houses of worship with clinics, houses of worship run by mail clerics, with clinics run by women and doctors and social scientists. she made us arbiters of our own behaviors and values, and from this conflict, a century of turbulence has ensued. and perhaps, another century will ensue as not only the judeo-christian culture reforms itself in this regard, but many millions of muslims go through the same sorts of transitions. she was progressive. this is important, it defines or politics. she emerged on the american scene in the house e.on days -- the halcyon days at the turn-of-the-century, a time when america seemed wide open with possibility before the russian revolution and the overtaking of the labor movement. her faith and revolution gave way to an agenda for reform and a confidence that a well-run state could tame capitalism and provide a floor of well-being for the most vulnerable among us. this is critical to understanding sanger and the movement. she embraced the ideals -- she was a friend of eleanor and franklin roosevelt. she wanted government that would guarantee reproductive autonomy for improvements in social welfare and public health. she called for a robust social safety net. increased public expenditure on family planning as a matter of civil justice. why would a country that was taking care of its people not give them the voluntary tools to limit a number of births? one has to understand that the new deal, the foundation of the new deal, were northern irish catholics and southern protestants that became a political base that is now holding captive the republican party. she never forget that. she gave up on america. it is a fundamental point that she always voted socialist. she was so angry about franklin roosevelt. she was fourth -- a feminist, her fun -- her fundamental heresy, was claiming a woman's right to experience their sexuality free of consequence, just as men have always done. the hardest challenge in writing about her today, and over the last 20 years, talking about her as well as writing about her, is to explain how absolutely destabilizing she was in her own time. even given in warmest backlash against women's rights today and in the years since my book was published, it is hard to inhabit in era in our own history when sex was seen more as an obligation rather than pleasure for women, mother -- motherhood is a primary goal. women were denied identities of their own as citizens, and they had compromise -- compromise rights, no protection from violence. this unyielding principle of mail cover to her -- male cove ture was key to understanding why her arguments were so profound. examining all this in the context of the recent expansions of international human rights discourse, which i have been involved in as an activist for many years since i wrote this book with george soros, there is an international human rights movement now which is incorporated socioeconomic and cultural rights as what we define as fundamental human rights. the -- being involved in that underscores the originality of feminist thinkers who demanded civil protection of the body, not just the states promise to respect our privacy, but also demanded of the state a positive obligation to provide services on a voluntary basis for contraception. this is something that is enshrined in international human rights law. it is also now enshrined in the affordable care act. if you want to know why the controversy over these issues has intensified, it is because of that. america now obligates its government to make certain that women not only have contraception, but the best contraception, even if it is the most expensive -- an iud long-lasting contraception. finally, and i went to see this quickly, margaret sanger was a eugenicist, a follower of what in its state was a popular movement. it addressed the manner in which biology and her entity as well as environment affects human intelligence and opportunity. she took away from darwin and supreme court justices like brandeis, and others, -- >> oliver wendell holmes. >> but also w.e.b. dubois follower -- founder of the naacp. and many aggressive's embraced these ideas. they took an optimistic lesson that our descending from the animal kingdom makes us capable of improvement if we apply the right tools. she believed alas, that merit should replace birthright as social stat -- as social status. iq tests are the legacy, the positive legacy, of eugenics. she supported sterilization on the grounds of mental incompetence. we have to come to terms with that fact. i am out of time, but i think we should spend some time recognizing that the historically specific circumstances and the complexity of all these are hard to untangle. as a result of them, though, margaret has become in recent years a victim of the abortion wars and political extremism. her reputation savaged by zealots who distort what has been a heated but a spectral academic discourse on the subject. accusations about family planning globally and planned parenthood. we have much to learn from her she can perhaps inspire us it offers some fear. i offer it to linda to say the rest. >> i will put these papers down and stand appear. a little tight here. i want to say a word about anniversaries, then talk about more recent history. anniversaries are designed for the present. they have different meanings. i was thinking about the fact that if we were commemorating margaret sanger in the 1930's, or again in the 1950's, very different things would have been said. for example, as ellen told you she came to birth control as a feminist and as a socialist. in the 1930's and 1950's, people did