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Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy. We need your help. More Info ### I would like to contribute One Time Monthly Yearly Join Now ![](\\" ![](\\" Candace Owens stated on May 3, 2022 in a tweet: “79% of Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority neighborhoods. This is not by accident. That is by its founder, Margaret Sanger\'s, eugenicist design.\" ![\\"true\\"](\\" mostly-false/6a6ef6075c162fdccf5eb960e683dcd1.jpg.\\") ![\\"barely- true\\"](\\" false.jpg\\") * Abortion * National * Race and Ethnicity * Supreme Court * Facebook Fact-checks * Candace Owens ![\\"A](\\" A Planned Parenthood Center is seen in Long Island City, Queens, New York. (AP) ![\\"Samantha](\\" By Samantha Putterman May 18, 2022 # Claim that most Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority areas by \'eugenicist\' design falls short #### If Your Time is short * There is conflicting evidence about how many Planned Parenthood clinics are located in minority neighborhoods. * Sanger has been criticized for supporting eugenics, but scholars say her allegiance to the movement concerned public health, not race. She also didn’t support abortion, and none of her clinics performed the procedure until after her death. See the sources for this fact-check Conservative commentator Candace Owens is no fan of Planned Parenthood, the nonprofit organization that has provided reproductive health care, including abortion services, for decades. In a recent tweet, Owens cited a statistic and the organization’s history as proof Planned Parenthood’s goals are unethical. \"79% of Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority neighborhoods,\" Owens wrote on Twitter May 3, a post that has since been shared on Facebook. \"This is not by accident. That is by its founder, Margaret Sanger\'s, eugenicist design. Go back and read her quotations. The Left sees racism everywhere except for where it actually is.\" The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Planned Parenthood and supporters of its mission have indeed wrestled with the legacy left by Sanger, who opened the nation’s first birth control clinic in 1916 and five years later founded the organization that would become Planned Parenthood. Sanger embraced the idea of eugenics, defined by the National Human Genome Research Institute as the \"scientifically inaccurate theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations.\" But scholars who have studied her life and work say that as she expressed a eugenstic viewpoint, she did not link it to race — and there is no indication she supported abortion access or sought to use abortion as a form of genocide, as some have claimed. But we were interested in the 79% data point Owens cited. Owens told PolitiFact the source for that figure was a 2015 report by the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., that was submitted to Congress. The report said the number came from \"protectingblacklife.org,\" a website associated with an anti-abortion organization. But that analysis is in dispute, and data on this matter differs. Further confusing matters, the data that is available has been produced by organizations with clear stances in the abortion debate. Some of the reports are more than10 years old. They also vary in how they analyze neighborhood demographics — and in how they evaluate the meaning of those demographics. Although Owens’ original post didn’t mention abortion, she pointed us to data specifically about abortion clinics. (Planned Parenthood has many clinics, not all of which provide abortions.) While Sanger was a champion of birth control, she was largely opposed to abortion. Planned Parenthood did not begin offering abortion services until 1970, fours years after Sanger died. Taken together, available data is inconclusive The original source of Owens’ 79% claim, protectingblacklife.org, features a map of what it says are Planned Parenthood surgical abortion facilities that are located \"within walking distance of African American or Hispanic/Latino neighborhoods.\" \"2010 Census results reveal that Planned Parenthood is targeting minority neighborhoods,\" it says. \"79% of its surgical abortion facilities are located within walking distance of African American or Hispanic/Latino neighborhoods.\" An abortion clinic is included on the map if it lies within 2 miles of a census tract with at least a 50% minority population or where the minority population percentage is at least 1.5 times higher than that of the surrounding county. PolitiFact reached out to the website to get more information about the data it used but didn’t hear back. #### Featured Fact-check ![](\\" Instagram_logo_2016.svg/322c808c00e73c217d17772ddd5a0eb5.jpg\\") ![](\\" Instagram_logo_2016.svg/8b142c91ebe468a84a192e6df2b7b994.jpg\\") Instagram posts stated on September 11, 2024 in an Instagram post \"Debate moderators made the false claim to Donald Trump that there is nowhere in the United States where abortion is legal up until birth.\" ![\\"true\\"](\\" false/33efdb6633e5e2fdc2d4e2f63383a1e0.jpg.\\") ![\\"false\\"](\\" false.jpg\\") By Jeff Cercone • September 13, 2024 Joerg Dreweke, associate director of U.S. communications at the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights research organization, took issue with the methodology. As an example, he pointed to what the map shows about the facility in Sioux City, Iowa. \"There are what looks like eight census tracts within walking distance,\" Dreweke said. \"One of these eight is 27% Hispanic, which by their definition (because it is 1.5 times higher than the county average) makes it a ‘minority neighborhood,’ and therefore the facility ‘targets’ minorities.’ But that is ridiculous on its face, from the map (and again, no idea how reliable it is), that clinic appears to be surrounded by overwhelmingly white residents.\" In 2014, the Guttmacher Institute published its own report to address claims that most abortion clinics are located in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods. It was broader in scope, though and Planned Parenthood was only one of the providers included in the analysis. The report, which was based on 2011 census data, found that fewer than one in 10 clinics were located in mostly Black neighborhoods and that six in 10 abortion providers were located in neighborhoods where more than half of residents are white. Planned Parenthood cited 2015 data that said less than 4% of its clinics providing abortion services were located in communities where more than one- third of the population is Black. The original report was internal, and a Planned Parenthood spokesperson declined to share it with PolitiFact. Planned Parenthood also pointed us to research showing that, as of 2019, 56% of its health centers are in what are considered rural, medically underserved or where there are shortages of health professionals. Sanger’s views and the Negro Project Sanger’s first birth control clinic opened in 1916 in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, which was mostly Irish and Jewish. When she did open a Harlem clinic in the early 1930s, about half of its patients were white. Members of the Black establishment, including W.E.B. DuBois and the Black newspaper the Amsterdam News, supported it. Although Sanger has been criticized for supporting eugenics, historians of the movement and scholars who have studied Sanger’s life say her opinions largely centered around what would today be considered issues of public health. During Sanger’s time, one scholar wrote, \"the purpose of eugenics was to improve the human race by having people be more healthy through exercise, recreation in parks, marriage to someone free from sexually transmitted diseases, well-baby clinics, immunizations, clean food and water, proper nutrition, nonsmoking and drinking.\" Those who think Sanger wanted Black genocide often cite the Negro Project, an effort launched in 1939 to bring birth control services (but not abortion) to Southern Black communities. Black leaders like DuBois, and Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women, and Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, pastor of the Black Abyssinian Baptist Church, were members of its advisory council. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt was also supportive. Sanger has been criticized for a particular statement from a 1939 letter she wrote advocating that organizers recruit Black ministers for the project: \"We don’t want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs.\" But reporting by PolitFact Georgia found Sanger was advocating for Black doctors and ministers to play leadership roles in the project to avoid misunderstandings — she was not suggesting genocide. In addition, scholars note that her views on abortion were far from those of an advocate. In her own words: \"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.\" While she strongly condemned the practice, Sanger felt that it was \"a woman’s duty and right to have for herself the right to say when she shall and shall not have children.\" Our ruling Owens claimed that \"79%\" of Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority neighborhoods. \"This is not by accident. That is by its founder, Margaret Sanger\'s, eugenicist design,\" she said. Data on this matter is dispute, with advocates on each side of the abortion debate arriving at separate conclusions based on different methodology. Sanger has been criticized for supporting eugenics, but scholars say her allegiance to the movement concerned public health, not race. She also was largely opposed to abortion, and none of her clinics performed the procedure until after her death. This statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False. #### Read About Our Process The Principles of the Truth-O-Meter ### Our Sources Facebook post, May 3, 2022 Congress.gov, The effects of abortion on the Black community, by the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, June 2015 Protectingblacklife.org, \"Planned Parenthood Targets Minority Neighborhoods,\" Accessed May 7, 2022 Guttmacher Institute, Claim that most abortion clinics are located in black or hispanic neighborhoods is false, June 1, 2014 Planned Parenthood, The irreplaceable role of Planned Parenthood health xenters, January 2019 Scribd, Planned Parenthood health center locations 2017, Accessed May 7, 2022 PolitiFact, Cain claims Planned Parenthood founded for \"planned genocide\", April 8, 2011 PolitiFact, Did Margaret Sanger believe African-Americans \"should be eliminated\"?, Oct. 5, 2015 Rewire News Group, How false narratives of Margaret Sanger are being used to shame Black women, Aug. 20, 2015 Washington Post, Are most Planned Parenthood clinics in urban areas where women have adequate access to care?, Oct. 3, 2017 