Eugenics: The Distilled Essence of the Anti-Life Mentality
ShareCHAPTER 105 — EUGENICS: THE DISTILLED ESSENCE OF THE ANTI-LIFE MENTALITY
American Life League
The partisans of eugenic planning hear that other music, the music that says that there shall be nothing random in the world, nothing independent, nothing moved by its own vitality, nothing out of keeping with some idea: even our children must not be our progeny, but our creation.
Charles Frankel.[1]
The Anti-Life Philosophy.
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives [in warfare]. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices ... Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.[2]
The word "eugenics" possesses an entirely undeserved negative reputation. The science of eugenics is merely the use of applied genetics to solve the problem of improving the health of the entire human race by improving the health of individuals.
Scaremongers would have us believe that slavering Nazi butchers in white lab coats are waiting in the wings for just the right moment to perform their hideous experiments on the unsuspecting.
What nonsense!
Introduction.
The "anti-life mentality" described in Chapter 2 of Volume I might could just as accurately be called the "eugenics mentality."
The theory of eugenics is the purest distillation of anti-life thought. And the practice of eugenics is the result of the anti-life movements in action. The theory and practice of eugenics covers the entire spectrum of the "slippery slope," from artificial contraception to abortion to euthanasia to genocide, and also encompasses many other evils as well.
Until about 1985 in this country, eugenics practice had been limited to dictating that it is we, not God, who determines who will be born into this world (through the widespread practice of abortion). We are now at the point where eugenics may very well determine who will remain here (through the growing practices of infanticide, euthanasia, 'medicide' and 'senicide').
Eugenics certainly did not die with the Third Reich. The eugenics "movement" flourished long before Hitler came to power, and it is certainly alive and well today. In fact, it is stronger now than it ever has been. And, since its adherents have learned their lessons regarding the value of stealth, deception, incrementalism, and propaganda from long experience, it is far deadlier.
Definitions.
Positive and Negative Eugenics.
In order to be able to understand and discuss the eugenics mentality and its goals, it is necessary to define the differences between positive and negative eugenics.
These definitions, set forth by a prominent geneticist, are given below.
Eugenics Planned breeding designed to alter the genetic makeup of future generations.
Positive Eugenics the preferential breeding of so-called superior individuals in order to improve the genetic stock of the human race.
Negative Eugenics discouragement or the legal prohibition of reproduction of individuals carrying genes leading to disease or disability ... can be achieved by genetic counseling or by sterilization, either voluntary or enforced.[3]
The Christian Response.
Several Christian denominations had already clearly perceived the threat of eugenics to humanity before the beginning of World War II, and they moved swiftly to condemn it.
The best-known of these documents was the Vatican's Decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office on Eugenics, issued on March 18, 1931.
In question-and-answer format, it held that;
Question: "What is thought of the theory called 'eugenics,' whether positive or negative, and of the means indicated by it to improve the human race without taking into consideration neither natural or divine or ecclesiastical laws relative to marriage and individual rights?"
Answer: "The theory of 'eugenics' is to be held entirely blameable, false and condemned, in accordance with the Encyclical on Christian Marriage, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930."
The Basics of the Eugenics Philosophy.
If man is not a divinity, then he is a disease. Either he is the image of God, or else he is the one animal which has gone mad.
G.K. Chesterton.[4]
Introduction.
Despite all of the posturing and lofty theorizing of the eugenicists, there stands one immutable, diamond-hard fact: We must not, we cannot, dispose of human life if it is perceived as valuable and sacred. The eugenicists know that, once the connection between God and man is severed, man is no more than a product of the evolutionary chain, and is just another animal to be bred, aborted, neutered, or 'put to sleep' for the general good of society.
If the eugenicists can successfully convince society in general that "man is just another animal," they have virtually accomplished their ultimate goals. After all, we have no moral or ethical problems with breeding, aborting, and slaughtering animals. If the nature of man as God's greatest creation is generally denied, then we truly are just another species of soulless animal.
The practice of eugenics is nothing more than the anti-life mentality put into action. The theory and execution of eugenics-related activities ties all of the anti-life practices together.
Eugenics is truly a theory that is diametrically opposed to the precepts of Christianity. On one side of this struggle we have Christian morality handed down by God and set down in Holy Scripture as interpreted by the Church Fathers; on the other side we have eugenicist 'morality' handed down by Darwin and set down in The Origin of the Species as interpreted by the eugenicist 'fathers.'
The First Step: Dehumanization.
The first step in any eugenics or euthanasia program is to dehumanize the 'target' population. After all, it is much easier to kill a victim or an enemy who has been dehumanized and demonized.
Pro-abortionists first dehumanized the obviously human fetus by referring to it as "protoplasmic rubbish," "a gobbet of meat," "equivalent to fingernail clipping or warts," "salamander," and "products of conception."
During the days of slavery, Blacks were called "dregs of humanity," and were considered "exactly intermediate between the superior order of beasts such as elephant, dog, and orangutan, and European or White men." Other slave owners referred to the slave's "ignorance, brutality, obscenity, animal appetite, viciousness, and illegitimacy," and called them "ignorant, perverse, wicked, the pest of white men, and agents of satan."[5]
Nazis held that Jews and others not of Aryan quality "... had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, with which a healthy body may become infested. This was not cruel, if one remembers that even innocent creatures of nature, such as hares and deer, have to be killed, so that no harm is caused by them."[6]
In his book Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler referred to the Jews in almost comically vitriolic terms, alternatively comparing them to "maggots in a rotting corpse," "a plague worse than the Black Death," "mankind's eternal germ of disunion," "the drones in the human hive," "spiders sucking blood out of the people's pores," "a pack of rats eating one another," "the eternal bloodsucker," "the vampire of peoples," and "a harmful bacillus that spreads."[7]
Before he targeted the Jews, of course, Hitler killed more than a quarter of a million "sub-humans." These were adults and children who suffered from some physical or mental defect, sometimes trivial in nature.
Under the Nazi eugenicist program, thousands of children were killed by the Reich Committee for Children. Those sickly persons who would be eliminated were identified by the Committee for Research on Hereditary Diseases and Constitutional Susceptibility to Severe Diseases. These unfortunate people were carried to concentration camps by the Non-Profit Patient Transport Corporation, and their passage was funded by the Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care.
The job of the eugenicists is a little tougher today, because they recognize that they cannot target just one group of people with their propaganda. They must convince all of us that we are intrinsically worthless and that all of our value is conferred upon us by society. In this manner, "society" (as directed by the eugenicists, of course) will be able to revoke our right to live at any time.
The quotes shown in Figure 105-1 demonstrate that latter-day eugenicists/euthanasiasts are far down the road to convincing themselves that we human beings are just another breed of animal.
FIGURE 105-1
ANTI-HUMANITY STATEMENTS BY MODERN EUGENICISTS
Each time another one of us decides not to add another one of us to the burgeoning billions already squatting on this ravaged planet, another ray of hope shines through the gloom ... No matter what you're doing to improve life on planet Earth, I think you'll find that phasing out the human race will increase your chance of success.
Spokesperson for The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VEHEMENT). Quoted in Joel Dippold. "Live Well and Die." The Portland [Oregon] Alliance, March 1991, page 5.
We must cut out the cancer of population growth. Coercion? Perhaps, but coercion in a good cause [population control] ... We must be relentless in pushing for population control.
Paul Ehrlich. The Population Bomb. New York: Ballantine Publishers, 1968. Pages 11 and, 24.
[Mankind is] the cancer of the planet.
"U.S. Presents Views on Population Growth and Economic Development." Department of State Bulletin, January 31, 1966, p. 176.
We [humans] have grown like a cancer. We're the biggest blight on the face of the earth.
Ingrid Newkirk, Director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Quoted by Charles Oliver. "Liberation Zoology." Reason Magazine, June 1990, pages 22 to 27.
We are not interested in the utility of a particular species or free-flowing river, or ecosystem, to mankind. They have intrinsic value, more value to me than another human body, or a billion of them. Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet ... Somewhere along the line at about a billion years ago, maybe half that we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the earth ... Until such time as homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.
