Eugenics In America
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, is – perhaps in a fit of decompensation – stridently and shamelessly demanding that a significant fraction of the proposed Stimulus Package be given over to abortion clinics run by population control organizations.
Don’t Let Them Breed
Rep. Pelosi says that it is necessary to subsidize these organizations with US tax dollars because the US needs to rebuild its economy by limiting the population of those poor people who are a burden on the state.
There’s a word that defines this sort of social engineering, a word laden a great deal of evil – eugenics.
Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those – one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.
— Rep. Nancy Pelosi
This Week with George Stephanopoulos
“Family Planning” covers a bit more than just the contraception that Pelosi mentions though. It also covers abortion. And when you combine the two with subsidies based on social engineering principles, you are endorsing eugenics in America. Of course eugenics has a fairly long history America, and it has always been entangled with population control and family planning groups. In fact most of the modern family planning groups and abortion clinics derived from the American Eugenic Movement.
These groups are, of course, the ones that Pelosi is beholden to and the ones she demands that vast sums of US tax dollars be given to. This is unsurprising since Rep. Pelosi’s former Deputy Chief of Staff was none other than Cecile Richards, the current President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
Planned Parenthood evolved out of the American Eugenics Movement as it was adhered to by its founder, Margaret Sanger. Both Sanger and her organization, Planned Parenthood, focus on Negative Eugenics. Negative eugenics is the attempt to improve society by lowering the fertility among the genetically disadvantaged. Methods for this include abortions, sterilization, and other methods of family planning.
So far, so good – or at least not entirely bad or evil. Encouraging or making it easier for people with severe genetic conditions not to pass those damaging traits to the next generation has a certain logic and benefit. Of course this wasn’t the sole focus of Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood and similar organizations, and apparently Rep. Pelosi. The focus is, and has always been, on reducing the number of “undesirables” in American society.
In Sanger’s own words:
Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents.
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It [charity] encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.
~*~
The most serious charge that can be brought against modern “benevolence” is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression.
— Margaret Sanger,
The Pivot of Civilization
Reading Sanger’s writings and listening to Pelosi’s mouthings is enough to raise the hackles of any reasonable and right-thinking American, even those who follow the beliefs of the Pro-Choice / Pro-Abortion side of American reproductive politics.
Perhaps it’s past time to apply something akin to negative eugenics to the US House of Representatives. 😉
Tags: Abortion | Democrats | Economy | Eugenics | Liberals | Pelosi | Politics
January 27th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
What I don’t understand is why most people don’t see how barbaric we are / are becoming. What’s the difference between this and throwing a baby girl to the dogs becuase she wasn’t a boy, or drowning an infant boy becuase he had a birth defect? Why are we so blind to what we’re becoming?
January 28th, 2009 at 7:08 am
I think our blindness stems from some combination of: denial, reactionary secularism, shortsightedness, and a misguided idea of what people’s rights are.
What Pelosi wants isn’t the same thing as “throwing a baby girl to the dogs because she wasn’t a boy, or drowning an infant boy because he had a birth defect.” It is a precursor behavior to such atrocities though, much like torturing animals is a precursor behavior to psycho-sexual serial killing. People refuse to see the link though because they deny that such behavior could happen here in America.
Worse, the Liberals at least have a knee-jerk anti-religion ideology that causes them to lean towards any behavior that the dominant religions in the US say is wrong. This makes it hard for those Liberals to make rational decisions on ethical matters.
Fortunately Obama is desperate to get his New Deal 2.0 through Congress and the GOP still has some power. Obama has said – for what that’s worth – that he’ll have Pelosi’s eugenics attempt removed from the package.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
jonolan-
you need to post this article on theologica. love the way you think!
January 28th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
I’m posting a link on my facebook page, expect some traffic!
January 28th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
I’m glad you liked the post, Nancy. I have – at your suggestion cross-posted this over a Theologica.
January 28th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Jonolan,
So I read through your posts regarding abortion and it seems like your opinions are evolving. Not the point. Have you ever looked into the ‘Negro Project’? It, essentially, layed down the foundations for where PP clinics are planted. Think about it. The poorer and more diverse the neighborhood, the more there are.
I look forward to reading more of your stuff.
January 28th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Welcome, Raquel.
It’s not so much my views on abortion that are evolving as it is the sociopolitical situation that is doing so, and the resultant posts on this blog. And also – to some extent – my willingness to post about it in a depth at all given the sensitive nature of the topic and my views on the matter, which do not fully adhere to either side of the core argument.
I’ve looked into “The Negro Project.” I’m not completely sold on their premise, but I don’t believe they’re completely wrong either. They approach it as pure racism, whereas others might have approached it from a classism angle – especially when Sanger’s biggest issue was the Irish Catholic immigrants of the time as opposed to Blacks.