Posted on 02/08/2007 10:39:51 AM PST by Froufrou
A Catholic girls' school abruptly cancelled a best-selling author's speech about the founder of Planned Parenthood and her controversial pro-eugenics views because the "content could be misunderstood," according to a representative of the national conservative group that was to have sponsored the event.
Daniel Flynn, author of the 2005 book, "Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas," was invited by the Pro-Life Club at Mercy High School in Farmington Hills, Mich., to speak on the foundations of the abortion rights movement, said Jason Mattera, a spokesman for Young America's Foundation.
During an after-school event on Monday, Feb. 12 - at which attendance would be voluntary - Flynn was slated to give "a fact-based talk" drawn from the chapter in his book dealing with Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the U.S.
Just days before the event, however, Principal Carolyn Witte suddenly cancelled the lecture, calling the subject "unsuitable for high school students." Matter said Witte had told him the "content could be misunderstood."
"The principal didn't mention how information exposing Sanger's nefarious programs to sterilize large segments of the blacks, Italians and Jews - whom Sanger referred to as 'human weeds' - could be 'misunderstood,' particularly by a pro-life club sanctioned by a Catholic school," Mattera said.
Witte told Mattera her students - who range from 14 to 18 years old - were too "sensitive" to hear a topic about Planned Parenthood's roots. "I'm not suggesting that I or the school is anti-Mr. Flynn," said Witte. "I just have not heard him speak."
"While Mercy High School administrators didn't think their students were mature enough to hear a topic related to abortion, the school has brought in speakers to talk about chastity and shown videos regarding sexual abuse," Mattera responded.
Kathryn Stickley, a 17-year-old senior and member of the Pro-Life Club at Mercy, also criticized the principal's actions.
"So Principal Witte admits to never hearing Mr. Flynn talk, then cancels his appearance because of his message? What sense does that make?" Stickley said in a statement. "We're high school students, not first graders. I think we can handle a controversial topic.
"History is replete with unpleasant facts, including slavery, racism and Native American genocide, but that doesn't mean we should be sheltered from learning the past," she added.
"Mercy High School is a Catholic college preparatory school for young women," the school's website states. "The common thread among staff, students and parents is a commitment to academic excellence, cultural diversity and the integration of Mercy Values into daily life," the site adds.
Several telephone calls by Cybercast News Service seeking reaction from Witte were not returned by press time. However, the principal was quoted elsewhere as saying the event had been canceled because a school moderator involved with planning the event had failed to follow school policy.
"That's a cheap excuse," Mattera told Cybercast News Service on Wednesday.
"This event has been planned for more than a month, and there was no cost to the school," he noted. "The honorarium for Flynn was covered by us. The hotel and travel for Flynn was covered by us.
"The Pro-Life Club invited him, and they got the moderator to sign off on all the paperwork, so the club did everything right," Mattera stated. "Just because Witte doesn't like Mr. Flynn's pro-life message is by no means a justification for censorship.
"Witte's obviously taken the cue from other leftist administrators that school officials should shun, not foster, debate and discussion," he added.
Flynn said in a statement released by Young America's Foundation that the school administration "is setting a terrible example for their students by banning an after-school speech with which they disagree."
"Students should be learning how to find the truth through debate and discussion, not how to muzzle opposing voices," he added.
Sterilize the sick, keep out 'feeble-minded' immigrants
As Cybercast News Service previously reported, Sanger's belief in eugenics has drawn criticism from such groups as the American Life League - which called on the organization to apologize for its "eugenic past" - as well as the operators of the pro-life website blackgenocide.
Planned Parenthood devotes space on its website to discuss Sanger and eugenics, saying while its founder "uniformly repudiated the racist exploitation of eugenics principles," she also agreed with some views the organization finds "objectionable and outmoded."
These included favoring incentives for the voluntary hospitalization and/or sterilization of people with untreatable medical conditions, regulations to prevent the immigration of diseased and "feebleminded" people into the U.S., and "placing so-called illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, and dope-fiends on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct."
The site goes on to reject a number of quotations attributed to Sanger, saying she "never described any ethnic community as an 'inferior race' or as 'human weeds.'"
Planned Parenthood did not respond to requests for comment on this article.
Sanger is not alone among abortion-rights pioneers to have supported eugenics. The founder of Marie Stopes International, a U.K.-based organization that carries out about 35,000 abortion a year and operates in 30 mostly developing countries worldwide, has been accused of publishing views on "selective breeding" called racist and offensive.