David M. Graber quoting Bill McKibben's The End of Nature in the Los Angeles Times book review, as printed in the Orange County (California) Register, October 28, 1990.
When it comes to feelings, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They are all mammals. They all feel pain. There is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights ... 6 million people died in concentration camps, but 6 billion chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses.
Ingrid Newkirk, founder and director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), quoted by syndicated columnist Stephen Chapman in the December 6, 1989 Chicago Tribune. Also see "Animal Rights Activists Take Their Protests Too Fur." The Oregonian, December 6, 1989, page C5.
Every babe's birth diminishes me ... [obstetricians should discourage fertility] in order to diminish the amount of adult stupidity, which itself is a form of social pollution, and a most dangerous one ... Some form of community coercion gentle or severe, explicit or cryptic will have to be employed.
Garrett Hardin. "Everybody's Guilty: The Ecological Dilemma." California Medicine, November 1970, pages 42 and 45 to 46.
There is no difference between cabbages and kings, we are all recent leaves on the old tree of life.
Nobel Prize winner Szent Gyorgyi, quoted in Larry Azar, Philosophy and Ideology. Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publishers, page 18.
I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand.
United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, quoted in Richard Hertz. Chance and Symbol. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Page 107.
To give preference to the life of a being simply because it is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists.
Australian 'bioethicist' Peter Singer, Animal Liberation. Quoted in Joseph Sobran's Washington Watch. "Nice Kitties?" The Wanderer, April 20, 1989, page 5.
Soon the world may well be engulfed by indescribable horrors as these nations of the starving are crushed under the weight of their teeming populations.
Edgar R. Chasteen, The Case for Compulsory Birth Control (Chasteen's suggested law mandating sterilization and birth control is shown in Chapter 131, "Overpopulation").
A large family can no longer in itself be viewed as a social contribution. If the parents of three children decide to have a fourth, it should be with the full awareness that they are choosing to indulge their personal desires at the expense of the welfare of their society.
Lincoln H. Day and Alice Taylor Day. Too Many Americans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964. Pages 133 to 135 and 233.
To view the problem of health rationing objectively, what we need is a concept of man as a colonial creature, similar to ants and bees which, like ourselves, are so highly specialized and so dependent on one another that no one of them can long survive alone. In the hives and homes of these bees and ants, no special care is given to the aged or infirm. Consideration is for the welfare of the colony as a whole.
Dr. George Crile, Jr., Head of Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio, quoted by Cal Thomas of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, September 1984.
The Second Step: Barnyard Medicine.
Eugenicists look upon human beings as a veterinarian looks upon farm animals. After the dehumanizing process has successfully taken place, they logically treat human beings just as a vet would treat a maladjusted or ailing animal.
Charles Darwin, the "Father of Modern Eugenics," recommended handling human beings and animals identically in his work The Descent of Man;
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbeciles, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poorlaws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized society propagate their kind.
No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.[8]
In 1938, The Eugenics Society recommended a framework plan for dealing with human beings under the people=animals philosophy;
The measures which have been proposed for reducing the fertility of sub-normal persons include regulation of births, sterilization, better adjustment of mental defectives within the community, legal prohibition of marriage, termination of pregnancy and health examinations before marriage ... Thus eugenicists aim at replacing the present generation by children who are deliberately conceived in the full light of all known medical, social, and genetic factors. They favor the planned as against the unplanned family, and they want to see the community so organized that its best citizens will feel eager to give full expression to the instincts of parenthood.[9]
And Marie Stopes, birth control champion, member of eugenics societies, and good friend of Margaret Sanger, complained in her book Radiant Motherhood that
Society allows the diseased, the racially negligent, the thriftless, the careless, the feeble minded, the very lowest and worst members of the community, to produce innumerable tens of thousands of stunted, warped, inferior infants ... A large proportion of these are doomed from their very physical inheritance to be at best but partly self supporting, and thus to drain the resources of those classes above them who have a sense of responsibility. The better classes, freed from the cost of institutions, hospitals, prisons and so on, principally filled by the inferior racial stock, would be able to afford to enlarge their own families.
The sterilization of those totally unfit for parenthood is an immediate possibility, indeed to perhaps be made compulsory.[10]
Eugenics in Action.
Eugenicists tend to believe that sexuality is a primitive and basically uncontrollable urge, and mankind, as a species of animal, simply cannot rise above his nature. Therefore, the resulting 'sexual frustration' must be relieved somehow if the animals are not to become uncontrollable. Therefore, pornography must be given to the animals.
If these animals have outlets for their sexual urges, they will remain placid and docile. So we have school-based clinics and we distribute free condoms to teens so that they can fornicate whenever their urges overcome them. Self-discipline is viewed as "reactionary" and "restrictive."
Of course, we must also breed out undesirable traits so that the animals will produce what we want them to. So Planned Parenthood aggressively targets Black, the poor, and the "near-poor" with dozens of assembly-line abortion mills and hundreds of birth control clinics, all supported by public tax money.
And we cannot let the animals overpopulate, or there will be adverse impacts upon those in control. So the United States floods developing nations with tons of abortifacients that are deemed too dangerous for American animals to use.
Sick animals, of course, must be put to sleep, because they become useless and a burden on their owners. So we now have infanticide in our hospitals to take care of those animals that are born sickly or deformed, and we have a half-dozen major organizations pushing for 'death with dignity' and assisted suicide to eliminate those animals that have become weak and unproductive in their old age.
Naturally, we must practice positive eugenics to breed these animals so that better traits are emphasized, so we have in-vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, and 'sperm banks' of the 'best' animal's genes, none of which the critters from the "lower social strata" can afford, and we must insure that these animal's undesirable traits are not passed on to their offspring, so we also have sterilization and abortion for poor animals, paid for with tax dollars.
This means that the infertile rich can afford the technology that allows them to reproduce, while the only thing that is offered to the poor for free is the opportunity to limit their fertility.
The Ultimate Goals of the Eugenicists.
Sooner or later one human society or another will launch out on this [eugenic breeding] adventure, whether the rest of mankind approves or not. If this happens, and a superior race emerges with greater intelligence and longer life, how will these people look upon those who are lagging behind? One thing is certain: They, not we, will be the heirs to the future, and they will assume control.
A. Rosenfeld. The Second Genesis: The Coming Control of Life.[11]
Introduction.
The ultimate goals of the eugenicists are incredibly far-reaching. These objectives include not only the elimination of 'bad human stock' through negative eugenics, but also the 'bio-engineering' of an 'improved' human being through positive eugenics.
Many scientists, drunk with the euphoria of treading where no human has dared go before, are plunging headlong into lines of research that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. In addition to accumulating arcane knowledge, the 'biocrats' have also acquired a dangerous elitist attitude.
As one leading researcher boasted, "[Scientists] have the right to exercise their professional activities to the limit ... as lay attitudes struggle to catch up with what scientists can do."[12]
In other words, ethics and morals, along with judgment, have been sacrificed in order to advance the mad dash for knowledge.
This philosophy has destroyed all limits, so that now the bioethical Prime Directive is:
IF IT CAN BE DONE, IT MUST BE DONE,
AND DAMN THE CONSEQUENCES.
For example, if researchers continue along current lines of inquiry, it will soon be possible for a woman to conceive and bear her own (younger) identical twin sister; it will be possible to allow human embryos to gestate in apes of various species (or even in bovines) in order to bypass the legal barriers now springing up against surrogate motherhood; and it may well soon be possible for homosexuals to fulfill their long-standing fantasy of male pregnancy.
Where Are We Being Led?
The noted French biologist Dr. Jean Rostand wrote in all seriousness a few years ago that
Here and now Homo Sapiens is in the process of becoming Homo Biologicus, a strange biped that will combine the properties of self-reproduction without males, like the green fly; of fertilizing his female at long distance, like the nautiloid mollusk; of changing sex, like the xiphores; of growing from cuttings, like the earthworm; of replacing his missing parts, like the newt; of developing outside his mother's body, like the kangaroo; and of hibernating, like the hedgehog.[13]
These are not the mad pipe dreams of some isolated quack. Many leading scientists have advocated the creation of "chimeras" part-human and part-animal or plant creatures whose usefulness for various purposes would be enhanced by their new 'qualities.'
