Founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, condemned abortion

When she traveled to the Soviet Union Sanger was bothered by how many abortions were being performed.

While she was all for birth control she wasn't enthused about abortion saying:

“In my opinion it[abortion] is a cruel method of dealing with the problem, because abortion, no matter how well done, is a terrific nervous strain and an exhausting physical hardship.”

That's not the only time that Sanger condemned abortion. In her 1920 book "Woman and the New Race she writes:

So, too, with woman’s struggle for emancipation. Women in all lands and all ages have instinctively desired family limitation. Usually this desire has been laid to economic pressure. Frequently the pressure has existed, but the driving force behind woman’s aspiration toward freedom has lain deeper. It has asserted itself among the rich and among the poor, among the intelligent and the unintelligent. It has been manifested in such horrors as infanticide, child abandonment and abortion.

She goes so far to write that abortion is a "disgrace" to civilization:

While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.

In a response to Pope Pius XI's document "Casti Connubi" Sanger wrote:

Although abortion may be resorted to in order to save the life of the mother, the practice of it merely for limitation of offspring is dangerous and vicious. 

In her 1938 autobiography Sanger declares that abortion is the taking of a human life; a point that Planned Parenthood and "pro-choice" people declare is false despite the clear statements of science that support Sanger:

To each group we explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not begun.

Here's what science says on the subject:

“[The zygote], formed by the union of an oocyte and a sperm, is the beginning of a new human being.”

Keith L. Moore, Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology, 7th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2008. p. 2.

“Although life is a continuous process, fertilization… is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.”

Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Miller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 2001. p. 8.

“[All] organisms, however large and complex they might be as full grown, begin life as a single cell. This is true for the human being, for instance, who begins life as a fertilized ovum.”

Dr. Morris Krieger “The Human Reproductive System” p 88 (1969) Sterling Pub. Co 

Sanger, for all her other faults, is right; abortion kills a human being.

What she didn't know is that many modern forms of contraception are in fact abortifacients that kill the child. They do so because to be effective enough in preventing pregnancies a purely contraceptive pill is also strong enough to seriously hurt the women taking it. Hence the dose of contraceptive chemicals has been reduced in many modern contraceptives while the dose that causes the death of a living human being has increased.

Hence if she were consistent she'd condemn many modern forms of contraception.

In any case it's clear that Sanger was what Planned Parenthood's leaders would call a pro-life anti-woman fanatic.

Given that Planned Parenthood is currently extolling abortions, asking women to shout out that they've had one it would seem that PP is no longer conforming to what Sanger believed.

Which is odd given how much gushing praise PP heaps on Sanger.

While it's true she was a racist who demanded that genetically "inferior" people not be allowed to immigrate into the US she drew the line at killing the unborn.

It's therefor interesting that the organization that hails her is the countries biggest abortion mill; killing around 40% of all the unborn babies that are killed in the US each year.