Margaret Sanger Papers Project Research Annex Margaret Sanger’s Views on Abortion, June 4, 2012; The Margaret Sangers Papers Project at NYU, Margaret Sanger Answers Questions on Abortion, 2012 Email interview, Candace Owens, conservative commentator, May 7, 2022 Email interview, Isabel Guarnieri, communications assistant at the Guttmacher Institute, May 6, 2022 Email interview, Joerg Dreweke, associate director of communications at the Guttmacher Institute, May 7, 2022 Email interview, Megan Freeland, director of health communications at Planned Parenthood, May 9, 2022 ## Browse the Truth-O-Meter ### More by Samantha Putterman ![](\\" black/4590875651af69b2c789ceab409664dd.jpg\\") ![](\\" black/72988380e8c8bd188dc360d11552e4a0.jpg\\") X posts stated on September 30, 2024 in an X post: Photo shows President Joe Biden lounging on the beach \"while towns all over America were being wiped out” by Hurricane Helene. ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Samantha Putterman • September 30, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Vote No on 3 stated on September 7, 2024 in a TV ad: Florida’s Amendment 3 is “the monopoly amendment.” ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Samantha Putterman • September 27, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Vote No on 4 stated on September 10, 2024 in a TV ad: “Unlike other amendments, Amendment 4 has no definitions. … Without definitions these words can mean almost anything.” ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" barely-true.jpg\\") By Samantha Putterman • September 23, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Social Media stated on September 21, 2024 in a video: Sen. 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Tim Walz. ![\\"half-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"half-true\\"](\\" true.jpg\\") By Samantha Putterman • August 8, 2024 ### Claim that most Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority areas by \'eugenicist\' design falls short * ![](\\" ![](\\" Viral image stated on September 30, 2024 in a Threads post: Image shows a photo of former President Donald Trump wading through floodwater after Hurricane Helene. ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Ciara O\'Rourke • October 2, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Donald Trump stated on September 29, 2024 in a rally in Erie, PA: Kamala Harris \"let in the 13,099 convicted murderers and opposes all efforts to find them and to remove them.\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Marta Campabadal Graus • October 2, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Facebook posts stated on September 25, 2024 in a Facebook post: “Georgia coach Kirby Smart\'s family ends relationship with Taylor Swift: ‘We do not support her endorsement.’” ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Ciara O\'Rourke • October 1, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Viral image stated on September 20, 2024 in a Facebook post: “TD Jakes MYSTERIOUSLY VANISHES: The search for the renowned bishop begins!” ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Ciara O\'Rourke • October 1, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" X posts stated on September 29, 2024 in X posts: A biolab caught fire in Georgia right before the 2024 election. ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Sofia Ahmed • October 1, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Donald Trump stated on September 29, 2024 in a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania: Vice President Kamala Harris “even wants to legalize fentanyl.” ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Amy Sherman • October 1, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" House Majority PAC stated on September 9, 2024 in a television ad: Laurie Buckhout is “trying to get to Congress to pass a national abortion ban, allowing politicians to ban abortions with no exceptions and prosecute women if they get an abortion, treating women right here like criminals.” ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" barely-true.jpg\\") By Paul Specht • October 1, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Donald Trump Jr. stated on September 9, 2024 in a post: “Less than three months ago, Kamala Harris and her administration blocked 300,000 unvetted Haitian migrants from being deported out of our country.\" ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" barely-true.jpg\\") By Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu • September 30, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" X posts stated on September 30, 2024 in an X post: Photo shows President Joe Biden lounging on the beach \"while towns all over America were being wiped out” by Hurricane Helene. ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Samantha Putterman • September 30, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Social Media stated on September 30, 2024 in in social media posts: “Biden Announces: ‘2.4 billion more to Ukraine’ but ‘no more aid for Hurricane Helene.’” ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Jeff Cercone • September 30, 2024 Load more ### Support independent fact-checking. 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79 of Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority neighborhoods This is not by accident That is by its founder Margaret Sanger's eugenicist design