not want to talk about those things. but they are important, because i think she made a theoretical contribution in bringing together both sex, gender, and class radicalism. she never left off that commitment. by sparking the movement to open birth-control clinics -- and that was a tough road with many obstacles -- she was focused there he much on accessibility. that meant accessibility to people across the social spectrum, and to removing contraception from being the private property of an elite who could afford to go to private doctors who could discreetly fit them with diaphragms. there is therefore, an interesting cyclicalness in the way we remember her. we are in a time of honoring those feminists and class-conscious commitments that she had. i also want to say one personal thing, following what ellen said about her alliance with eugenicists who constructed a very of noxious and racist policy, long before hitler took power, the u.s. was coercively sterilizing what became a total of 64,000 people, primarily people of color, notably american indians. after i publish that, i was hounded i that. -by that. first, in the 1980's, i was harshly criticized by planned parenthood because planned parenthood did not want that news about margaret sanger. more recently, i have been cited on the internet by the right wing who makes these claims that birth control is a racist plot. they cite me as a disempowering feeling, knowing that i am unable to correct that complete misuse of it. among the most egregious examples of that, which many of you have probably seen, are these billboards that say the most dangerous place for an amount -- an african-american baby is in the womb. i have seen the southwest billboards that say the same things. out of those concerns, there arose in the 1970's, sparked by both the civil rights movement and the women's liberation movement, a new take on reproductive rights, which i think we sometimes lose. a coalition of feminists that included the national welfare rights organization, the national black feminists organization the puerto rican socialist party the national women's health network, formed a group centered here in new york called the committee for abortion rights and against sterilization abuse. it was a committee that actually had significant success in stopping coercive sterilization of people that was being done without adequate consent. they asked women, who were literally in the delivery room in the pain of delivery, to sign so-called consent forms for sterilizations. they also had a theoretical contribution, and i think it is an important one. that is that reproductive rights and reproductive choice has to include the right to bear, as well as not to bear, children. it includes the right to have children safely and keep them in good health. that is -- that should be a woman's right as much as the right not to have children. i had the pleasure of being on a panel in new orleans with carol mcgregor of the planned parenthood association, and she extended this to say that one of the reproductive rights is the right of a mother to have sons who will be free from being shot down by police. this is an ethic that we must support today. it is an approach that situates choice, and the real, not just theoretical, right. the worst defeat to reproductive rights in our era was the height amendment, the amendment that denied for -- federal public spending on abortions. this was a piece of class legislation, particularly aimed at the poor. public spending would, of course, pay for childbirth among those people. sanger would, i think have agreed with this ethic. like many reformers, she took support where she could get it. she was not self-effacing, but her principles never wavered. i would like to return to my notion of thinking about what anniversaries are for. as a historian i cannot quit being a teacher. i think it is important to think critically about the fact that we sometimes like to create heroes who must be perfect. then, if we discover a flaw in them, there is a tendency to reject them whole hog. this is not a helpful way to think about, and honor, someone like margaret sanger. i think, ultimately, her most important contribution was inspiring so many other people to care about reproductive rights. thank you. [applause] >> loretta? >> i think i should start by saying margaret sanger was my kind of woman. she was a rebel with contradictions, which i think is the best that all of us can be. i don't think she was fearless i think the things she chose to do made her quite afraid, quite frequently. what she chose to do them anyway. that is a wonderful model for taking on an overwhelming system that seems to have so much arraigned against you, to pursue a cause that you know you believe in, and the women who depend on you believe in, but very few other people believe in. to go in some very oderous places in pursuit of the cause. as an african-american, i am upset that she met with the ku klux klan. i would like to know any leader who does not make strategic mistakes as they pursue causes. i am rather forgiving of that, because that one act is not tomorrow the legacy that we have inherited from her. we have to see the totality of what they do, as opposed to trying to isolate any one thing as if we have people like jesus leading the movement. i am not sure he was perfect. >> met with them to try to change their minds. >> whatever the reason, she was not paying attention to -- what is that called? the optics of the process. but like i said, she is my kind of woman. i have been a blue -- oblivious to optics. i have enjoyed pissing off the cameras. the