Perhaps the best-known radical 'bioethicist' in the world is Joseph Fletcher, whose pronouncements alternately provide entertainment for more serious thinkers and scare them half to death.
Two decades ago, Fletcher adeptly linked eugenics to the 'pro-choice' mentality as he wrote;
If the greatest good of the greatest number (i.e., the social good) were served by it, it would be justifiable not only to specialize the capacities of people by cloning or by constructive genetic engineering, but also to bio-engineer or bio-design para-humans or "modified men" as chimeras (part animal) or cyborg-androids (part prostheses). I would vote for cloning top-grade soldiers and scientists, or for supplying them through other genetic means, if they were needed to offset an elitist or tyrannical power plot by other cloners a truly science-fiction situation, but imaginable. I suspect I would favor making and using man-machine hybrids rather than genetically designed people for dull, unrewarding or dangerous roles needed nonetheless for the community's welfare perhaps the testing of suspected pollution areas or the investigation of threatening volcanos or snow-slides.
People who appeal to Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four and Fahrenheit 451 forget this, that the tyranny is set up first and then genetic controls are employed.
Coital reproduction, is, therefore, less human than laboratory reproduction more fun, to be sure, but with our separation of baby making from lovemaking, both become more human because they are matters of choice, and not chance. This is, of course, essentially the case for planned parenthood. I cannot see how either humanity or morality are served by genetic roulette.
To be men we must be in control. That is the first and the last ethical word. For when there is no choice, there is no possibility of ethical action. Whatever we are compelled to do is a-moral.[14]
Fletcher reiterated in his book The Ethics of Genetic Controls: Let's Stop Playing Reproductive Roulette that scientists should create a species of half-animal, half-human creatures that would be expendable and could become living organ banks.
Another 'bioethicist,' Dr. Robert C. Gesteland, an associate professor of biological sciences at Northwestern University in Illinois, has suggested (1) crossing humans with plants, so all we'd need for food would be water and sunlight; (2) developing a servant class of super-intelligent apes; and (3) best of all, breeding a race of humans only four inches tall, which would lessen pollution and conserve natural resources.
Watch Out for Leo the Housecat!
It's funny how these allegedly educated people often don't think about the practical aspects of their hopes and dreams. Presumably, if Gesteland's dreams came true, (1) we could pass up the McDonald's and simply graze at the side of the road, (2) we would create and then enslave another sentient species, and (3) we would shrink ourselves to the point where pigeons would become our predators and housecats would be comparatively as large as elephants.
Dr. George Haldane (the late British geneticist) predicted that we might breed a race of legless humanoid mutants with prehensile tails or feet for space travel. Other scientists would like to see women laying eggs that could be hatched or eaten (i.e., we would use our own young as a food source); human beings with gills to facilitate underwater travel; and people with two sets of arms and hands, one for heavy work, the other for lighter tasks.[12]
We are already most of the way down Gerald Leach's "Ladder of Unnaturalness." Herds of prime cattle embryos are flown across the Atlantic Ocean in the wombs of female rabbits. Lesbians are now making men superfluous with sperm banks. The exploitation of women as 'wombs-for-hire' is the first step towards parthenogenesis and actual extracorporeal gestation.
But Seriously, Folks ...
The greatest present threat of the eugenics philosophy is not in the mad pipe dreams of scientists with overactive imaginations, but in the fixed and functioning eugenics programs that are currently in operation all over the world. These programs represent an appalling and present danger, not only to our basic humanity, but to the freedoms that we cherish the most.
This is because eugenics programs inevitably evolve from experimentation to implementation to outright coercion.
At first, of course, the programs are voluntary and are directed towards increasing society's 'quality of life' as much as possible.
The modern-day eugenics movement counted as its first and greatest victory the popularization of artificial contraception in North American and Europe. At a 1940 conference of the Birth Control League of America, eugenicist Henry Pratt Fairchild enthused that "These two great movements, eugenics and birth control, have now come to such a thorough understanding and have drawn so close as to be almost indistinguishable."[15]
After artificial contraception was firmly entrenched, the eugenicists turned to their next objective: Abortion on demand. As always, they began by getting abortion for the "hard cases" legalized. The pitiful specter of grossly malformed and suffering infants was presented to the public, and the pro-abortionists insisted that these poor children would be better off dead because their "quality of life" was virtually nonexistent.
Of course, this was not the real reason that the eugenicists wanted abortion for fetal deformities, because they are essentially self-centered through and through. The actual motivation for the legalization of eugenic abortion was not because the 'quality of life' of the child would be decreased by its birth, but that of the parents specifically and society in general.
Authors M. Simms and Keith Hindell betrayed the reasoning behind eugenic abortions; "An abnormal foetus is not aborted because it would die, but on the contrary because it would be healthy enough to live a sub-human existence. Essentially it is for social, ethical and aesthetic reasons that some people recoil from the survival of such sub-humans and prefer to see them aborted."[16]
Madeleine Simms, Research Fellow of the Eugenics Society, takes this reasoning one step further and pushes for actual coercion: "Has she [the woman] the right to choose to inflict this burden on the state?"[17]
The eugenics philosophy, as it becomes entrenched in the public mind, expands as inevitably and inexorably as a free gas. Dr. Julius Adlam expanded the demand for mandatory eugenic abortion to abortion in the case of women whose income and possessions are not up to his lofty standards; "I am not afraid to stick by my belief that only those couples who have the necessary material possessions and sources of income to ensure an economically secure and safe cradle should allow a pregnancy to progress to term."[18]
As always, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America rides 'point' for the eugenicists. By 1980, it set as a target 85 percent of its referrals for poor and "near poor" women and 35 percent of its referrals for teens. This would amount to 30,000 sterilizations and 85,000 abortions.[19]
By 1992, Planned Parenthood was performing well over a hundred thousand abortions, an equivalent number of abortion referrals, more than 50,000 sterilizations, and hundreds of thousands of contraceptive referrals, while providing less than ten thousand women with prenatal services.[20]
Additional major projects listed by Planned Parenthood in its Five-Year Plans include major projects directed at the "mentally retarded" (Project 3); the "physically handicapped" (Project 4); and "psychiatric patients, criminals, and prisoners" (Project 6).[19]
This, then, is the Planned Parenthood mission: Target the poor and the handicapped and emphasize sterilization, abortion, and contraception instead of real help.
While Planned Parenthood is relatively circumspect in its pronouncements for obvious public relations reasons, other eugenicists are not as restrained. Garrett Hardin, the most outspoken American eugenicist of all, says baldly that
It would be better to encourage the breeding of more intelligent people rather than the less intelligent. ZPG's [the group Zero Population Growth] entire attraction has been among the college population. So in effect, ZPG is encouraging college-educated people to have fewer children instead of encouraging reduced fertility among the less intelligent.[21]
The History of the Eugenics Movement.
The Early Years.
Although eugenicists of one stripe or another have always been with us, perhaps the beginning of the modern organized eugenics movement in the West can be benchmarked by Francis Galton's 1869 work Hereditary Genius, in which the author distinguished 'positive' and 'negative' eugenics. In this work, Galton wondered if it might be possible to produce geniuses by inbreeding the upper classes through several generations, while sequestering the "less desirable elements" in monasteries, convents, and institutions.
Galton (1822-1911), who was Charles Darwin's cousin, described eugenics as "The science of improving stock ... to give the more suitable races a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable."[22] He founded the Eugenics Society in 1907, whose purpose was "... to spread eugenic teaching and bring human parenthood under the domination of eugenic ideals."[23]
The new science, which was named Social Darwinism, held that the struggle for existence in society and evolution would inevitably lead to the "fittest" races achieving domination over the "less fit."
