There’s George Washington, our first president. There’s Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of our Independence; Albert Einstein and the Wright Brothers. They all made TIME Magazine’s list of “The Most Influential Americans of All Time” and likely each one deserves to be on that list.
But I do find it odd that TIME also chose to honor Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, on the same list as Jefferson, who declared that life was an inalienable god-given right to all. Ironic, no?
Penning the profile of Sanger is feminist idol Gloria Steinem who writes:
In a series of articles called “What Every Girl Should Know,” then in her own newspaper The Woman Rebel and through local clinics that dispensed woman-controlled forms of birth control (a phrase she coined), she put information and power into the hands of women. Her brave and joyous life included fulfilling work, three children, two husbands, many lovers and a large network of friends and colleagues. Indeed, she lived as if she and everyone else had the right to control her or his own life. By word and deed, she pioneered the most radical, humane and transforming political movement of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Radical and transformative, I’ll give you. But humane? Seriously?
Sanger was also a “radical” and “transformation” figure in “racial betterment” and the eugenics movement — that is, trying to improve hereditary qualities by socially controlling reproduction. Radical? Yes. Humane? Not so much.
Also making TIME’s list: Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln and Lewis & Clark. Click here to see the whole list.