Posted on 04/21/2004 10:25:26 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.
One day in 1981, when Jeannette Watson was visiting her doctor for a pregnancy checkup, she told him about her congenital hip displaysia. The doctor informed her, “In a few years there is going to be a genetic test to determine early in a pregnancy if the fetus carries that defective gene.”
Jeannette, who considered herself pro-choice, responded, “I would never kill my baby because he had hip displaysia.”
Jeannette’s husband, Alexander Sanger, disagrees. He tells this personal story in his new book, Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century. Sanger is the grandson of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. Like his grandmother, Sanger is a pro-abortion activist. To him, the moral of this story is that his wife “simultaneously thinks that abortion should be legal and that it is in many cases wrong”—he considers that a problem. Sanger believes that, like his wife, this country is “pro-choice, mostly.” And for him, “mostly” is not enough.
As Sanger reports, the number of Americans who support abortion in all circumstances has changed very little in the three decades since the Roe v. Wade decision. So he wrote the book to share some pro-choice arguments that he hopes will be more convincing than the old ones. He thinks we need to learn to see abortion not just as morally justifiable, but as morally right.
If we base our thinking on biology, Sanger argues, we see that both abortion and birth control are necessary means of taking “control of our reproduction” and making sure our genes are passed along. He claims that it may be in a woman’s “reproductive interests” to abort a child who isn’t healthy, or for whom she can’t care, and try to have another one later when the circumstances are more favorable. This, he says, is the best way of ensuring that her genes will be passed on to future generations. Near the end of the book, he sums up this argument as follows: “The only thing more important than life is the propagation of life.”
That statement is chilling. I think if I were Sanger’s son, I would be frightened by my father’s words, especially when you consider that story of his wife’s conversation with her doctor. While he dedicates his book to his son, among others, he claims that any child—his son included, I presume—is replaceable.
And yet I would be surprised if Sanger really believes that about his own child. I suspect he’s a lot like the philosopher Peter Singer, who argues in favor of euthanasia for the weak while lavishing care on his sick, elderly mother.
While Sanger is an influential and respected man in some circles, I don’t think his arguments are going to be as effective as he believes. Even if you don’t believe that each human being has an indisputable right to life, most people can’t get past the fact that each human life is unique, that no one is replaceable. If that’s the best he can do, I’m afraid Sanger will have to resign himself to the fact that the American public still has some respect left for unborn human life—a respect on which those of us who are pro-life need to continually build.
"Kill my baby"? How in the world does a chick who would marry the grandson of Maggie "I'm not a Nazi, I just play one at my 'birth control' clinic" Sanger not know that it's evacuating the products of conception, not killing a baby. Who filled her head with the silly notion that pregnancy involves a baby?
Very interesting...this seems to be a new turn of strategy for them. They've lost what I call "The Ultrasound Battle" so they must pretend that murdering some people is good for the species as a whole. So we have Singer, Satelan, Mundy and some daughter of an abortion provider in Australia who made a documentary "justifying" her abortion on "Yeah it was a baby, but so what, you can't tell me what to do" grounds...and now Sanger circles back to his grandma's arguments about useless eaters and undesirables.
In keeping with my "abortion-to-slavery" translations of the last few days..."Them darkies is better off working in the fields, what kind of world would we have if they were wandering around free? They'd all be starving and miserable; slavery is really a mercy that's good for society!"
As usual, the source document has some good links.
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Pssst.
An interesting choice of words coming from a blob-of-tissue type.
Jeannette’s husband, Alexander Sanger, disagrees.
In other words, this man is admitting to the world that he'd just as soon his wife had never been born. Wow, what a guy, to take on someone so biologically inferior. Wonder what lucky girl he'll be trading her in for in a few years.
I'm expecting a deafening silence.
Wouldn't it be ironic if they were judged by the same individuals that were denied an Earthly life due to abortion?
Given who this gal's husband is, he's probably got an argument built for why that euthenasia should be forced, and why it ought to be pretty soon because, after all, he's got a hot date waiting.
An earlier post asked what kind of woman would get herself mixed up with someone whose family members have been major players in building the foundations of Nazism, and the answer is "pretty darned stupid".
Is there any doubt this is a culture war?
Film about abortion raises outcry -- interesting: so pro-abortionists need to tweak their arguments to make killing one's baby more palatable, but the truth is 'too offensive, too graphic'.
Margaret Sanger in her eugenics book, Women and the New Race
Some info on Sanger. It's astounding that so many people today don't know who she really was, and that the feminist left gets away with singing her praises on a regular basis.
In 1921 Sanger founded The American Birth Control League which propated an unambiguous eugenicist philosophy indistinguishable in any significant way from Nazi racialist philosophy.
Her own words convict her:
On African-Americans:"[We propose to] hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. 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 to any of their more rebellious members."On infanticide: "The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."
On eugenics: "Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race."
Sanger was strongly anti-Semitic. She was a business partner with a man named Henry Pratt Fairchild, who wrote The Melting Pot Mistake, in which he accused "the Jews" of diluting the true American stock. In his book, Race and Nationality, Fairchild blamed anti-Semitism and the holocaust in part on "the Jews."
Margaret Sanger was committed to, in her words, the elimination of "weeds . . . overrunning the human garden" and the segregation of "morons, misfits, and the maladjusted." Her journal, The Birth Control Review, was a convenient transmission belt for racist bile. Lothrop Stoddard, who also was on Sanger's Board of Directors, wrote in The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy that "we must resolutely oppose both Asiatic permeation of white race-areas and Asiatic inundation of those non-white, but equally non-Asiatic regions inhabited by the really inferior races."
Sanger championed sweeping sterilization laws.
In the 1930s, Margaret Sanger was warmly praised by Adolf Hitler for her energetic championship of eugenics.
Because of the strong association in the public mind between The American Birth Control League and Sanger's Nazi sympathies, during WWII she changed its name to Planned Parenthood.
In the 1930s, Margaret Sanger was warmly praised by Adolf Hitler for her energetic championship of eugenics.
Because of the strong association in the public mind between The American Birth Control League and Sanger's Nazi sympathies, during WWII she changed its name to Planned Parenthood.
Yep.
I wish every American knew the truth about the historical and philosophical roots of the modern pro-death movement.
Thanks for telling the truth.
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