American eugenicists confined themselves primarily to theorizing and philosophizing until the early 1920s, when state and local governments began to "try out" (purely for academic or fiscal reasons, of course) some of their more apparently innocuous schemes. These plans naturally targeted those who had the weakest voices; the poor and the institutionalized.
The Organizations.
American and British eugenics organizations evolved along parallel paths over a period of five decades into a bewildering morass of related and overlapping groups with philosophies that generally meshed perfectly.
The first 'mental hygiene' society in the world was founded in Connecticut in 1908. Two years later, The Eugenic Record Office was founded in the United States. Other organizations that soon followed were the Brush Foundation for Racial Hygiene, and the premier eugenic organization in the world, the American Birth Control League (later Planned Parenthood).
As a parallel development, the Eugenic Education Society was founded in England in 1908. This group was renamed the Eugenics Society, and eventually spawned several other eugenic organizations.
One of these was the National Association of Mental Health, whose avowed purpose was the prevention of the transmission of mental deficiency through strict segregation of the 'mentally unfit.'
Another was the British Birth Control Campaign, which discouraged fertility among the 'inferior' segments of society and encouraged it among the 'superior' elements. Yet another was the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, which aggressively promoted "mercy killing."
The First International Eugenics Congress was held in London in 1912. Eugenicist S.G. Smith remarked that "Enlightened states have already agreed that the feeble-minded, the insane and the pauper must not be allowed to become parents." Keynote speaker at this conference was Alfred Ploetz, who was the founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene.[24]
Marie Carmichael Stopes founded the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress in Britain in 1921.
Lothrop Stoddard was a member of the National Council of the American Birth Control League (ABCL) when Sanger headed it. Sanger was a life member of the Eugenics Society in Britain.[15] Havelock Ellis, one of Sanger's lovers, wrote a favorable review of Stoddard's The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy.[26] Harry Laughlin, another member of the American Birth Control League, received an honorary M.D. degree from the University of Heidelberg in acknowledgement of his contributions to the Third Reich.[26] Since 1925, the Rockefeller Foundation has supported the American Birth Control League (now Planned Parenthood).[27]
In 1938, the American Society of Euthanasia was established. It relied heavily on eugenicist theory. One year later, the Margaret Sanger Clinical Research Bureau and the American Birth Control League merged to form the Birth Control Federation of America, which itself was eventually renamed "Planned Parenthood."
In 1949, eugenicists from all over the world met in Cheltenham, Britain, and founded the International Committee of Planned Parenthood. The group's magazine was financed and edited by Mrs. Dorothy Brush of the Brush Foundation for Racial Hygiene.[27] The International Committee met in Bombay four years later and changed its name to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).
In 1963, the British Eugenics Society resolved that its "activities in crypto-eugenics should be pursued vigorously," and that it "should increase its monetary support of the International Planned Parenthood Federation."[28] The IPPF was listed as a member of the British Eugenics Society as recently as 1977.[29]
It is interesting to note that the International Planned Parenthood Federation has stepped far beyond the boundaries of advocacy for voluntary eugenics programs by recommending penalties for those couples failing to follow the Chinese coercive population policies. The IPPF has also generously funded these policies.[30]
Eugenics in Action.
British and American eugenicists did not content themselves with attending conventions and playing musical chairs with their organizations. They longed to set their principles into action.
The eugenicists considered the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 to be one of their greatest victories. This Act assumed that "inferior peoples" included Poles, Blacks, Greeks, Irish, Orientals, and Eastern and Southern Europeans. "Superior stock" allegedly included the English, the Germans, the Scots, the Danes and Swedes, and the French (but only if they were not Catholics). President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Restriction Act with relish. He had declared that "America must be kept American. Biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races."[31]
Eventually, American eugenicists found the simplest and most effective way of preventing the "less desirable classes" from reproducing widespread involuntary surgical sterilization. Famous New York urologist William Robinson was certainly not unique in his view that "It is the acme of stupidity to talk in such cases of individual liberty, of the rights of the individual. Such [unfit] individuals have no rights. They have no right in the first instance to be born, but, having been born, they have no right to propagate their kind."[31]
The first American law mandating the sterilization of 'undesirables' was passed immediately after World War I ended. The operations were performed in "mental health facilities" on "unwed mothers, prostitutes, petty criminals and children with disciplinary problems."[32]
Indiana was the first State to pass a compulsory sterilization law. It did so in 1907, and was followed by Connecticut and California in 1909; Iowa in 1911; North Dakota, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Michigan in 1913; Nebraska in 1915; New Hampshire, Oregon, and South Dakota in 1917; North and South Carolina and Alabama in 1919; Delaware and Montana in 1923; and another 11 states by 1956, for a total of 28.[33]
These laws were patterned on the Model Eugenical Sterilization Law, promulgated by Harry H. Laughlin, director of the Eugenics Record Office. This legislation called for the sterilization of criminals, mental patients, the retarded, the blind, deaf, diseased, alcoholics, and dependents upon society the homeless, orphans, and "tramps."[34]
Before Germany's Sterilization Act was passed, California was the world's primary eugenics experimentation entity, with more than 15,000 involuntary sterilizations of psychiatric inmates.[35]
In the United States, from 1907 to 1941, more than 36,000 persons in all were forcibly sterilized, mostly in California, Virginia, and Indiana, primarily for "feeblemindedness" or for having been born into large welfare families.[31]
In 1927, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes delivered the Court's Buck v. Bell decision, which upheld the widespread enforced eugenic sterilization of poor Black women in several states. In his opinion, Holmes wrote that "We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices ... Three generations of imbeciles are enough."[2]
Justice Holmes had once remarked that "I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand."[36]
The Nazis, of course, were corresponding with their American counterparts, and eventually created the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Disease. This law was the basis for Hitler's race purification program, and was directly patterned after the American Model Eugenical Sterilization Law.[34]
Following the lead of established practice in the United States, German eugenicists sterilized 225,000 people who were classified as "mental defectives" between the years of 1934 and 1937.
By 1935, leading American geneticist Hermann J. Muller complained that the legitimate aspects of the science of eugenics had been "... hopelessly perverted into a cult for advocates for race and class prejudice, defenders of vested interests of church and state, Fascists, Hitlerites, and reactionaries generally."[31]
In 1975, a United States Federal court found that, under these laws, 100,000 to 150,000 women were sterilized annually in the United States after World War II without their knowledge or consent under Federal programs. From 1924 right up until the early 1970s, more than 7,500 poor men and women were forcibly sterilized in the State of Virginia alone every year.[32]
The Traces Linger On.
Vestiges of this racist American eugenics program still linger to this day. The Federal government continues to fund 90 percent of the cost of sterilization of poor women under Medicaid and other family planning programs, but will not pay for infertility treatments.[36]
And, of course, we still have many influential pro-abortion and pro-eugenics scientists calling for enforced sterilization and abortion. Dr. Cecil B. Jacobson, Chief of the Reproductive Genetics Unit of George Washington University Hospital, asserts that "I can't imagine any reasonably responsible person arguing against the abortion of mongols ... If we could tell what fetuses are going to be affected with cancer in their 40s and 50s, I would be for aborting them now."[37]
And, in a 1979 symposium significantly sponsored by the March of Dimes, Joseph Fletcher said that "People who carry genetic disease should be prevented from having children. We ought, in conscience, to have a humane minimum standard of reproduction, not blindly accepting the outcome of every conception. And we ought to act on our genetic information to prevent the birth of children below that minimum."[38]
Even more ominous that the views of anti-life individuals and organizations were the chilling results of a comprehensive poll of health workers and opinion leaders, which showed that 78 percent and 67 percent respectively would approve of the widespread involuntary sterilization of mentally handicapped and mentally ill women.[39]
The only reasons we do not hear more about these quotes and surveys is that these people move in influential circles that average citizens never breach, and the Neoliberal media hushes up their indiscretions so that the public never hears about them.
For more information on the racism of abortion (including the court-ordered use of sterilizing 'contraceptives'), see Chapter 78 of Volume II, "The Racism of Abortion."
Although the practice of enforced sterilization has largely been stamped out, it is interesting to note that Neofeminists commonly use it as a red herring by tying it to abortion 'rights.'