The Scottish-born Stopes, who opened Britain's first "family planning clinic" in 1921, reportedly referred to the children of the poor as "puny and utterly unsatisfactory."
Apparently, Eugenics was the global warming of the 1920's. Its proponents included such "great minds" as Woodrow Wilson, George Bernard Shaw, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Margret Sanger. Try googling eugenics. Here's one site: http://www.independent.org/events/detail.asp?eventID=111
"circles until Hitler gave it a "bad name.""
Because it was his idea to breed a master race of Aryans. Sanger was trying to breed better people. Still kooky but not nearly as nefarious as Hitler, whom she criticized pretty harshly.
Hmmm...maybe you should post that link in my global warming thread!!! I knew Crichton poopoo'd it in State of Fear.
"I hear tell there are still libraries -- that might be your best bet."
Wouldn't it be more appropriate for those claiming to quote Sanger to use a reference or source? After all, "I hear tell there are still libraries." Evidently no journalistic standards, though.
No, these days it's, "Write whatever you want and if somebody questions you, have them spend their time sourcing your material for you. Pathetic.
What grade do you think you would have gotten on your term paper in high-school if you simply refused to source your quotes? I would have gotten an F.
I always source my quotes, so I got As. I don't write for any of those sites you mention. The internet isn't the best place to look for scholarship (it's there, of course, but in my experience mostly on pay sites).
You're absolutely right. The same discussion about selective editing is also on this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1780988/posts
And yes, it's also about Sanger.
Hitler was trying to breed "better people." He just had definite ideas not shared by all of what constituted "better." Sanger's ideas were accepted by her circle, and to my knowlege she never went so far as to suggest executing those who did not come up to her standards. No, she was a kinder, gentler person who just wanted them to breed (unbreed) themselves out of existence.
You are right. Artificial Birth Control is condemned by Church Teaching. Humanae Vitae is the document that outlines the reasons for this.
"No, she was a kinder, gentler person who just wanted them to breed (unbreed) themselves out of existence."
Depends on who you consider "them". If you consider "them" blacks, then I don't know what to say except you are wrong and you have no source to back you up. An unsourced quote is no quote at all.
Sanger rails against the poor and uneducated. In the cities where she worked, these were largely immigrant populations of Europe and Britain so it's not clear to me that she means only blacks, or just blacks and Jews or whomever. To me, what matters is that she divided her world into the "fit" and the "unfit" and that is that. To me, what is truly scary is not that she was a bigot, but how clever she was at taking a true statement (ie, 'We should take responsibility for our children and be good parents.') and twisting it around into a seductive horror (ie, 'Sterilizing the unfit is a mercy to not only them but to all humanity').
I've never really fixated on the "human weeds" issue, I've never tried to sit down and find the exact reference. Her work is plenty damning without it. So much of her work available to read online that everyone should read up on her and come to their own conclusions.
Here's a classic starter piece: The Pivot of Civilization.
Thanks linda. A voice of reason from the darkness. :)
The problem with someone as controversial as Sanger is that people believe she's evil anyway, so selective quotes are easily accepted as evidence. People need to understand agendas behind selective quotation, just as they need to understand an agenda behind Sanger herself.
IIRC it was while in college 20+ years ago so no I can't cite chapter verse & page number.
Old joke: What do they call people who use the rhythm method for birth control?
Parents.
Read later.
Harvard has one, too, but the links aren't working well. At least for me.
Original sources. No editing.
The Michigan link didn't work for me but the Harvard did. They said Sanger 'didn't extend [eugenics] to race or class.
I don't think that's correct.
"I've never really fixated on the "human weeds" issue, I've never tried to sit down and find the exact reference. Her work is plenty damning without it."
Exactly. That's my point. The "fit" and "unfit" was typical of eugenicists. She did work in the poor neighborhoods and the fact that those tended to be ethnic minorities has not changed to this day.
My point is that Blackgenocide.com has painted her as actively trying to erradicate the black population and numerous pro-life sites and FReeprs swallowed that whole when there in no evidence at all to support it. The "human weeds" comment cannot be conclusively attributed to her. Wikipedia states that quote (among others attributed to her) inaccurate.
But we still see it marched out, in this instance to school children. I hate abortion but I also hate the blind repetition of falsehoods. Conservatives get like liberals sometimes: We don't need facts, it's the seriousness of the allegation. Lies aren't bad if we use them for a good purpose, etc.
Exactly!
It's the links on the Harvard page that are supposed to go to the original texts. I didn't read much of their article - I wasn't much interested in Harvard's version of her biography.
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