There’s no way she doesn’t know about Margaret Sanger’s background, right?

Via CNS News:

Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Monday, feminist Gloria Steinem said receiving the Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama would be “honoring the work of Margaret Sanger.”

“I hope this is retroactive in honoring the work of Margaret Sanger,” said Steinem about the woman who founded what would become Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the largest abortion provider in the United States.

“I hope that she would celebrate this recognition that reproductive freedom is a human right at least as crucial as freedom of speech and that no government should dictate whether or when we have children,” Steinem said.

In her remarks Steinem said that “the power of this honor may be even more evident in the withholding than in the giving,” noting that Sanger never got the medal.

“I was reminded by Ellen Chesler, biography of Margaret Sanger, that President Lyndon Johnson, even as he signed the first federal and international family planning act into law, refused to bestow the metal of freedom on Sanger,” Steinem said. “He feared reprisal from the Catholic Church.

“Ellen told me that when she looked at Sanger’s private history papers at Smith College – I’m proud to say the biggest archive of women history – she found a poignant little hand-written note from Sanger, asking that her body be buried here next to her husband but that her heart be removed to Japan – the only country in the world that had every bestowed a public honor on her,” Steinem said.