One of the favorite slogans of the Neofeminists is;
NO FORCED STERILIZATION!
NO COMPULSORY PREGNANCY!
Even More "Progress."
Other eugenicists, sensing that their "window of opportunity" had arrived, demanded that the American eugenics program "progress" even further, and as quickly as possible. Frederick Osborne called for the mandatory segregation of those persons with birth defects and mental disabilities in state-run institutions. Even if such unfortunates recovered, a condition of their release would be mandatory sterilization. Osborne also demanded mandatory sterilization of all those who carried hereditary disabilities (which would account for more than 20 percent of the population), and mandatory contraceptive use by all those whose family history indicated a predisposition towards serious hereditary defects (another twenty percent of the nation's population).[40]
The Racism of Eugenics.
The Expert Speaks.
A very concise and complete summation of the fully-devolved eugenicist philosophy is provided us by Norman E. Hines in his 1938 book Practical Birth-Control Methods;
All the rights we have are those granted to us by society. Certainly there is no natural right to spawn defective children who must be supported by others through taxation or charity. The crisis in this instance is the enormous expense to the state of the care of the defective classes and the contamination of the biological stock which results from their reproduction ... While sterilization is no substitute for segregation, it is also true that segregation is no substitute for sterilization. They must go hand in hand.
Ever since the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany an objection that has frequently been raised against eugenical sterilization is that a voluntary sterilization program may turn into a compulsory one. Some thoughtful people sincerely fear this. But the history of eugenical sterilization in the United States and in other democratic countries offers little warrant for the contention. This is the old fallacy of ultimate danger; that if we take step A, it would lead to step B; that if we take step B, it may lead to step C, and so forth without end. The evidence now available shows that even in Nazi Germany, where there is a great deal of compulsion that would not be tolerated by citizens who believe in democracy, there has been as yet no attempt to sterilize any special racial group ...
Most of the objections to eugenical sterilization are based upon unfounded fears, insufficient knowledge, or faulty reasoning. None of the objections has substantial merit. They are comparable to the arguments made ten years ago against birth control, even by some supposedly will-informed individuals, that birth-control devices caused sterility, necessarily led to immorality, would cause 'race suicide,' were unreliable, etc.
... we do not need the defective classes. They are already an excessive burden upon the State. A few special students of the problem even believe that our society is undergoing a "moronization" process; that the intelligence level of the American people is declining because the gifted have few children and the stupid many ... Probably it will take society a span of years to learn how to use it [eugenic sterilization] properly as a weapon for its own improvement ...[41]
Note the author's representation and summation of classic eugenicist theories, which, despite their antique quaintness, are still deadly poisonous to this day;
• that all rights are bestowed by the State alone, even to the granting (or withholding) of the right to life to handicapped persons;
• that "defectives" are expensive and "contaminate the biological stock," and therefore society does not need "the defective classes;"
• that the slippery slope theory (here called the "ultimate danger fallacy") has no merit, and, in fact, all anti-eugenicist arguments are baseless and originate from ignorance; and
• that birth control methods are reliable, do not cause physical damage, do not lead to immorality, and may one day be compulsory.
Attempts to Debunk the 'Slippery Slope.'
It is amusing that the author tried bravely to debunk the "ultimate danger" (slippery slope) theory by stating that there was "little warrant" for the contention that Nazi Germany's voluntary sterilization program might turn into a campaign of compulsory sterilization.
Hines' book was first published in August 1938. Unknown to him, a compulsory sterilization program had already begun in Nazi Germany.
He also feigned ignorance of the fact that, by 1938, several states had created Boards of Eugenics that typically endorsed involuntary sterilization and castration for those individuals who were "... feeble minded, insane, epileptic, habitual criminals, degenerates and sexual perverts reported to it who will probably become a social menace or ward of the State."[41]
So much for disproving the "slippery slope" theory!
And yet, modern-day eugenicists are following Hines' lead as they insist that they can control the extent to which their "reforms" are applied in society.
Of course, it does not really matter to the eugenicists if they can control the horrors they propose to unleash; they approve of coercion in any case, and, as long as they are not victims of the programs that they spawn, they are content to sit back and observe the "cleansing" of society's gene pool.
The Link.
In his vividly-titled book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (introduced by fellow racist/eugenicist Madison Grant), eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard waxes eloquent about what he calls "the root of all our problems," and by doing so replicates almost precisely Hines' philosophy.[42] However, Stoddard's writings have an additional dimension in that they demonstrate beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt the intimate connection between eugenics and goal-oriented racism;
... upon the quality of human life all else depends ... none of the colored races shows perceptible signs of declining birth-rate, all tending to breed up to the limits of available subsistence ... It can mean only one thing: A tremendous and steadily augmenting outward thrust of surplus colored men from overcrowded colored homelands ... But many of these relatively empty [Northern] lands have been definitely set aside by the white man as his own special heritage ...
His ["colored" man's] outstanding quality is superabundant animal vitality. In this he easily surpasses all other races. To it he owes his intense emotionalism. To it, again, is due his extreme fecundity, the negro being the quickest of breeders. This abounding vitality shows in many other ways, such as the negro's ability to survive harsh conditions of slavery under which other races have soon succumbed ... black blood, once entering a human stock, seems never really bred out again ...
White men cannot, under peril of their very race-existence, allow wholesale Asian immigration into white race-areas ... The grim truth of the matter is this: The whole white race is exposed, immediately or ultimately, to the possibility of social sterilization and final replacement or absorption by the teeming colored races.
And, of course, the more primitive a type is, the more prepotent it is. This is why crossings with the negro are uniformly fatal. Whites, Amerindians, or Asiatics all are alike vanquished by the invincible prepotency of the more primitive, generalized, and lower negro blood.
... whether we consider interwhite migrations or colored encroachments on white lands, the net result is an expansion of lower and a contraction of higher stocks, the process being thus a disgenic one.
For race-betterment is such an intensely practical matter! When peoples come to realize that the quality of the population is the source of all their prosperity, progress, security, and even existence; we shall see much-abused "eugenics" actually moulding social programmes and political policies ... we or the next generation will take in hand the problem of race-depreciation, and segregation of defectives and abolition of handicaps penalizing the better stocks will put an end to our present racial decline.[42]
Notice how, near the end of the second paragraph, Stoddard lets slip that he does not consider Blacks to be human.
Does this sound familiar?
Notice also how Stoddard waxes prophetic in the last paragraph. His prophecy, unfortunately, has been transformed into fact. It is our benighted generation that has taken up the task of "abolishing handicaps" with the devastatingly effective weapons of amniocentesis, abortion, and infanticide.
It is interesting to note that Stoddard sat on the board of Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League (soon to become Planned Parenthood), and his book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy was plugged in Sanger's magazine Birth Control Review.
America: Inspiration for Nazi Eugenicists.
Everything must be examined from this [utilitarian] point of view and used or rejected according to its utility.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.[7]
Seeds of Destruction.
If they are capable of seeing past their blind nationalism and close-mindedness, most people are astounded to realize that the philosophy and framework of the Nazi eugenics program originated not in Germany, but right here in the United States!
The American Philosophy.
In the mid-1930s, the pathologically anti-Semitic American, Madison Grant, argued that "sentimental beliefs" [such as Christianity] short-circuited the practice of infanticide, which he saw as a natural weeding-out process necessary to the "preservation of the [human] species."
Dr. Lothrop Stoddard asserted that compulsory sterilization of the "unfit" was a "gift" from the American eugenics movement.[33]
In May of 1933, Margaret Sanger's Birth Control Review featured an article entitled "Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need," which was authored by Ernst Rudin, who founded the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene and was Hitler's Director of Genetic Sterilization. He was also director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics during the Third Reich, and wrote the Nazi's Sterilization Laws.
