Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson recently accused Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger of creating the organization with the intention of "eliminating black people" and criticized U.S. President Barack Obama and 2016 Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton for failing to acknowledge that reality.
During a phone interview with conservative radio host Jan Mickelson on WHO Radio in Des Moines, the 63-year-old retired neurosurgeon was asked to comment on an Obama speech from last year where the president defended Planned Parenthood.
"You wonder if he actually knows the history of Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger, who was trying to eliminate black people," Carson replied. "That was the whole purpose of it."
Mickelson then played an audio clip of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 2009, when she was awarded the Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger Award: "I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision," Clinton said. "I am really in awe of her."
Carson replied to the Clinton soundbite by asserting that her words will be used against her in the upcoming election, as Sanger famously shaped the eugenics movement which contributed to compulsory sterilization laws in 30 U.S. states throughout the 1930's and 40's. Such laws, notes the Washington Post, saw 60,000 sterilizations of vulnerable people, including people Sanger considered "feeble-minded," "idiots" and "morons."
"I am delighted to have her saying that on tape because if I am a nominee and we are in the race, believe me that quotation that she just said will come back and it will be in a context that people can understand," Carson argued. "She has done us a great favor right there ... That is a ticking time bomb and of course, her whole relationship with Saul Alinsky."
Carson also weighed in on the controversial Planned Parenthood videos showing discussions about the practice of using aborted baby parts for medical research, saying the footage reveals "we've reached a time where people are so desensitized where they are not horrified by this kind of activity." He added, "We've allowed the secular progressive movement to [desensitize society] to the point where things are no longer wrong."
Carson emphasized that those who are pro-life should view the Planned Parenthood revelation as a "smoking gun" to push for the defunding of the leading abortion company, which receives about $500 million in taxpayer funding each year, according to government records.
"If we can't defund Planned Parenthood after this, we are lost. We are just in the wilderness forever. I think the appropriate response is to focus our attention on it because they will try to divert the attention and move on to something else and we cannot allow that to happen," Carson contended. "This is the smoking gun and we have always known what kind of organization this is and how anti-life they are and we can also use this to help women understand that they are being manipulated."
In an earlier interview with Fox News host Megyn Kelly, Carson said that in recent years, a dichotomy has been created in what should be "an almost sacred relationship" between a mother and a baby. "The mother is the protector of that baby and we've distorted things to the point where people believe that if the mother can't kill the baby, then anybody who is advocating that is an enemy of women. How can we be so foolish to believe such a thing?" he asked.
He lamented that many on the left have been so vocal about protecting species like "snail darters and little spiders," but are not interested in protecting an unborn baby. "Yet the human being inside of that mother's womb, just beyond 10 weeks, is much more sophisticated than many of these creatures that they're trying to preserve," said Carson.
