Televangelist Pat Robertson on Thursday misquoted the founder of Planned Parenthood to make a false connection between the abortion provider, Adolf Hitler and African-American “genocide.”

After noting that President Barack Obama would be speaking to Planned Parenthood Federation of America on Friday, Robertson urged his viewers to Google the group’s founder, Margaret Sanger.

ADVERTISEMENT

“She was the one who set the stage for Adolf Hitler,” the TV preacher explained. “She didn’t copy him, he copied her. Planned Parenthood, it’s unbelievable how evil they were in the early days.”

“They said, what we’ve got to do in order to get the black people in America to have abortions, we have to have some noted black leader who will come out for Planned Parenthood and we’ll give him the Margaret Sanger Award. And, therefore, he will be our poster boy, in a sense showing the black people they should have abortions.”

“It was strictly genocide if you read what she had to say,” Robertson added.

Anti-abortion activists often misquote Sanger as saying, “[W]e want to exterminate the Negro population.”

In full context, however, the quote has the opposite meaning. In a 1939 letter to pro-birth control advocate Clarence J. Gamble, Sanger argued that black leaders should be involved in the effort to deliver birth control to the black community.

ADVERTISEMENT

“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs,” the letter said.

PolitiFact examined similar statements about Sanger made by then-Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain in 2011 and gave him a “Pants on Fire” rating.

“But we found no evidence that Sanger advocated – privately or publicly – for anything even resembling the ‘genocide’ of blacks, or that she thought blacks are genetically inferior,” PolitiFact said.

ADVERTISEMENT

Watch this video from CBN’s The 700 Club, broadcast April 25, 2013.

ADVERTISEMENT

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)