Respected philosopher H.L. Mencken urged that "A resolute attack be made on the fecundity of all the males on the lowest rung on the social ladder."[43]
Charles Davenport, another prominent American eugenicist, asserted that "Our ancestors drove Baptists from Massachusetts Bay into Rhode Island, but we have no place to drive the Jews to. Also, they burned the witches, but it seems to be against the mores to burn any considerable part of our population."[13]
A number of American eugenicists actually lobbied for Adolf Hitler to be "... made an honorary member of the [American] Eugenics Record Office."[44]
The Nazi Response.
Madison Grant and Dr. Lothrop Stoddard exerted great influence "... in awakening in Germany ... the movement for the preservation and increase of the Nordic race."[13]
According to historians, Hitler's closest advisers were "avid" readers of Grant and Stoddard in German publications, "... years before the Third Reich."[13] After voraciously consuming the "works" of such American "thinkers," is it any wonder that Rudolf Hess stated simply that "Nazism is applied biology?"[33]
The Nazis welcomed Henry Ford as "a great individualist and a great anti-Semite," primarily because of his extensive writings defaming Jews. Hitler praised Ford in his book Mein Kampf and hung his picture in his Munich headquarters. Ford ran for President in the 1920s, and part of his platform was ridding the country of the "Jew bankers" whom he blamed for causing World War I and the Depression.[31] On his 75th birthday, in 1938, Ford became the first American to receive Hitler's Supreme Order of the German Eagle.
In July of 1931, a member of the German Mental Hygiene Movement remarked that
We Germans cannot totally ignore events which occur outside our borders. A whole series of nations have positively accepted that the laws of heredity do affect the development of mental abnormality and have understood the consequences of that and created [compulsory] sterilisation laws. The Americans have been reproached with relentless pluck because of laws they have passed in 22 of their States.[33]
Ernst Rudin, writing in the April 1933 issue of Margaret Sanger's Birth Control Review, demanded that the "lower strata" comprised of ten million Americans be involuntarily sterilized en masse, and described the situation in Germany as "... proceeding towards a policy that will be in accord with the best thought of eugenicists in all civilized countries."[45]
Gradually, the Nazis began to believe that eugenics could accomplish two major objectives for the Fatherland: (1) the practice could drastically cut the costs of caring for "hopeless idiots," thereby releasing more funds for the war effort, and (2) eugenics could ensure Third Reich world domination by actively breeding a superior race of human beings, called variously The Master Race, The Aryan Race, and Homo Superior.
As one famous Nazi physician postulated, "The destiny of the German people was to be assembling and preserving the most valuable Aryan stocks ... slowly and surely raising them to a dominant position."[33]
Figure 105-2 shows many of the amazingly close parallels between the Nazi and American eugenics/euthanasia programs. Note the identical language used by both sets of eugenicists and the nearly identical progression of events that brought both programs into "full flower."
FIGURE 105-2
COMPARISON OF QUOTES AND EVENTS FROM THE NAZI AND AMERICAN EUGENICS MOVEMENTS
[A medium text size on your computer's 'view' setting is recommended, otherwise, the tables may be discombobulated.]
"What good does it do to humanity to "Most birth defects are not discovered
maintain artificially and rear the thousands until birth. If a child were not declared
of cripples, deaf-mutes and idiots? Is it not alive until three days after birth, the
better and more doctor could allow the
rational to cut off from the first this unavoidable child to die if the parents so chose and
misery which their poor lives will bring them- save a lot of misery and suffering.
selves and their families?" I believe this view is the only rational,
Nazi 'ethicist' Dr. Ernst Haeckel, 1904. compassionate attitude to
have."
American 'ethicist' Dr. James
Watson, 1973.
1920: Alfred Hoche and Judge Karl 1931: Margaret Sanger, in her book
Binding Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Pivot of Civilization, wrote that
Lebensunwerten Leben ("The "[Philanthropists] encourage the
Permission to Destroy Life healthier and more normal sections of
Unworthy of Life"), which recom- the world to shoulder the burden
mended the active euthanasia of of the unthinking and indiscriminate
"absolutely worthless human beings," fecundity of others; which brings
including the retarded, the deformed, with it, as I think the reader must
and the feebleminded and senile. The agree, a dead weight of human
book referred to eugenic murder waste. Instead of decreasing and
as "a healing work," and "an allow- aiming to eliminate the stocks that are
able, useful act." Frederick Wertham, most detrimental to the world, it tends
author of A Sign for Cain, wrote to render them to a menacing degree
that "This little book influenced, or at dominant."
least crystallized, the thinking of a
whole generation."
1931: Physicians and psychiatrists 1926: "There is only one reply to a
begin to discuss means of mass request for a higher birthrate among
sterilization and/or killing of mental the intelligent, and that is to ask the
patients while meeting at professional government to first take the burden of
conventions. the insane and feeble-minded from
off your back. [Mandatory] sterilization
for these is the answer."
Margaret Sanger, Birth Control
Review, October 1926.
1933: Selective forced abortions 1907: Indiana becomes the first of 28
and the mass sterilization of those states to pass a mandatory sterilization
with "serious hereditary diseases" law aimed at those considered "unfit."
begins. 58 years later, the selective forced
abortions and mass sterilization
programs aimed at Puerto Rican
and Native America women are
still being carried out.
"The enormous costs imposed on "Institutional care for Down Syndrome
our society by congenital defects alone represents an expense of
is calculated to be 1.2 billion $250-350 million per year."
Reichsmarks annually." National Academy of Sciences,
Dr. Gerhard Wagner, 1935. 1975.
1935: Hitler convenes high-level 1967: Euthanasia societies begin to
conferences to discuss the possibility hold high-level conferences for the
of establishing programs for liquidating purpose of discussing the liquidation
the "incurably ill." of "human vegetables" and the
"incurably ill elderly."
1935: On May 10, the first large-scale 1987: The first large-scale murders
murders of helpless people by the of helpless people by American
Nazi regime occurred when twelve euthanasiasts occurred when eight
mental patients were euthanized at elderly persons were starved to death
Hadamar, Germany. at a nursing home in Galveston, Texas.
1937: The SS (Schutzstaffel) organizes its 1973: The Center for Germinal Choice,
Lebensborn program where, in secret villas a sperm bank for Nobel Prize winners
scattered throughout Germany, the SS elite and other "supermen," is established in
breed with superior female Reich women. California. Lesbians begin to organize
their own sperm banks in order to
avoid 'breeding with men.'
1938: Leipzig. Baby boy Knauer is born blind 1982: Bloomington, Indiana. Baby
and missing part of one arm and one leg. He is Doe is born with an esophagal defect
the ideal test case for Germany's euthanasia/ and spina bifida. He is the ideal test
eugenics program. Hitler's personal physician, case for America's euthanasia/
Karl Brandt, murdered the child. The eugenicists eugenics program. The baby was
carefully observed the reaction of the judicial allowed to die of thirst and starvation.
system and the press to this murder. The eugenicists carefully observed the
It was positive. reactions of the judicial system and
the press to this murder.
It was positive.
Reference: Most of these events and quotes are described in William Brennan. The Abortion Holocaust: Today's Final Solution. Order from Landmark Press, Post Office Box 13547, 1461 Dunn Road, St. Louis, Missouri 63138, or Life Issues Bookshelf, Sun Life, Thaxton, Virginia 24174, telephone: (703) 586-4898. 1983, 237 pages.
Gearing Up the Program.
Although all of the blame for the Nazi eugenics program cannot be laid at the feet of American "thinkers," German and American eugenicists corresponded regularly even before World War I. As early as 1905, German eugenicist Dr. Alfred Ploetz opposed caring for the sick and poor because, as he asserted, it led to degeneration of the Aryan race, an attitude that corresponded startlingly to Margaret Sanger's.
Five years later, Germany formally recognized eugenics as a respectable science by establishing the Society for Racial Hygiene, which Ploetz founded.[44]
'Sterilizing' the Tarnished Image.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) by quiet men in clean, carpeted and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.
C.S. Lewis. The Screwtape Letters.[46]
Introduction.
By the end of World War II, the word "eugenics" had lost much of its glittering appeal. People saw and remembered what could happen when eugenics programs, with all of their empty promises, were given free rein. The "new eugenicists" insisted that the problem was not eugenics practice, but the Nazis they had simply gone "too far."