other thing i admire about her, is that she, like myself, came into this movement through lived experiences. i made the mistake of majoring in chemistry and physics. because nerds run in my family. it was not until i was sterilized when i was 23 that i realized that my feet were on a path to try to prevent that from happening to other women. that is when i discovered the struggle for reproductive rights and reproductive freedom, because it was not something i was aware of coming from a very conservative religious family. it was not something that was largely discussed. it was her lived experiences that radicalized her, as mine radicalized me. one of the things i have dealt with as a legacy of hers, is the way that the opponents to women's freedoms -- i don't think they are just opposed to birth control and abortion, i think they are opposed to women's sexuality, as we have heard discussed on the panel so far. opponents to women's freedom and sexuality have, in fact, deeply racialized the abortion debate. even going so far as to outrageously compare abortion to slavery. and to the holocaust. really cheapening the lives of the people who suffered through those tragedies, as if we, as black women, are responsible for the enslavement of our own children. i don't even know how to figure out their rationale, where they tend to believe that black babies are being aborted as of their race, but i have yet to find a black woman who is surprised that her child turns out to be black. [laughter] i don't know how to make sense of what they are talking about. i want to use the last couple minutes to talk about what we can learn from margaret sanger today. i think she is just as relevant today as she was during her time. i have been-deep in the margaret sanger papers. one thing i am endeavoring to write as an activist, trying to be an historian, is a black feminist analysis of margaret sanger, to counter the distortions of her record that i have to deal with in my activist life. one of the things that i think we can pass on is to reconceptualize what fearlessness looks like. what looks like fearlessness probably is not, it is bravery in the face of fear. that is what we all have to call upon, it is what the ferguson protesters are calling upon right now. they know that they are risking their lives, that they are dealing with the trigger-happy police force who have no respect for their human rights. they don't even respect their american right to protest or justice. we have to package that fearlessness, that a parent peerless miss. -- fearlessness. she was also incredibly focused. if you do any reading of margaret sanger, she did not care what the subject was. if we were talking about that brilliant chandelier up there, she would probably be talking about how a woman could not enjoy it unless she had birth control. [laughter] that was her. many times i know, myself, i have been accused of being like that because i will always talk about reproductive justice, the right to have children, to not have children, and to parent our children safely. this is something we have done is women of color to transform the conversations. i'm glad planned parenthood and others have finally got the memo. we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the reproductive justice framework this year as well as speaking of celebrations. we had to be focused on the right to have children and the right to have our children thrive and be safe from police violence and poverty, from drug violence, all kinds of things that threaten our children once they are here. the last thing i will say about what i hope to replicate with her and pass on that we should learn from she was an incredible risk taker. she did not necessarily stand up for what was popular she certainly envisioned what was possible. whether or not it was popular or not, she was going to stand up for it. sometimes, that led her to make mistakes. but at the same time, it showed us what bravery under fire looks like. it showed us what is possible in terms of women's freedoms. i think that her legacy is not celebrated enough. i actually will probably get in trouble, my mouth always gets me in trouble, i share that with her. and that is, i do not think planned parenthood does a good enough job celebrating margaret sanger. i think they are too apologetic about it. the woman made mistakes. if we did not celebrate martin luther king because he made mistakes, what a poor world we would have. >> he was a great supporter of margaret sanger. he won a margaret sanger award. >> absolutely. i think it is important for us to lift her legacy up, lift it up with clear glasses, not whitewashing it or being embarrassed by it, but lifted up with true grace and on. she was a woman who made what we do in our lives possible. that is very important, and i would love to see more celebrations of margaret sanger's legacy. it has transformed the world in a way that will never be undone, no matter how angry our opponents get. thank you. [applause] >> that was fabulous. we have heard from these three brilliant women, who answered a lot of the questions i wrote down. but i will ask them anyway i know there is so much more to say. we are celebrating the advent of sanger's journal, "the woman rebel," in 1914. their slogan was no gods, no masters. it is hard to imagine a feminist journal having that slogan. we are more pro-religion now than feminists used to be. in "the woman rebel," sanger wrote, a woman's body belongs to yourself alone. she supported birth control and realistic sex education. cease -- she said marriage was between couples, not the state. she defended teenage