Troy Newman, one of the anti-choice activists behind a new set of videos smearing Planned Parenthood, claimed in a radio interview yesterday that the women’s health organization was “founded on a eugenicist philosophy” and that its founder was “embedded with the Nazis,” claims that he backed up with a fake quote from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the need to “exterminate” populations she doesn’t like.
Iowa-based talk radio host Steve Deace was telling Newman about a column he recently wrote in the Washington Times arguing that if state governments are taking down the Confederate flag, the U.S. should also “purge” the “viciously racist” Planned Parenthood.
“Look, Planned Parenthood was founded on a eugenicist philosophy,” Newman responded, “in other words, ‘exterminate the people that we don’t want to have too many of,’ which is a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a sitting Supreme Court justice. That’s what abortion is all about.”
He added that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was “embedded with the Nazis,” adding, “That’s not rhetoric, folks, look it up, it’s absolutely true.”
We followed Newman’s advice and looked it up, finding (unsurprisingly) that Justice Ginsburg has never expressed the desire to “exterminate the people that we don’t want to have too many of.”
There is also plenty of information available debunking Newman’s claims about Sanger. While Sanger did back some repugnant but then-fashionable eugenics principles such as the sterilization of people with hereditary diseases (which Planned Parenthood now publicly rejects), she was not “embedded with the Nazis,” nor did she support racial eugenics. In fact, Martin Luther King, Jr., praised Sanger in accepting an award named after her from Planned Parenthood.