But thinking people recognized that the Vernichtungslagern the death camps were not an aberration of eugenics theory but its most perfect product.
But, like Communists, the eugenicists are convinced of the correctness of their clouded vision, no matter how many failures they suffer. They will not be deterred by an infinity of failures or a mountain of evidence against them.
And so, after World War II, they went 'underground' in their activities, if not in their thinking. Their primary purpose for about 40 years after the end of the War was image building and damage control. They sought to sanitize and make innocuous the appearance of the roots of eugenics, and they sought to sever the concept entirely from the horrors of World War II.
Dr. Horace Blacker noted that "The [British Eugenics] Society should pursue eugenic ends by less obvious means, that is by a policy of crypto-eugenics, which was apparently proving successful with the US Eugenics Society."[47]
Pro-eugenics "historians" were so sensitive to negative connotations that they even shortened the original title of Charles Darwin's famous book The Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection on the Preservation of Favored Species for Life to The Origin of the Species.
The Power Behind the Theories.
The front line of the eugenics cartel has historically included a vast international web of more than 250,000 full-time psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, college professors, bankers, bioethicists, writers, fundraisers, publicists, attorneys, judges, legislators, publishers, editors, prominent Neoliberal churchmen, and newspaper owners. The eugenics movement now has more than twice as many full-time employees than it did when it originally flowered in the 1920s and 1930s.
In order to give an idea of what type of influential people are members of eugenics groups, Figure 105-3 lists some of the more famous members of the British Euthanasia Society from 1907 to the present. Note that this list includes the founder and three subsequent presidents of the International Planned Parenthood Federation; the son and the grandson of evolutionist Charles Darwin; Marie Stopes, the birth control pioneer; famous Neoliberal churchmen; leading economists; illegal abortionists; Members of Parliament; high United Nations officials; and high-ranking members of the Nazi Party.
FIGURE 105-3
PAST AND PRESENT DISTINGUISHED MEMBERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL EUGENICS SOCIETY
Rev. Dr. D.S. Bailey, participant in the Anglican Lambeth
Conference of 1930 that approved of contraception
Professor D. Baird, Britain's most famous illegal abortionist
Sir Thomas Barlow, personal physician to Queen Victoria,
King Edward VII, and George V.
C.P. Blacker, lawyer, doctor, and co-founder of the
International Planned Parenthood Federation
Vice Admiral F. Clifton Brown
Dr. Harrison Brown, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders, Royal Committee on Population
Frederick Chance, who funded Margaret Sanger's first U.S.
birth control clinic
Professor S. Chandrasekhar, India's leading population controller,
author of Abortion in a Crowded World
Eustace Chesser, Secretary, Society for Sex Education and
Guidance, and member, Abortion Law Reform Association
Sir John Cockburn, President of the International Masons
SIR CHARLES DARWIN, grandson of Sir Charles Darwin
Leonard Darwin, son of Sir Charles Darwin
Dr. Neil Dayton, American Association on Mental Deficiency
C.V. Drysdale, lawyer and Secretary of the Malthusian League
HAVELOCK ELLIS, companion of Margaret Sanger
Sir Robert Esnor, Royal Commission on Population
Sir Ronald A. Fisher, Professor of Eugenics
Francis Galton, founder of the American eugenics movement and
author of the 1869 work Hereditary Genius
Sir Eardley Holland, President of the Royal College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists
Mrs. Vera Houghton, First General Secretary of IPPF and
Chief Executive of the Abortion Law Reform Association;
married to Lord Houghton, head of the British Labour
Party in the 1970s.
Julian S. Huxley, Secretary General, UN Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
LORD JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES, economist, editor of
The Economic Journal for 34 years, governor of the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development;
his wife, Lady Keynes, was also a member
Professor David Mace, Executive Director, American
Association of Marriage Counselors
A.E. Mourant, author of The Genetics of the Jews
Professor W.C.W. Nixon, the famous "[illegal] abortionist
of Gower Street."
Frederick Osborne, lawyer and Secretary of the American
Eugenics Society
Captain G.H.L.F. Pitt-Rivers, Secretary General of the
International Union for Scientific Investigation of
Population Problems
ALFRED PLOETZ, founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene
MALCOLM DAVID POTTS, President, International Planned
Parenthood Federation
Mrs. Margaret Pyke, Chairman of the International Planned
Parenthood Federation
The Honorable Keith Rous, Member of Parliament
MARGARET SANGER, founder of the American Birth Control League
(later Planned Parenthood)
Sir Henry Self, President, Modern Churchmen's Union
Professor Alan Carruth Stevenson, Director, Medical Research
Council Population Genetics Unit
Abraham Stone, doctor and lawyer, head of the Margaret Sanger
Research Bureau
MARIE STOPES, birth control pioneer and founder of the Society
for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress
Professor C.H. Waddington, President, International Union of
Biological Sciences
Reference: Katherine S. O'Keefe. "Crypto-Eugenics: The Hidden Agenda of Planned Parenthood." 1991, 52 pages. Order from St. George Financial Research, Post Office Box 171, Asbury, New Jersey 18802-0171. Appendix B lists the names of more than 500 members of the Eugenics Society from 1907 to the present.
American membership lists (unlike the British lists) are protected by privacy laws. However, it is safe to assume that even more influential eugenicists sit on the boards of anti-life organizations in the United States than do in Britain.
These professional full-time eugenicists are backed up by the full financial and organizational might of more than 250 pro-euthanasia, pro-abortion, animal rights, environmentalist, and homosexual groups and tens of millions of people who like to think of themselves as 'progressives.'
Just for a moment, try to imagine the magnitude of the colossal influence and power wielded by this massive group of organizations.
The eugenics cartel is a very efficient and effective self-contained and self-sufficient industry that has many branches that interlock and support each other. They advance the eugenicist cause by simply eliminating those people they deem to be 'useless' or 'unwanted.' They push abortion, infanticide, contraceptive imperialism, eugenic euthanasia, genetic counseling and mapping, in-vitro fertilization, sterilization, sex education, and sex therapy, and a universe of other horrors that once were unthinkable to moral people
But the Eugenicists Dream On ...
The eugenicists are now merely waiting for an opportune moment to re-emerge into respectable company. After abortion on demand was thrust upon the land, and after the much-publicized killings of numerous handicapped babies in the mid-1980s, the 'new eugenicists' inserted themselves into the growing public debate in the guise of pro-euthanasia groups.
Despite its tarnished image, the theory and practice of eugenics lives on in the United States. There apparently will always be those people who never seem to learn their lessons from history, those people who are so wrapped up in implementing their vision of the "perfect world" that they trample all others underfoot.
As George Santayana put it, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
Latter-day eugenicists are motivated by precisely the same desires as were those earlier in this bloody century. Primarily, they would like to (1) save money, and (2) insure that all members of the human race receive their "stamp of approval" before being entitled to exist or continue their current existence.
Abortion As Human Culling.
Dr. David A. Hamburg of the Psychiatry Department of the Stanford University Medical School has approved of the UNESCO (United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization) theory that abortion might be a way to prevent a future Genghis Khan or Hitler from being born.[48] The implementation of such an abortion program would require the mandatory genetic testing of all unborn babies via amniocentesis or chorionic villi sampling (CVS), and the mandatory abortion of those babies whose genes were deemed "unsatisfactory" by the eugenicists.
This figure would include from 20 to 50 percent of all pregnancies.
Sterile Perfection.
Another popular eugenicist notion is to remove all of the eggs from adolescent girls and obtain sperm samples from adolescent boys. After this "harvesting," teenagers would be neutered. Their egg and sperm cells would be subjected a battery of genetic tests, and only the 'best' would be kept for future implantation in mothers deemed "fit" for the task.[49]
Two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling has suggested that those who carry "dysfunctional genes" have information on their disabilities tattooed in code onto their foreheads.[50]
While we're at it, why don't we take just a minute and tattoo the numbers "666" there as well?