sexual expression, which was said to lead directly to prostitution. that is kind of amazing that she did that. that is incredibly controversial today, saying it is ok that teenagers have sex. it is supposed to be, they need to have burst -- birth control. it is never, this is good, this is part of growing up. our world is very different than her world. and yet, so many of these issues are alive today. it is kind of amazing. i would like to hear what people think about that. why is it that people cannot get over birth control? even though 99% of women have used it, almost no cap lick women do natural family planning -- catholic women do natural family planning. the number of people who want to ban abortion 100% is very small. it is not even 20% of the population, it is more like 8%. why is it that we can't get over ourselves on reproductive rights, and modernizing gender relations? big questions. >> i will go first. to add to the question, one of the mysteries that i think about a lot, is how rapidly there have been victories for gay marriage. i think gay marriage is on a roll and it will be legal everywhere soon. to compare that with what has happened about abortion and the fact that it is now even further towards an open attack on contraception. there are -- the comparison helps me think about it a little bit, but i do not have a full answer but by incorporating gay people into marriage, we are bringing them into a traditional and conservative institution. whereas, what the message about contraception and abortion is, it is very destabilizing of gender stuff. years ago, i saw the movement as , in part, an expression of public anxiety about the loss of mothering, there is sort of a very deep sense that women would walk away from this and not so much literally not have children, but not be the nurturing, caretaking people that we have always been raised to be. i think, as the opposition has gotten so incredibly virulent, and i think the modern version of what margaret sanger took what i would call "the slot talk -- the slut talk," increasingly open threats of physical violence and attack, they suggest a tremendous well of hostility about this world in which women are changing things. i will just say one more thing we do have to understand the gender system we all live in is one of the earliest -- not only one of the oldest part of human society, but it is one of the earliest things a child learns. most children, we understand them child development, they have a sense of their gender for they can speak. there is something terribly deep about this. when it is threatened, it will set off these things. i don't think that is an adequate answer to the question, and i don't know -- >> let's let ellen give it a crack. >> many say that in the 100 years since margaret sanger's revolution, remember what i said earlier is that when margaret sanger published "the woman rebel," women did not vote or work in this country. if they were poor, they work because they had to. or if they were women of color. that was not the conventional idea of a woman's role. it was motherhood. today, 50% of all americans are employed, over 50% of employed americans are women. more children live in single mother households than ever. fewer people are marrying, and they are marrying later. these are huge changes in america today. we still earn less than men, and we need a work-family allen's. we live in an -- an incredibly different world. the expectations of women in my lifetime, i am getting old but not that old as i like to do my students, there is been profound change. when there is change of this nature, there are always people who are harmed by the change. that includes also sexual freedom. there are people simply don't feel that freedom is nothing left to lose. they have lost something. so a small number of them, and again, it is only really 20% and the dialogue has not changed much, that they are not -- now 20% of the people who shifted from the democratic party to the republican party because of the strange structure of our political environment. it is an unnecessary control, because it controls a lot of small states. we have an unrepresentative government. if we hadn't -- a government that represented the people, we would not have these issues. if new york and california had a vote, and as texas changes to a more progressive society if poor people voted and were not denied their rights, we would not have these issues. it is a combination of the profound, real changes in social structure, and the failure of the government keep pace with the current society. >> loretta, would you like to add to that? >> i am writing down the responses i like to make to that. i do not believe that cut -- cultural shifts and resistances are accidents. they are driven by ideologies driven into practice in the form of social movements that could move left or right. i think that resistance to women's freedom and empowerment is driven by a reality, the ideology that has been markedly consistent over the colonization over the united states. it has caused white supremacy. we having door that, and in -- have ignored that, and i advise you to google the phrase democratic winter. there is a doctor to mentor he -- a documentary by supposedly conservatives that say we need a new revolution to replenish the white race. i am convinced that the attack on birth control, abortion, and sex education are driven by the ideology designed to compel white women to have more children. i am not convinced that they want more brown children. they are too busy killing the ones we have. if we ignore racial politics in what is happening towards