Posted on 04/19/2009 9:41:38 AM PDT by wagglebee
Perfect!
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Jeez... I can see it... a state visit from Hillary! And the first words out of her mouth... “Let’s kill some babies!”
This article repeats many falsehoods about Margaret Sanger.
Although she was a racist and eugenicist, Sanger did not anywhere in any of her writings or speeches advocate killing people (or abortion).
She advocated for contraception, involuntary contraception, sterilization, involuntary sterilization.
People would have much better case against this despicable person if they would stick to the facts about her. She was bad enough without making things up about her proposals.
Nonsense, her statement, "the most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it," is well documented.
Sanger may not have openly advocated abortion, but this is likely because she NEVER dreamed that America would legalize infanticide.
The verbal diarrhea in this sentence is astounding!
I'd like to know how abortion clinics, contraceptives, and morning after pills will lower infant mortality rates in developing countries.
That comment is taken out of context. If you read it in context you will understand what she was talking about.
Very good point. I doubt that even Sanger had the courage to mention “abortion.” We 21st-centuryites forget that it was considered for millenia an abomination. Besides, as the Hippocratic oath makes undeniable, “safe,” effective abortions were always available; they simply weren’t “viable” options in CIVILIZED societies.
Margaret Sanger appointed Lothrop Stoddard as a board member of the Birth Control League (the forerunner of Planned Parenthood). What did Stoddard think about Nazi eugenics? Author Stefan Kuhl writes:
"When the Nazis came to power", argued Stoddard, "they started to increase both the size and the quality of the population. They coupled initiatives designed to encourage "sound" citizens to reproduce with a "drastic curb of the defective elements." Stoddard personally witnessed how the Nazis were "weeding out the worst strains in the Germanic stock in a scientific and truly humanitarian way."
Seems to me agreeing with the way 'weeding out' undesirables the way Hitler did is advocating murder.
Can you post the context in which killing an infant is “understandable”?
Yes, Sanger did agree with ‘weeding out the undesirables”.
But the methods she proposed are NOT what the author of this article says. She is in error on that and it hurts her overall case, that Sanger is a bad person to be despised, which she is.
On more than one occasion, I have wish that both Bill Clinton’s mom and Hillary’s mom had practiced more birth control!!!
Think of how that would have changed America.
And we have Chelsea being groomed for public office!! GAG!
http://www.bartleby.com/1013/5.html
In this chapter of her writing Sanger is talking about the burdens of large families on poor working class families. She is making the case that the stresses of supporting many children with little money causes many social ills, such as child labor, child prostitution, hunger, disease ... etc. She is making the case that many in this situation, faced with another mouth to feed (that the family cannot afford) is at risk for all these things, plus that families may be practicing infanticide as a means to prevent such suffering of their children. She has a graph showing that in larger families, the infant mortality rate jumps much higher in later births than in the earlier births, suggesting that there are nefarious reasons behind why this statistic.
She makes this point in the context of advocating for CONTRACEPTION, in order to avoid the evils she saw in society of her day (which included abortion, extreme poverty, child labor, prostitution ... especially among young girls, and suspected infanticide).
She used these social ills to further her own agenda, which was CONTRACEPTION.
http://www.bartleby.com/1013/10.html
In this section Sanger is advocating for contraception to PREVENT ABORTION. To make her case, she is presenting an argument that many poor immigrant women have no access to contraception and so must “submit to a humiliating, repulsive, painful and too often gravely dangerous operation” (abortion).
“I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.” (Planned Parenthood doesn’t want you to know Sanger said that).
_________________________
If you are interested in presenting Sanger accurately, I urge you to read her complete writings, available on Bartleby.com. She was opposed to abortion, called it an ‘abominable act’ but claimed women were forced to it by desperation of poverty and exhaustion from and having too many children to take care of and being extremely poor. You have to realize poverty in her day is not like poverty in ours.
Yes, she also was a racist (as were many in her day) and got caught up in the Eugenist movement, which had become very popular ... promoted by many prominent people of her day ... even Presidents supported it.
But nowhere in her writing does she advocate infanticide, or abortion. In fact, she used the fact that these practices were already going on to make a case for CONTRACEPTION, which was illegal in her day. Even giving out information about sexual biology and human reproduction was illegal in her day.
You have to read Sanger in context of her writings and her time. Not doing so is like reading things our Founders wrote out of context of their time.
I’m not defending Sanger’s racism and eugenicism. But in the context of her time, these were popular ideas supported by many well know and respected people. We also know that many States instituted involuntary sterilization programs ... Sanger saw STERILIZATION as more humane than abortion,infanticide and extreme poverty caused by poor families children they could not take care of. She saw involuntary sterilization as a means to limit the ‘unfit’. But she did not advocate killing
And, "in the context of her time", Sanger KNEW that she could NEVER get abortion legalized and would probably face prison and lose the support of many of her allies if she even suggested it.
Yes, many prominent people of Sanger’s day, in the USA and in Europe, embraced Eugenics. It had become quite a mainstream idea.
There is no evidence she even considered it.
And she already faced prison for her advocacy of contraception.
MRS. SANGER GUILTY, FACES PRISON TERM
February 3, 1917
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A01E7DD1538EE32A25750C0A9649C946696D6CF
Mrs. Margaret Sanger, birth control advocate, was convicted of violating the penal code in a decision handed down yesterday by Justices Freschi, Herrman and O’Keefe in Special Sessions in Brooklyn.
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