Posted on 06/23/2004 4:10:02 PM PDT by swilhelm73
WASHINGTON -- After a lengthy incubation, the sick dreams of Margaret Sanger are finally hatching. Against the excuses of her modern defenders, it should be remembered that the founder of Planned Parenthood's main interest in the legalization of abortion was not that women should be freed from the bonds of childbearing, but that unsavory types should be cleansed from the larger population.
In fact, Sanger only turned to abortion when her original plan to "apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation" to those with "objectionable traits" -- sometimes derided as the stronger epithet "human weeds" -- found little support. Turned out folks felt a bit queasy about sending those of certain ethnic backgrounds and with disabilities and mental illnesses off to "farm lands and homesteads" to be "taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives."
Sounds a bit like a concentration camp, no? Then again, she was a great admirer of the Nazi eugenics movement. Like Hitler, she had a long list of folks she wanted to eliminate from society, including "illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope fiends."
More to the point, Sanger considered non-Aryan people "a great biological menace to the future of civilization." The same woman considered a saint today by the pro-choice crowd warned supporters in 1939 that they did not want "word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population."
But look at the massive abortion rates in modern black neighborhoods and set them against, say, the merely moderate rates in white neighborhoods, and it becomes depressingly clear that Sanger helped accomplish something both depressing and far-reaching. If these high death rates were attached to a war, it would be called genocide. When it happens in a Planned Parenthood office we call it progress.
AND NOW, ABORTION ON demand, combined with ever more rigorous screening of children in the womb, has provided the perfect backdoor for other eugenic obsessions to quietly slip back into American life.
According to a front page article in Sunday's New York Times, upwards of 500 medical conditions can be diagnosed by tests on fetal cells "with more than 100 tests added in the last year alone." And, as literally hundreds of science fiction novels predicted, those of us who fail to measure up to the state of normalcy determined by society-at-large are getting the axe in utero.
The results are fairly ugly. For starters, more Down's Syndrome children are now aborted than born. Not for any lack of sentience or capacity for joy or love, they simply move too slowly for modern tastes. Unborn children at risk for cystic fibrosis, expected to live 35 to 40 years, are also increasingly not worth the trouble. Tragic as the disease might be, we never react to the death of an 18-year-old in a car accident by wishing they'd never been born. Exactly how many years must people live before their lives are considered worthwhile?
As with anything else, the moment parents are allowed to selectively eliminate their children because of flaws, we have to grapple with the fact that what constitutes an abnormality can vary greatly.
Thus, the Times tells us the story of a woman who was born with an extra finger, which she later had surgically removed. So far she has aborted two children when ultrasound scans showed they had the same extra digit.
Another woman in Manhattan recently aborted a female child because she already had three daughters and wanted a son. Her physician, Dr. Mark Engelbert, told the Times that he was uncomfortable with the situation, but what could he do?
"My feeling as a physician was that I've accepted the responsibility of being her health care provider," he said. "She's not doing anything illegal, and it's not for me to decide."
That's just it, isn't it? Those who have accepted the barbarism of abortion are forced to follow it all the way down. Any uneasiness about the reason for a particular "elimination" must be set aside for the greater good.
Shawn Macomber is a reporter for The American Spectator. He runs the website Return of the Primitive.
Until anti-Hitlerism forced them to change their name to Planned Parenthood, I believe the org was called the American Eugenics Society
One of the great myths of the 20th century is that the Nazis lost World War II.
The original ping was to a duplicate of this, very timely, article.
Thanks. Good find. Think I shall refrain from much comment, other than note my horror.
A Plan for Peace by Margaret Sanger
(A Plan for Peace, authored by Margaret Sanger, was published in Birth Control Review, April 1932, pages 107-108)
First, put into action President Wilson's fourteen points, upon which terms Germany and Austria surrendered to the Allies in 1918.
Second, have Congress set up a special department for the study of population problems and appoint a Parliament of Population, the directors representing the various branches of science: this body to direct and control the population through birth rates and immigration, and to direct its distribution over the country according to national needs consistent with taste, fitness and interest of individuals. The main objects of the Population Congress would be:
a. to raise the level and increase the general intelligence of population.
b. to increase the population slowly by keeping the birth rate at it present level of fifteen per thousand, decreasing the death rate below its present mark of 11 per thousand.
c. to keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.
d. to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.
e. to insure the country against future burdens of maintenance for numerous offspring as may be born of feebleminded parents, by pensioning all persons with transmissible disease who voluntarily consent to sterilization.
f. to give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.
g. to apportion farm lands and homesteads for these segregated persons where they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.
The first step would thus be to control the intake and output of morons, mental defectives, epileptics.
The second step would be to take an inventory of the secondary group such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection, and segregate them on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct.
Having corralled this enormous part of our population and placed it on a basis of health instead of punishment, it is safe to say that fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense---defending the unborn against their own disabilities.
The third step would be to give special attention to the mothers' health, to see that women who are suffering from tuberculosis, heart or kidney disease, toxic goitre, gonorrhea, or any disease where the condition of pregnancy disturbs their health are placed under public health nurses to instruct them in practical, scientific methods of contraception in order to safeguard their lives---thus reducing maternal mortality.
The above steps may seem to place emphasis on a health program instead of on tariffs, moratoriums and debts, but I believe that national health is the first essential factor in any program for universal peace.
With the future citizen safeguarded from hereditary taints, with five million mental and moral degenerates segregated, with ten million women and ten million children receiving adequate care, we could then turn our attention to the basic needs for international peace.
There would then be a definite effort to make population increase slowly and at a specified rate, in order to accommodate and adjust increasing numbers to the best social and economic system.
In the meantime we should organize and join an International League of Low Birth Rate Nations to secure and maintain World Peace.
Summary of address before the New History Society, January 17th, New York City
"New History" is pretty mainstream, too. It's all over most college history programs. The emphasis is less on the dead white guys who did important things and more on the milleu of the era- fads, fashions, slang, the woman's experience, notions, beliefs, worldviews etc. All interesting in their own right but not a substantive substitute for the "old" history.
It does remind me of how the Carthaginians threw innocent children into the fire.
Robbing the Cradle: The Rockefellers’ Support of Planned Parenthood
Thanks for sharing that, Corin. How'd the pregnancy turn out?
My mother always refused that scan. Our little guy was a surprise, but turned out to be a pleasant one. Whe I hear about people who abort a child just because he has Down Syndrome... may God have mercy barely begins to cover it.
It's not? How about following your own standards and morals? Oh, but I guess you are.
Health care provider? When did that euphemism creep into the language? There must be a political reason for it.
From now on, I will only refer to it as the American Eugenics Society.
Manhattan, Island of Evil.
Another woman in Manhattan recently aborted a female child because she already had three daughters and wanted a son. Her physician, Dr. Mark Engelbert, told the Times that he was uncomfortable with the situation, but what could he do?
Wow! Absolutely horrible.
To: mondonico
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.