This week, I sat down with Alexis McGill Johnson, the President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and co-founder of the Perception Institute, for one of the most honest conversations I’ve hosted about race, gender, and the medicine we all rely on. Alexis has spent her career at the exact place where racial bias and reproductive care meet, and she came ready to connect the past to the present in a way that’s hard to unsee once you’ve seen it.
We get into why the history of medicine still shapes the care a young person receives today. We tell the story of Henrietta Lacks, whose cells were taken without her consent and used to build modern medicine. We cover the pseudoscience claiming Black people feel less pain, and how it still leaves patients under-medicated in the emergency room. We look at the federally funded forced sterilization programs that ran in 32 states during the 20th century, well within living memory.
Then we go somewhere Planned Parenthood usually avoids. Alexis explains her decision to stop making excuses for founder Margaret Sanger’s ties to eugenics, and how an organization reckons honestly with its own origin story.
We close on something hopeful. The Black Health Equity Initiative is Alexis’s evidence-based push to make Planned Parenthood, in her words, “the Beyoncé of healthcare for Black women.” If you’ve ever walked into a doctor’s office with your guard up, this conversation explains why, and what’s being done about it. Stay and listen to the whole thing.
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Resources Mentioned
Alexis McGill Johnson: President and CEO, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
The Perception Institute: Research organization Alexis co-founded, bringing together social psychologists, neuroscientists, and strategists to study racial and gender bias.
Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells: The Black woman whose cervical cells were taken without consent in 1951 and used to develop vaccines, cancer treatments, and HIV research.
Informed consent and the IRB (Institutional Review Board): The ethics-review and consent process meant to protect people who participate in medical research.
Research on racial bias in pain perception: Studies, including work highlighted by the Perception Institute, showing Black patients, including children with appendicitis, are under-treated for pain.
20th-century forced sterilization programs: Federally funded programs that operated in 32 U.S. states, disproportionately targeting people of color, low-income people, and people with disabilities or mental illness.
The Puerto Rico birth control trials: Mid-20th-century contraceptive testing conducted on Puerto Rican women.
Margaret Sanger: Planned Parenthood’s founder, whose advocacy for contraception coexisted with beliefs and actions tied to eugenics.
Buck v. Bell (1927): The U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld compulsory sterilization laws, endorsed by Sanger.
“We’re Done Making Excuses for Our Founder”: Alexis McGill Johnson’s 2021 New York Times op-ed publicly reckoning with Margaret Sanger’s legacy.
The Black Health Equity Initiative (BHEI, nicknamed “BAE”): Planned Parenthood’s evidence-based initiative centering Black women, girls, and trans and non-binary patients.
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Keywords
Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood, Kahlil Greene, Gen Z Historian, reproductive rights, reproductive justice, racial bias in medicine, medical racism, Henrietta Lacks, HeLa cells, informed consent, IRB, pain perception bias, Black maternal mortality, forced sterilization, eugenics, Buck v. Bell, Margaret Sanger, Puerto Rico birth control trials, Perception Institute, Black Health Equity Initiative, bodily autonomy, health equity, Black women’s health, history of medicine, medical ethics, systemic racism, Substack Live.