women around the blood politics that drives all of this, i think we are being naive. i think we are actually promoting a feminism that is a -- in the service of white supremacy, rather than one that is constructive. look up demographic winter. >> i have seen that, it is incredible. >> they are saying they are in a race war. >> can i ask you a question? when henr was acting abouty hide the hyde amendment, it does nothing for women who can afford it. he said, i know, it is terrible. but those women are the only women i can get to. when you say that all of this is leading to white women making more children, how will it happen, given that the pro-natal lists want to have more children? they think educated white women are the real americans. they are the women for whom this will never happen. >> the messages that these educated white women are being given, which have to be incredibly confusing, first of all, they are being told that they are in a race against their biological clock number one. >> yes, the biological clock. >> we have the biological clock ticking, we are told that no longer should should you aim for a college education, because we have gone into a capitalism that will not reward you for adding on. -- getting one. the american dream of an education, a home, all these things become verboten. these are no longer within reach. i -- >> i don't deny what you are saying, but i have more of a class than a race analysis. there is a history to this. in the late 1960's, a few republican strategist look at the array of voters, and they saw a pattern that had been created by franklin roosevelt in which not only most lack people, but also most white working class people, voted democratic. they said, how do we get these belts? they deliberately established a strategy that they called the new right, that is the label they gave to it. they said, what we have to do is get people's attention away from economic policy, because if they focus on economic policy, working-class evil will not vote publican. republican policy is not in their interest. so they threw enormous amounts of funding into the sex and gender issues, along with opposition to desegregation of schools, opposition to busing. what i am saying simply is, i think we shouldn't neglect the fact that there are these strategists, maybe the most visible exemplars today would be the koch brothers, i bet they personally do not give a damn about abortion. but if they can use it to produce what i think is a more corporate agenda, and i really resonate to what ellen said, if this country was really run democratically, we would probably not have anyone near this strength of opposition to reproductive rights. because it is not what most people think. >> i just want to -- everyone should go home and read "how democratic is the u.s. constitution? " he uses the example, 44% of senators come from tiny, rural mostly white states collects what if black people had 44 senators? anyway, i know you want to eat. >> referring specifically to the irony of george h.w. bush who got on a take it in 1980 with ronald reagan. both of them had been pro-choice pro-reproductive rights. people in the bush family, his finer -- father, in connecticut -- his grandmother had been on the board of planned parenthood. in order to erode the new deal majority there was a deliberate movement. what i said earlier roman catholics and fundamentalists from that south and west who are the core of democratic support working-class people, there was quite a deliberate decision made. ronald reagan and george h.w. bush went along with it in the 1980's, and of course when bill clinton was elected as the first pro-choice president, millions of dollars, hundreds of millions were put into trying to put forward family values as they were called. he wrote support for abortion rights and contraception. also sex education. the issue became not only values, but also jobs. this is very important to understand. planned parenthood is a federal government contractor. 90% of its budget comes from the fact that it provides services. to poor women and many, often middle-class women, as it turns out. far greater than abortion are contraception, also including prenatal care or cancerous greetings -- screenings. a variety of things that every person important in french parenthood had played with federal money. in 1996, clinton responded on the question of welfare reform the "devils deal," which provided jobs for fundamentalists and churches. some of this money also had an impact on international u.s. aid for international development. in those years after my book -- book was published, i had the unusual opportunity, as a writer and academic, to go to eric to try to counter some of that money with progressive money. money provided by visionary philanthropists. they were trying to counter this incredible investment on the right to destabilize this tradition of progress with respect to reproduction and reproduction -- reproductive rights. they invested in other ways, oddities -- advocacy, the morning after pill, all kinds of instruments and we attempted most importantly we were able to give planned parenthood a huge amount of money to be billed. the kind of money that did not come from the federal government, to provide services. that only angered them more. they made planned parenthood even more controversial. that turned out to be not a great strategy, as we found in the 2012 election. ironically, with all of this armor, against planned parenthood and all of this spending, if you take a poll today in america, planned parenthood enjoys favorability of 68% overall. a lot better than congress, which