Margaret Sanger popularized the term “birth control” and founded Planned Parenthood in 1921. | Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Back in the 1930s, when I was a boy still wearing short pants or knickers, my daddy taught me that wearing boxer shorts and long pants does not make you a man. He made sure that I was aware that my actions in life, especially with women, is what determined whether I could consider myself a real man.
I lost my dad back in 1977, but still thank him for those lessons.
Recently, there were two articles in our local newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, one of which filled me with pride, while the other filled me with rage.
The first article reported that the Republican presidential debate would be coming to our University of Houston campus in February. This is great for the Republican party and the City of Houston, but especially for our already outstanding University. It is recognition of our school’s importance we can all be proud of.
The second article made me feel shame for the state of Texas.
The junior senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, a pip-squeak, is coming to be on our University’s debate stage.
Why am I ashamed and angry? Because that article showed him to be at the forefront of the war on women that is being waged in our country.
Margaret Sanger dedicated her life to battling the backward-leaning Ted Cruz’s of her day to guarantee safe women’s contraception and the availability of women’s health services that are still pertinent to women today.
Margaret Sanger is most notable for founding the health care clinics for women, Planned Parenthood.
Most Planned Parenthood clinics are a source, often the only source, for a woman to obtain an abortion. I do not favor abortion but, as a son of a mother, the brother of a sister and the father of six daughters, I believe it is my place to advise that it is the women’s need and right to make her own choice and decisions about her health. I ask no one to accept my beliefs as their own.
Ted Cruz is leading a group of nine Texas and 15 other so-called conservative, but actual yellow-belly cowardly, legislators to demand that the bust of Margaret Sanger be removed from the National Portrait Gallery in our nation’s capital.
Her bust is on display in the “Struggle for Justice” exhibit in the Smithsonian Institution. These namby-pambies accuse this magnanimous woman’s hero of holding values “deeply antithetical to the very values most Americans hold dear.”
This horrible nothing of a man claims, in writing, that Sanger’s bust represents, “hatred, racism and the destruction of unborn life.”
This is the view of a man, an office holder, who would have us return to the good-ole days of the 1850s when women were bare-foot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
If thinking like his persisted to its ultimate conclusion, this campus would be devoid of women.
Margret Sanger’s actions have saved countless human lives.
What has Ted Cruz ever done for mankind?
I challenge this coward to bring up this issue on our debate stage on the 26th of February. I know that he is too chicken to, but my real challenge is to UH women. In a political debate, I want to hear all points of view, but this prehistoric person should be met with protest that shows the true, rational feelings of the female population of our campus.
Make yourselves heard and shame this neanderthal when he comes to our campus.
Opinion columnist Ken Levin is a political science senior and may be reached at [email protected]
“Margaret Sanger is most notable for founding the health care clinics for women, Planned Parenthood.” What is rarely if ever mentioned is that her plan was to reduce if not eliminate the “inferior” black race in this country. Choose your heroes well.
My goodness, you certainly write with a lot of insults and name calling. That probably doesn’t help your cause.