Abortion was linked to eugenics, racism and slavery by Akua Furlow in a speech sponsored by the Oberlin Pro-life Union of Students last Sunday.

Furlow, Director of Research at the Life Education and Resource Network, titled her presentation ‘The Legacy of the Negro Project,’ although the she only covered the issue in passing during her speech. The bulk of her talk concerned the personal ideology of early feminist and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and the impact of her organization on people of color in America and around the world.

She began by invoking the historical spirit of Oberlin.

“This place was founded by abolitionists,” she said. “They were people who believed that just because something is legal doesn’t make it right.”

Furlow’s criticisms of Sanger revolved mainly around her writings on eugenics and her association with openly racist members of the American Eugenics Society.

While she did not point to any examples of Sanger actually mentioning race or African-Americans, Furlow presented several excerpts from Sanger’s writings in which she promoted reproductive freedom for “fit” parents and segregation or sterilization for “dysgenic” ones.

She also linked Sanger and her eugenicist associates with the Holocaust. “What happened over in Nazi Germany was the result of ideas that were developed here,“ she said. “Hitler accepted the mandate of the British and American eugenics societies.”

Furlow’s other charge against Sanger related to the Negro Project, a 1939 Planned Parenthood Initiative to promote birth control among African Americans in the south. Though the project was supported by prominent black leaders of the time such as W.E.B. DuBois and Adam Clayton Powell, Furlow sees it as a eugenically-motivated effort to control the population of the black community.

“It’s quite possible that she actually wanted to exterminate all of them,” she said.

Furlow believes that Planned Parenthood is still motivated by these aims. As evidence she pointed to the statistic that 32 percent of all abortions are performed on women of color.

She also claimed that the organization “baits women into their clinics with free pregnancy tests and pap smears so that when they’re late with their period they’ll come back for the abortion.

“I’m not saying that everyone who works for Planned Parenthood is a racist,” she said. “But as an organization they are eugenically driven.”

She also accused Planned Parenthood and the U.N. of using AIDS and poverty in the third world to promote “population control.”

“These people don’t have food or clean water, why are we sending them contraceptives?” she asked.

She also criticized modern contraception methods. “People believe condoms will stop AIDS,” she said. “It’s simply not true.”

She said that the scientific community had been unfairly dismissive of the rhythm method of contraception, as supported by the Catholic church.

The latter part of the speech was devoted to more traditional arguments about the immorality of abortion, which she emphasized by passing small plastic fetus models around the room.

The culmination of her speech was her defense of the comparison between abortion and slavery.

“The slave master had to view the slave as less than human to justify the benefits he received from slavery. Today we make ourselves view these children as less than human to justify the convenience we receive from abortion.”

Despite her ardently pro-life views, Furlow said she did not judge those who had had abortions.

“I know that in every audience I speak to there are people who have had abortions,” she said. “If you’ve had an abortion or have helped someone have one you don’t have to walk around feeling guilty about it. I believe we have a forgiving God.”