Anti-abortion activists held a rally yesterday outside the National Portrait Gallery, demanding that the museum remove its bust of Margaret Sanger, who was a controversial eugenicist. She founded the organizations that would later become Planned Parenthood.
E.W. Jackson, a conservative Christian minister and Virginia lawyer, led the rally in D.C.
From Fox News:
“You must remove the bust!” Jackson said at the rally in front of the Smithsonian museum. He later added, “If Margaret Sanger had her way, MLK and Rosa Parks would never have been born.”
The event was also organized by conservative group ForAmerica and a group of black pastors.
Planned Parenthood has recently taken heat for multiple controversial videos released by conservative group Center for Medical Progress. The videos allege that the organization has taken fetal tissue and organs without consent and sold them. These videos are believed to have been edited in a misleading manner.
Several politicians, including Republican candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, have pushed for the defunding of Planned Parenthood entirely, even going so far as threatening to shut down the government over it, which Senate Majority Mitch McConnell has rejected.
Margaret Sanger spent her life working to change federal and state laws that criminalized contraceptives, leading the birth control movement. Her bust is a part of the National Portrait Gallery’s “Struggle for Justice” exhibit. The exhibit is intended to honor Americans who fought for the rights of the disenfranchised.
The gallery, which has displayed the tribute to Sanger since 2010, has said it will not be taken down.
A spokesperson for the gallery told The Associated Press that the museum’s displays include some people with “less than admirable characteristics.”
It also defended its decision to CNSNews.com and said the bust is in keeping with the museum’s goal to “see the past clearly and objectively.”