Religious Opposition to Eugenics

BC-08. Religious Opposition to Eugenics

Opposition to eugenics and forced sterilization came primarily from conservative Catholics, Jews and Catholics.


All too many books describing the history of eugenics are predictable in two ways. First, they spend little time on the close link between eugenics, which they now assume to have been bad, and the birth control movement, which they still assume to have been good. Second, they say little or nothing about the critics of eugenics and birth control, critics who were so effective that both groups were never able to achieve more than perhaps a third of what they had hoped to achieve in the political arena. In 1920, for instance, eugenic sterilization was legal in only 15 states, less than one-third the total.

It's actually quite easy to describe who the most active critics of eugenics and birth control were. They were the same groups that now oppose legalized abortion--predominately religious conservatives: Catholic, Jewish and Protestant. Supporters of the eugenic and birth control movements of some eighty-plus years ago are equally easy to describe. They're the same highly affluent, feminist, liberal and progressive people who are now the eager and vocal supporters of legalized abortion. There's no question about that political divide. As we saw in Topic 7, during the first half of the twentieth century, the left regarded its support for eugenics with pride, as yet more evidence that it was more enlightened and progressive than its 'reactionary' and religious opponents.

http://www.inklingbooks.com/inklinguniversity/C567674158/E126370932/

Can anyone provide links that refute or support this?

If you think that supporting widespread breeding to out-populate the adherents of religions opposed to yours, then from a certain point of view you're engaging in a form of eugenics as well. Such a policy encourages overpopulation as a war strategy, even though it occurs primarily in peacetime.

Just depends on how you see things.

Not positive eugenics. Of course the article is wrong in the sense that the Progressive Party splinted from the Republican Party and was not liberal in the sense we think of liberal today, but that's not the question.

I'm looking for links where Christian fundies supported eugenics or for links that prove they didn't. I think most feminists would agree they do support eugenics in the sense of child prevention though abortion when not emotionally or financially prepared for motherhood. Maybe that is one reason liberals are outnumbered today.

perhaps a list of sponsors/presenters of "better babies" events at state fairs in the early 20th century would start you on a fruitful path. another idea is to e-mail garland allen at washington university in st. louis, mo for his advice. he's a great guy and brilliant as well.

I've emailed Garland Allen. He looks to be the foremost expert in the field and I really appreciate the link.

Bush and Gray
The U.S. Agency for International Development says that surgical sterilization is the Bush administration's `` first choice '' method of population reduction in the Third World.

The United Nations Population Fund claims that 37 percent of contraception users in Ibero-America and the Caribbean have already been surgically sterilized. In a 1991 report, William H. Draper III's agency asserts that 254 million couples will be surgically sterilized over the course of the 1990s; and that if present trends continue, 80 percent of the women in Puerto Rico and Panama will be surgically sterilized.

The U.S. government pays directly for these sterilizations.

Mexico is first among targeted nations, on a list which was drawn up in July 1991, at a USAID strategy session. India and Brazil are second and third priorities, respectively. MUCH MORE....

http://www.tarpley.net/bush3.htm

And current. This is definitely a keeper.

The Unauthorized Biography

Snip>

The first step after giving the mental tests to grade school children was to interpret and make public the results. In Orange County the results indicated that three percent of the school age children were either insane or feebleminded.... the field committee hired a social worker to review each case ... and to present any cases in which sterilization was indicated to the State Eugenics Board, which under North Carolina law had the authority to order sterilization....Race science experimenter Dr. Claude Nash Herndon provided more details in an interview in 1990.

Alice Gray was the general supervisor of the project. She and Hanes sent out letters promoting the program to the commissioners of all 100 counties in North Carolina.... What did I do? Nothing besides riding herd on the whole thing! The social workers operated out of my office. I was at the time also director of outpatient services at North Carolina Baptist Hospital. We would see the parents and children there.... I.Q. tests were run on all the children in the Winston-Salem public school system. Only the ones who scored really low , the real bottom of the barrel, like below 70.

Did we do sterilizations on young children? Yes. This was a relatively minor operation.... It was usually not until the child was eight or ten years old. For the boys, you just make an incision and tie the tube.... We more often performed the operation on girls than with boys. Of course, you have to cut open the abdomen, but again, it is relatively minor. More...

http://www.tarpley.net/bush3.htm

Some of these little girls in North Carolina, died from these operations!

The story also tells about GHW Bush introducing the idea of "Family Planning" in Congress when he served in the US House! It also mentions how the Pope frowned on the things Bush was doing, big time!

Please print the entire chapter out and read it! Some of the people who did these horrid things and their offspring, have been appointed to VERY high government positions in the Current Bush Administration!

Now, think about George W's plan to screen every American for mental problems, as you read over this information! Do you trust these Nutcases? Are they doing God's work or trying to play God?

Here is a link to the entire book:

http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm

I just saw Webster Tarpley on TV not more than a week ago and he seemed as sane as anyone I've ever heard speak! His links to his sources are solid! A lot of his sources are from congressional records! If Cheney had really wanted to instill FEAR into the hearts of the American people he could have shown you this book! Of course then, Bush would have been the last person in the world sane, God fearing people would have voted for! Too bad more people did not see this information!

was an avid eugenics supporter.



The fact that her son's father-in-law was Barnes Wallis, the most brilliant engineer in Britain, seems to show she didn't regard intelligence as hereditary.

I'm trying to figure out how the eugenics movement on the right can now claim to be pro-life and be against abortion and euthanasia.

Is that a ploy? Or do they think sterilization is approved by God because there isn't any conception (soul) yet?

but there are quite a few people, who aren't eugenicists, who are happy with (voluntary) contraception, but oppose abortion.

It's a very complicated issue and I knew nothing about it recently.

One could spend a life time trying to digest it all.

Bush has had control over both branches of congress for two years! Bush has had control over the US House and the Supreme Court for the past four years! Bush has had control over the White House for the past four years! Has he done anything other than use abortion as a wedge issue? Has he tried to outlaw abortion, even though he has had enough control to probably have done so, if he'd REALLY wanted to?

Part of the eugenics GRAND plan is depopulation! War, diseases like Aids, which the republicans have done almost NOTHING about, and WAR, are the means to the end they have in mind IMHO! To many "unworthy" unproductive mouths to feed is the motivation! That's why I say the "New World Order" is so VERY much like Hitler's "World Order"! Very same background, people and reasoning behind both!

Birth control is when a person decides when and if they should procreate.

Eugenics is when someone decides for you.

There is zero equivalence between the two.

The modern eugenics movement can be found on the internet at

http://www.isteve.com/

. . which is Steve Sailer's website.

Who is Steve Sailer? "I'm a reporter, movie critic for The American Conservative, VDARE.com columnist, and founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute, which runs the invitation-only Human Biodiversity discussion group for top scientists and public intellectuals."

Read some of his columns if you want to see how racism has morphed into a supposedly benign pseudoscience on the internet.

Even thinking of these two things in the same thread shows either a lack of a basic understanding of the difference between coercion and volition - or racism on your part. Which is it?

If I misread your post, I apologize. But it would have been useful to say if you thought this crap was either interesting or threatening.

It's ugly enough that I am cautious about offering the benefit of the doubt - although I do so, tentatively.

Waiting your explanation . .

:kick: