Investigative

8 ways pro-abortion men pushed legalized abortion on America

abortion

The media seems to always equate abortion with “women’s rights” — but many people may be unaware that legalizing abortion in America was actually an idea originally pushed by pro-abortion men, many of whom were concerned about the growth of certain people groups. But beyond this, predatory men have benefited significantly from legalized abortion, which has removed male responsibility from unplanned pregnancy situations, and which is used to cover up sexual abuse. And male abortionists continue to be protected by the abortion industry even when they rape, injure or kill female patients.

Below are eight things everyone should know about the large role certain men played in liberalizing abortion laws in the U.S.:

1. Pro-eugenics men were the primary people discouraging reproduction among “undesirable” groups

Planned Parenthood

Image: American Eugenics Society document

2. A pro-population control man led the push for abortion at Planned Parenthood 

Image: Alan F Guttmacher

Alan F. Guttmacher

  • According to Planned Parenthood, “In 1978, Faye Wattleton became the first female president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America since Margaret Sanger — and the first president of color.” Read more about Wattleton here and here.
Image: Faye Wattleton first female Planned Parenthood president (Image: New York Times)

Faye Wattleton first female Planned Parenthood president (Image: New York Times)

3. A misogynistic man influenced the sexual revolution, which primarily benefited predatory males 

  • The sexual revolution of the 1960s pushed by Cosmopolitan Magazine (under direction of Helen Gurley Brown) was inspired by Hugh Hefner, creator of Playboy.
  • Hefner told Hollywood Reporter that Brown approached him for job before joining Cosmo: “She wanted to do a female version of Playboy.
  • The theme of free sex without consequences and no kids, with abortion as a safety net, benefited men.
Cosmo Magazine 1967

Cosmo Magazine 1967

4. Two pro-abortion men hijacked the 1960’s “women’s movement” to legalize abortion 

Image: Larry Lader and Bernard Nathanson. Both men worked against the feminist pro-life movement to push abortion on women.

Larry Lader and Bernard Nathanson — two men behind the original abortion industry in the U.S.

  • Most outspoken abortion enthusiasts in the 1960s were men, like Larry Lader and Bernard Nathanson.
  • Betty Friedan, author of “The Feminine Mystique,” dubbed “mother of the women’s movement,” called Lader “the father of the abortion rights movement.”
  • Friedan founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 and in 1967, Lader and Nathanson convinced her to add abortion to NOW’s plank, causing a loss in female NOW membership.
  • Lader admitted in his book that “Abortion never became a feminist plank in the United States among the suffragettes or depression radicals. It was ignored, even boycotted by Planned Parenthood women in those days.”
  • 1969: NARAL was established by Lader, Nathanson, and Friedan, who admitted few women attended. (Nathanson later renounced his pro-abortion stance and worked to expose the lies they told.)
  • 1989: Friedan acknowledged it was certain men who pushed to legalize abortion: “I remember that there were some men… that had been trying to reform these criminal abortion laws. And they got a sense somehow that the women’s movement might make everything different…. They kept nagging at me… to try and do something…. ‘We need some organization to take up… abortion rights.’”

Betty Friedan speaks to NARAL on history of NOW

5. Pro-eugenics men founded the Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s former research arm 

  • Alan Guttmacher, former Planned Parenthood president and Eugenics Society VP, founded the Center for Family Planning Program Development in 1968, which became the Guttmacher Institute, a “special affiliate” of Planned Parenthood.
  • In 1969, Guttmacher acknowledged funding came from “Kellogg, Rockefeller, and Ford Foundations.”

6. Men in favor of population control pushed for taxpayer-funded “family planning,” which aids America’s largest abortion business

  • The Title X federal family planning program allocates tens of millions of tax dollars to Planned Parenthood.
  • 1965: President Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) supported taxpayer funded “family planning” and was awarded Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award the following year.
  • 1966: Alan Guttmacher proposed a blueprint to force taxpayers to fund birth control for poor.
  • 1968: George N. Lindsay, chairman of Planned Parenthood-World Population, urged President Richard Nixon to federally fund poor people’s “family planning.”
  • 1969: Nixon spoke in favor of “family planning” and the same year, the Senate approved tax funding for it, with the help of Democrat Senator Joseph D. Tydings, a Planned Parenthood supporter granted PPFA’s Margaret Sanger award.
Image: Prescott Bush with his son, George Bush (Image Credit: George Bush Presidential Library and Museum)

Prescott Bush with his son, George Bush (Image Credit: George Bush Presidential Library and Museum)

  • 1970: The U.S. House of Representatives authorized federal dollars to pay for family planning services.
  • The chief co-sponsor of the Title X statute was Rep. George H.W. Bush, who later became president. Bush was recruited because his grandfather, Prescott Bush, once sat on a Planned Parenthood board.
  • 1972: Nixon recommended Congress create the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future to study abortion. It was chaired by John D. Rockefeller III, a longtime advocate of population control. The Executive Director was Charles Westoff, a member of the American Eugenics Society and Planned Parenthood’s National Advisory Council.

7. An all-male Supreme Court legalized abortion

  • 1973: U.S. Supreme Court justices, all men, ruled 7 to 2 to vote in the Roe v. Wade case in favor of legalizing abortion on demand.
Image: Supreme Court at time Roe v Wade legalized abortion (Image credit: Oyez)

Supreme Court at time Roe v Wade legalized abortion (Image credit: Oyez)

8. Men pushing eugenics and population control brought the abortion pill to the U.S.

  • The Population Council, founded in 1952 by John D. Rockefeller III, was led by men concerned about population issues and is credited with bringing abortion pill RU-486 to the U.S.
  • Population Council leaders were connected to the eugenics movement (read more here).
Image: RU486 abortion pill Mifeprex (Image credit: Danco)

RU486 abortion pill Mifeprex (Image credit: Danco)

  • 1994: President Bill Clinton’s administration encouraged French pharmaceutical manufacturer Roussel-Uclaf to assign US rights of marketing and distribution of RU-486 to the Population Council.
  • Right to distribute handed over to Danco Laboratories, a sub-licensee of the Population Council.
  • 2000: Larry Lader bragged in a press conference he “plotted” to break the law and smuggle the pills into the U.S.

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