An Animated History of Planned Parenthood, Brought to You by Lena Dunham, JJ Abrams & More

Lena Dun­ham draft­ed a host of well known friends for The His­to­ry Of 100 Years Of Wom­en’s Health Care At Planned Par­ent­hood, the short film (above) she co-direct­ed with ani­ma­tor Kirsten Lep­ore. Oth­ers tak­ing part in the pro­duc­tion include come­di­ans Mindy Kaling and Amy Schumer, actors Meryl Streep, Amer­i­ca Fer­rera, Hari Nef, Jen­nifer Lawrence, and Con­stance Wu, and pro­duc­er J.J. Abrams.

But the real stars of this show are the female trail­blaz­ers who fought (and con­tin­ue to fight) for access to safe and afford­able repro­duc­tive care for all women, regard­less of age, race, or abil­i­ty to pay.

In the words of founder Mar­garet Sanger, a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure who seems to share quite a few traits with Dun­ham, from her deft lever­age of her celebri­ty on behalf of her cho­sen cause to her capac­i­ty for alien­at­ing fans with some of her less savory views and state­ments:

No woman can call her­self free who does not own and con­trol her body. No woman can call her­self free until she can choose con­scious­ly whether she will or will not be a moth­er.

Women like Rosie Jimenez, a sin­gle moth­er who died from com­pli­ca­tions of a back alley abor­tion fol­low­ing the pas­sage of the Hyde Amend­ment, were vic­tim­ized by laws regard­ing repro­duc­tive choice.

Oth­ers, like Estelle Gris­wold, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Planned Par­ent­hood League of Con­necti­cut, flout­ed the laws to bring about change.

More recent­ly Faye Wat­tle­ton, Planned Parenthood’s first African Amer­i­can pres­i­dent and its cur­rent pres­i­dent, Cecile Richards, have worked to pro­mote aware­ness of both the pub­lic’s rights and any impend­ing dan­gers to those rights.

(Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence’s inad­ver­tent fundrais­ing efforts go unher­ald­ed, appro­pri­ate­ly enough. The mil­lions of women—and men—who made small dona­tions to Planned Par­ent­hood in his name are the true heroes here.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion . We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here . We thank you!

Comments (6)

Has any­one ever heard of a con­dom?! Got­ta love Mar­garet Sanger: “The most urgent prob­lem today is how to lim­it and dis­cour­age the over-fer­til­i­ty of the men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly defec­tive.”
Charm­ing. A hero of the left of course!

Mar­garet Sanger is a pio­neer in eugen­ics. She found a way to change the cul­ture instead of forc­ing it on them. Because of her, we are able to elim­i­nate the unde­sir­ables and help con­trol the pop­u­la­tion. Thank­ful­ly, Sanger spent her ini­tial time as a nurse in Harlem and was able to see first­hand the dam­age that was being done to humankind by peo­ple who should not breed. This expe­ri­ence inspired her to cre­ate a way to help con­trol the genet­ics of those who are not up to par by help­ing to elim­i­nate the genes of the poor, unin­tel­li­gent, and oth­er genet­ic defects. Thank you Open­cul­ture for mak­ing this prac­tice Ok for us to believe. You too are help­ing to change the cul­ture. Now if we could just make it so accept­able that we can decrease the pop­u­la­tion.

The arti­cle lost me at ‘Lena Dun­ham.’ The birth con­trol ser­vices PP offers are fine, but the sin­gle-issue plat­form of abor­tion-on-demand by mod­ern ‘fem­i­nists’ is not. There is a large vari­ety of birth con­trol con­ve­nient­ly avail­able to women in Amer­i­ca, as well as edu­ca­tion­al resources. Fem­i­nists only like abor­tion because it gives women a con­se­quence-free-out from their bad life-choic­es. Want to be a good fem­i­nist? Do so by being a good gate­keep­er with a mature sense of per­son­al account­abil­i­ty over who you decide to let in and vis­it your womb. A child (it’ll grow into noth­ing else) should not have to die because it’s moth­er could­n’t keep her legs shut, and had regrets the morn­ing after. The abor­tion indus­try insults women by assum­ing they have no self-con­trol, and thus they believe laws should be in place to pro­tect them FOR them. Guys, wear a con­dom, you’re 50% of the choice (no mat­ter what the fem­i­nazis think)!

“No woman can call her­self free until she can choose con­scious­ly whether she will or will not be a moth­er” And no man is free until he can choose con­scious­ly whether he will or will not be a father. It’s called equal­i­ty. And men don’t have it.