is about 5%-6%. [laughter] if you'd take out older white men, 80% of minorities, 80% of men and women under 45, so none of this has worked except for the small group of incredibly driven naysayers. >> you keep saying it is just about power. yes, it is about power. but you have to talk about why is that power resurrected and used in this particular way over and over and over again. you can't just say, the opposition to sankar--sanger was because in the 60's they tried to recapture the white house. it is biblical. it keeps happening over and over. we have to look at those consistencies over time. not date a timeline from the 60's, as if that is when the american democratic experiment went wrong. it's not historically accurate. >> i think we should open it up to questions because we are supposed to be wrapping it up in 15 minutes. i have all these questions, but i will resign and hear your questions instead. [indiscernible] >> ok. this is about birth control. what are the numbers of men who take the -- to control fertility , not the responsibility on the women. he takes the responsibility on himself. but goes around comes around sankar wanted women -- margaret sanger wanted women to have responsibility. reproduction is our obligation and our joy and capability. what she did mostly was to try to find -- we haven't fully given her credit for the birth control pill which she doggedly found to invent and companies to produce. not only the diaphragm but i giving scientific and medical experts billions -- brilliance. she made it an obligation for women. i think fewer and fewer men, because of hiv and aids, we should never speak in acronyms -- men now use condoms again. but they are not a full proof -- foolproof birth control method. i think many women are using double protection. along with the many responsibilities women have taken in the 20th century including economic ones, they now pay it -- primarily take these obligation. >> i remember when aids was a bigger thing -- witty you like to say something? >> to answer the question, the number one method of contraception used around the world, about 33% the woman is and about 7% is the men. about 40% of couples are using sterilization. 15% of couples are using condoms. >> but that is only after they have had the number of children they want. >> i remember when aids was beginning to get a lot of attention. in women's magazines in -- they would read articles that would have women carry condoms. can't men do anything? [laughter] you have to put it onto and provide them? good god. margaret think i did not trust men to take a pill. that was one reason why she went for the pill for women. it's interesting, a pill for men is only -- is always 15 years away. but he is always the same amount of distance away. >> what women would trust a man to say i am on the pill? [laughter] there is a fundamental problem with that. >> still we are in relationships with men that we do trust. we trust them to do all kinds of things and we love them. i'm not talking about a one night stand, but our husbands and long-term lovers. it does seem kind of odd to say i don't trust you to take this pill but i trust you with everything else. like, our finances and children. i think maybe people will come around on this pill for men thing. >> 1914 aspirations. how would you compare the reality of today with the degree of success or what do you think margaret sankar -- how happy would she be? how much would she think has been accomplished? >> a great question. what would margaret sanger think of today. >> i think that she would have a lot that would please her. i think she would be absolutely horrified by the virulence of the attacks. i also think, in what loretta has been saying, she also it absolutely oppose the levels of racism that we still see in this society. her alliances with eugenics, i don't think came out of a racism . >> no, she was not a racist. >> i want to put another point in that. >> that's fine. i am done. >> i didn't really in my five minutes make the point -- she entered the con -- conversation about eugenics from the left. it is broad with a right wing in a left wing. the left wing look as it -- at it as a way to introduce science into the conversation and not religion in terms of behaviors and practices. and morality. also to suggest that this should be the foundation of opportunity in the democratic society. things should not be left to chance. it should not be left to class or birth or race. she was a very advanced thinker or her day about race. on her board was w eb dubois. they believed and letting a talented of the society move first. i could tell you the language of dubois that sounds worse than anything margaret sanger said. about unfettered reproduction among people of color. they were middle-class morality advocates, at least at that stage in their life. she stopped talking about some of the radical things she said as a young woman. she changed the language of birth control to family planning. >> let's take another question. >> loretta brought up biblical ideology. i remember years ago about -- there was a huge loss of men on the railroad. they were afraid that -- would be beneficial to bring back that ideology? >> i think it is much to our shame and regret that we seem to suffer from so much historical amnesia. about how politics and power work in our country. particularly when they intertwined with the delicate subject of race. we are just so uncomfortable having that conversation with -- which i think is as uncomfortable as parents who should know better having the conversation about their children's first sexual adventures. we