THE 1916 PROJECT is a documentary exposing the roots of our current cultural and moral decay. There were several architects of the modern secularist culture of death. However, the architects all revolved around one central figure: Margaret Sanger, the founder of what is known today as Planned Parenthood. The documentary thoroughly analyzes the secular moral revolution and subsequent culture of death. There’s alarming content in the dialogue, which includes sexual perversion and genocide, along with mature thematic elements. So MOVIEGUIDE® recommends caution for older teens and adults.

Margaret Sanger was arrested in 1914 for violating the existing anti-obscenity laws. She fled to England and persisted in her diabolical plan to promote sexual licentiousness, birth control, forced sterilization for those deemed unfit, and abortion. Her central belief was an impending population explosion, which would supposedly throw the world into a food shortage and provisions for survival. The only remedy was to socially engineer a plan to “create a race of thoroughbreds” with a calculated, sterile system where the strong kill the weak.

Excluded from her list of people who are fit enough to reproduce are Blacks, immigrants, enslaved people, Jews and Italians, and the poor or handicapped. She was influenced by Charles Darwin and his cousin Francis Galton, who coined and championed the term “survival of the fittest.” One of her many egregious offenses was what she deemed as “The Negro Project,” where she enlisted black leaders to promote abortion and birth control among their populations. Behind closed doors, she’s quoted as saying, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”

In the documentary, host Seth Gruber interviews the author of the historical bombshell book, “Grand Illusion: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood,” George Grant. Grant lays out the relationships between Margaret Sanger and well-known Marxists and eugenicists, such as Thomas Malthus and Havelock Ellis, who shaped the landscape of the anti-Christian, anti-Biblical, and life-denying diatribe of the mainstream culture of death today. Hitler himself publicly applauded the work of Margaret Sanger, envying the legality of forced sterilization of the “unfit” in America at the time.

Sanger was relentless in her mission of changing the culture. Once she could change the culture, she and her colleagues could usher in their secular Marxist ideology. Who were her colleagues? Names include Alfred Kinsey, Hugh Hefner, and Mary Calderone. In the 1930s, Kinsey was a sexual deviant who performed sexual experimentation on children for research. He concluded that we are sexual beings from the beginning of life. Kinsey went on to “scientifically” conclude that 90% of men commit adultery and have homosexual tendencies.

He interviewed prisoners, many of them pedophiles, to support this conclusion. Hugh Hefner was the founder of Playboy and the man who normalized pornography. Once the notion that people are sexual beings became a widely accepted concept, it opened the doors for further deviant behavior. His works essentially claim that all sexual outlets are the same. Therefore, it doesn’t matter who or what you have sex with. The term “love is love” has roots in the belief that sexual behavior is separate from the soul.

Mary Calderone, who worked closely with Sanger, founded the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) in 1964, which became an arm of Planned Parenthood to indoctrinate children with pornographic and radical sex education. SIECUS now advocates for and funds gender reassignment in children. Therefore, it’s no surprise that Planned Parenthood now generates most of its income from prescribing gender-transitioning drugs.

THE 1916 PROJECT concludes with the martyrdom of two German college students, brother and sister, Hans and Sophie Scholl. The Scholl siblings stood up against the insanity of the Nazi German government’s attempted genocide of the Jews. However, Gruber lamented that “nothing changed” after the execution of the Scholls. Their courage was a small ember which eventually caught fire when others, including Bonhoeffer, continued to oppose the Nazi government. This is important because people don’t want to go down with a sinking ship. We must remember, as God’s people, He promises us victory. Jesus has already conquered. The only question is, which side are we on in the battle?

The documentary misses an opportunity by referring to Margaret Sanger as the “patron saint of feminism.” There are plenty of pro-life feminists, many of whom are involved with the human rights group Feminists For Life. It would’ve been nice to hear from some women leading the fight for life, including Abby Johnson, Alveda King, Michelle Malkin, Penny Nance, Elizabeth Hasselback, and Chairman Yoest.

Many brilliant, strong women are leading the fight for life and families. Also, there are a couple of awkward smiles and chuckles while delivering deeply disturbing information. Still, THE 1916 PROJECT does a great job outlining the important historical facts that led to the culture of death we are experiencing today. It also brings home that “bad ideas are taken to their logical conclusion,” which is total destruction.