[Statement on President Eisenhower's Population Views]

Date

1959-12-27

Source

"Mrs. Sanger Challenges Ike on Birth Curb Issue," Tuscon Daily Citizen, Dec. 28, 1959

Description

anger appeared on PBS Channel 13 in Tucson to discuss President Eisenhower's statement on American family planning assitance to foreign nations: "I cannot imagine anything more emphatically a subject that is not a proper political or governmental activity or function or responsibility."

Contributor

Eisenhower, Dwight

Identifier

Text

"Mrs. Sanger Challenges Ike On Birth Curb Issue"

Mrs. Margaret Sanger, birth control advocate, challenged President Eisenhower last night to debate the question of governmental participation in planned parenthood for nations requesting help.

"He needs to be straightened out on this," Mrs. Sanger said. "It is disgraceful that our country does not respond when a poor, overpopulated country asks for aid."

She said that Eisenhower set back the birth control movement by his recent refusal to help overpopulated countries settle their problems by planned parenthood.

"Such countries do not know what to do," she said. "They want our health and welfare departments to show them what to do. If we are serious in wanting peace we should be glad to help them."

Eisenhower, she said, knows only war.

"He doesn't realize that the question of war or peace is primarily a question of population," Mrs. Sanger said. "He goes gallivanting off to various countries to talk peace. But he knows nothing about population problems in those countries--especially India.

Japan, she said, has reduced the birthrate 50 per cent since 1957 by practicing planned parenthood.

"The movement started here in 1920 and met great resistance by the warmongering politicians. But the Japanese people kept at it even though some of them were jailed for sponsoring birth control."

Does she believe the President will agree to a debate, or grant her an interview?

"He certainly should," Mrs. Sanger said. "He's an intelligent man, but he just doesn't know about this problem. He has been misinformed. He has been influenced by the opposition--by the Irish Catholic bishops."

She said that the Draper report, requested by Eisenhower, had indicated that we should assist on request those nations needing population control. But Eisenhower apparently has rejected the report, after initially accepting it, she said.

"If he will debate the question and learn something about this problem I am confident that he would change his views," Mrs. Sanger said.

"We cannot have peace without halting the population explosion which is currently occuring in various countries such as India."