just have to get way beyond our naivete on this question. when it comes to -- i want to answer the question about margaret sankar. i think she would be pleased and appalled. a combination. i think that she, like many of us, it has been a struggle for decades. we are really ready to move onto something else. we are tighter -- tired of fighting. we are tired of fighting this struggle over and over and over again. these people are trying to repeal the entire history and act like it never happened. let's go back to the 19th century. try it all over again. so, we are really tired. i think she would be disgusted. it is very hard to talk about the functioning of our constitutional system, who gets elected to congress, counting sleeves as 3/5 of a person, and a disproportionate number of southerners to get to the presidency, all of this. i love being a feminist, i am deeply ashamed that the feminist movement cannot grapple with race better. the that i think i would support and margaret sanger would support, would understand that intersection analogy much better. it is definitely on american politics. i'm talking about colonization and genocide of native americans also. that trauma that has put into our psyche that we can't even talk about. so we have to do much much better. let's call it the everything but race conversation, i am tired of it. >> one more question. >> briefly, the world in many ways has moved farther ahead of the united states on these issues. i think that would please margaret sanger. one of the most extraordinary things about writing about her was how much town -- time she spent abroad early in her 20's. she went to india and japan. how interested she was in the world, not because she believed in population control, but because she saw essentially family-planning as a full-term issue in terms of women's rights and fighting poverty. that is a critical nexus that we don't put enough emphasis on. she did see fundamentally that being able to control and have the number of children you want to love and educate is at the basics of women but also their families and communities. ultimately, the world. she also understood to stomach sent -- some extent, our environment. there is an international human rights community now. ethics that sounds very sang er-ish. i think that would make her very happy. she may have turned her back on this country and gave up on the politics here. she was disappointed in the roosevelt to our because they were so captive to those things. >> you had a question. i would last question. -- our last question. >> i am realizing more and more, as a fairly educated person, the disparity between the technological knowledge we have and the ability to create birth control versus the broader general understanding of women's health. running from, teenagers who think you can't get pregnant the first time to politicians who think that a real rape rape -- result in spontaneous abortion. so it is one thing i am noticing more and more. another thing, as someone who for the past 10 years has taken various forms of birth control for granted, is considering using fewer farms, it is getting to the point where i'm seeing this idea of on one hand while as mothers and having children versus expectation that you are fully economic prepared to see children through college. i decided to say the things that i am realizing at this point in my life. that are making this all seemed extremely relevant. >> children are not seeing as a social good but an individual burden. as long as the individualized the whole concept of keeping the human race coupling, we are not going to have things like child care, health care, livable environments and quality schools. the things that we absolutely need to perpetuate ourselves as a civilized society. i don't think anyone and can make a decision about her reproduction outside of the context of what is going on with global capitalism and the whole failure of our society to put -- appreciate our obligation to care for each other. >> an interesting fact to think about in terms of children, is the last time i looked, the united states was 61st in the world in terms of infant mortality. that is beyond belief, but what is is about is inequality. there are those of us who will not be part of that or not experience that danger. i think one of the encouraging things is that, i think there have been some movements lately particularly here in new york -- the occupy movement -- at least what they represented was people saying we have had it with constructing a whole country designed about the rich. designed about -- around white people. i think you are absolutely right it is a whole context. one of the inevitable, but sad things about what has happened with women's movements is that we now have a whole bunch of separate issue movements. a movement for abortion rights, against rape, i could go on. there are many of them. i think it is really important in each of those movements to move towards a holistic analysis. >> on that note, we have our marching orders. develop a holistic movement that will honor the memory of the good sides of margaret sanger. [applause] thank you all for being here. it was a wonderful panel. [applause] >> you are watching american history tv. 40 hours of american history programming on c-span3. follow us on twitter on c-span history for information on our schedule, upcoming programs, and to keep up with the latest industry news. this year, c-span is to bring cities across the country exploring american history. next is the look to austin, texas. you are watching amer

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