Lawmakers call for removal of bust of Sanger from exhibit

Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a controversial figure during her lifetime, is drawing fire from GOP lawmakers who want a bust of her removed from a National Portrait Gallery exhibit.

Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and 25 Republican congressmen, including Texans Louie Gohmert, Kenny Marchant and Roger Williams, recently sent a letter to Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery, a part of the Smithsonian Institution, calling for the immediate removal of the bust now on display in the gallery’s “Struggle for Justice” exhibit.

Sanger (1879-1966), a birth control pioneer, was a hero to the women’s movement, but her speeches and writings have attracted renewed attention for her advocacy of using contraceptives to control the population of minorities, especially African-Americans.

“There is no ambiguity in what Margaret Sanger’s bust represents: hatred, racism and the destruction of unborn life,” Cruz said. “Not only should we continue efforts to redirect funds from Planned Parenthood, an organization founded by Sanger that is currently under criminal investigation, we must also work to ensure that her inhumane life’s work is in no way promoted.”

Cruz has been leading an effort to defund Planned Parenthood because of secretly recorded videos of staffers discussing the distribution of aborted fetal body parts and tissue to researchers. The House voted to terminate funding, but the Senate has not voted. The organization disputes that it was selling body parts for profit, but was accepting reimbursement for transportation and handling. On Tuesday, Planned Parenthood announced that it would no longer accept reimbursement for the distribution costs.

That distinction does not mollify the organization’s opponents.

“It is a complete and utter outrage to display a bust of Margaret Sanger in the National Portrait Gallery. In addition to this, it is appalling to honor her as part of the ‘Struggle for Justice’ collection,” Gohmert said. “One of the founders of Planned Parenthood, Mrs. Sanger portrayed deep-rooted racism by advocating birth control as a method for controlling the population of minorities.”

Asked for a response, the Portrait Gallery sent McClatchy the statement Sajet made in August when she declined to remove the bust after a group of African-American clerics complained that it was being displayed alongside civil-rights icons Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.

“Margaret Sanger, founder of the American Birth Control League (1921), is included in the museum’s collection, not in tribute to all her beliefs, many of which are now discredited, but because of her leading role in early efforts to distribute information about birth control and medical information to disadvantaged women, as well as her later roles associated with developing modern methods of contraception,” Sajet in the statement.

“Nonetheless, Sanger’s alliance with aspects of the eugenics movement raises questions about her motivations and intentions. The museum’s intent is not to honor her in an unqualified way, but rather to stimulate our audiences to reflect on the experience of Americans who struggled to improve the civil and social conditions of 20th-century America.”

This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 2:17 PM.