Randall Craig Fasnacht is one person who currently believes that the licensing of parents will solve poverty and all of man's other ills. Fasnacht, who runs The Life*Force Institute out of Albany, New York, published the book Life*Child: The End of Poverty in 1992, alleging that the national debt will be abolished by the year 2020 if only "fit" parents are licensed to have children. Other benefits that will allegedly accrue to such a program include the abolition of all crime, illegitimacy (of course!), unemployment, school dropouts, drug use, and all teen pregnancy.
It is inconceivable that all of these evils could be stamped out in just 30 years without the use of massive and institutionalized coercion.
Finally, 'distinguished' biologist John Maynard Smith would like to give tax breaks and bonuses to the educated and intelligent who have children and heavily penalize others.[51]
The Recent Quotes.
Many men and women who are literally revered by the scientific world are hard-core eugenicists. It is frightening indeed that their more conventional ideas (still laced with the poisonous eugenics theory) have gained widespread acceptance in our Western society.
These "distinguished" thinkers and philosophers include George Bernard Shaw, Garrett Hardin, Paul Ehrlich, William Shockley, Margaret Sanger, Friedreich Nietzsche, and Charles Darwin.
Some of their eugenicist quotes are shown in Figure 105-4.
FIGURE 105-4
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN EUGENICISTS
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poorlaws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized society propagate their kind.
No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is do ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
Charles Darwin. The Descent of Man. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, London, and Toronto. Section I, Chapter 5.
Society as the trustee of life is responsible to life for every botched life that comes into existence; and as it has to atone for such lives, it ought consequently to make it impossible for them ever to see the light of day: it should in many cases actually prevent the act of procreation, and may, without any regard for rank, descent, or intellect, hold in readiness the most rigorous forms of compulsion and restriction, and, under certain circumstances, have recourse to castration ... "Thou shalt do no murder," is a piece of ingenuous puerility compared with "Thou shalt not beget!!!" ... The [unhealthy] must at all costs be eliminated, lest the whole fall to pieces.
Friedreich Nietzsche, quoted in Mark Haller. Eugenics. New Jersey: Rutgers Press, page 53.
... we do not need the defective classes. They are already an excessive burden upon the State. A few special students of the problem even believe that our society is undergoing a "moronization" process; that the intelligence level of the American people is declining because the gifted have few children and the stupid many ... Probably it will take society a span of years to learn how to use it [eugenic sterilization] properly as a weapon for its own improvement ...
Norman E. Hines, Ph.D. Practical Birth-Control Methods. New York: Viking Press, 1946.
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices ... Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his opinion for the decision Buck v. Bell, 274 US 200 (1927), at 207.
No training or education can create intelligence; you must breed it ... The social imperialist state might well have to intervene in reproductive matters, at least in the families of anti-social propagators of unnecessary human beings.
British scientist Karl Pierson, Huxley Lectures, quoted in Daniel Kelves. In the Name of Eugenics. New York: Knopf Publishing Company, pages 3 and 34.
There is now no reasonable excuse for refusing to face the fact that nothing but a eugenics religion can save our civilization from the fate that has overtaken all previous civilizations.
George Bernard Shaw, quoted in Mark Haller. Eugenics. New Jersey: Rutgers Press, page 19.
... educated Americans came increasingly to identify themselves and their values with the Angle-Saxon races ... and its love for liberty. That same love of liberty caused the peoples of Northern Europe to accept Protestantism, while more servile people of southern Europe remained under the domain of Rome.
Mark Haller. Eugenics. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1963, page 51.
[We have a choice of] a painless weeding out before birth or a more painful and wasteful elimination of individuals [with low IQ] after birth.
Garrett Hardin. Biology: Its Human Implications, 1949.
Do our nobly intended welfare programs promote dysgenics retrogressive evolution through the disproportionate reproduction of the genetically disadvantaged?
Nobel Prize winner William Shockley, quoted in Allen Chase, The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, page 482.
The measures which have been proposed for reducing the fertility of sub-normal persons include regulation of births, sterilization, better adjustment of mental defectives within the community, legal prohibition of marriage, termination of pregnancy and health examinations before marriage ... Thus eugenicists aim at replacing the present generation by children who are deliberately conceived in the full light of all known medical, social, and genetic factors. They favor the planned as against the unplanned family, and they want to see the community so organized that its best citizens will feel eager to give full expression to the instincts of parenthood.
The Eugenics Society. "Aims and Objects of the Eugenics Society," 1938. Described in Nancy B. Spannaus, Molly Hammett Kronberg, and Linda Everett (Editors). How to Stop the Resurgence of Nazi Euthanasia Today. Transcripts of the International Club of Life Conference, Munich, West Germany, June 11-12, 1988. Executive Intelligence Review Special Report, September 1988. EIR, Post Office Box 17390, Washington, D.C. 20041-0390.
[Philanthropists] encourage 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 ... We are paying for, and even submitting to, the dictates of an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all ... Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying ... demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. The Pivot of Civilization. Pages 123, 189, 221.
There is only one reply to a request for a higher birthrate among the intelligent, and that is to ask the government to first take the burden of the insane and feeble-minded from your back. [Mandatory] sterilization for these is the answer ... Give dysgenic groups [people with 'bad genes'] in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.
Margaret Sanger, October 1926 and April 1932 issues of the Birth Control Review.
I can't imagine any reasonably responsible person arguing against the abortion of mongols ... If we could tell what fetuses are going to be affected with cancer in their 40s and 50s, I would be for aborting them now.
Cecil B. Jacobson, Chief, Reproductive Genetics Unit, George Washington University Hospital, Washington, D.C. Psychology Today, September 1975, page 22.
People who carry genetic disease should be prevented from having children. We ought, in conscience, to have a humane minimum standard of reproduction, not blindly accepting the outcome of every conception. And we ought to act on our genetic information to prevent the birth of children below that minimum.
Joseph Fletcher, during his address of the second national Symposium on Genetics and Law, held in May of 1979 in Boston and sponsored by the March of Dimes.
"Genome:" The Final Frontier?
The most efficient (and aesthetic) manner in which eugenicists could "cull" unwanted human beings from the population is through the testing of fertilized human eggs and the elimination of all but the very best.
At this point in time, the best negative eugenics practice consists of subjecting the preborn baby to CVS (chorionic villi sampling), amniocentesis, or some other genetic test past 15 weeks, and aborting those who are considered unfit. This is a messy, emotional and expensive project that could be vastly streamlined from the viewpoint of the eugenicists.
The Genome Project is a multibillion dollar effort funded primarily by the Federal government. Its objective is to identify and 'map' all of the more than 10,000 human genes.
This huge undertaking is already bearing fruit that eugenicists see as beautiful. But we may find out that the fruit is deadly poisonous to human beings.
Jerry E. Bishop and Michael Waldholz give us a progress report on the Genome Project and comment on some of the possible uses of its findings to date;
The list of common diseases that have roots in this kind of genetic soil is growing almost daily. As of this writing [in 1990], it includes colon and breast cancer, Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, schizophrenia, depression, at least one form of alcoholism, and even some types of criminal behavior ... [S]ome contend that almost every disorder compromising a full and healthy four score and ten years of life can be traced in one way or another to a genetic vulnerability.
It is highly likely that within a decade tests for a variety of aberrant genes will be cheap and easy enough to permit testing of large numbers of people. Initially, only those persons who are at risk of inheriting a defective gene might be tested. For example, anyone who had a parent die prematurely of a heart attack might be tested indeed, might want to be tested to see if he or she had inherited one of the several defective genes that can render one susceptible to coronary heart disease.
As the list of known defective genes grows, there will be mounting pressure for mass screening of the population, at least of the newborn population, to pinpoint anyone predisposed to future illnesses. There is ample precedent for such mass genetic screening of newborn infants ...
Of course, society might decide to use such tests in other ways. There are circumstances where the interests of society in knowing an individual's genetic susceptibility would be paramount. It would seem too risky for an airline to permit a person with a genetic tendency for alcoholism, or for a premature heart attack, for that matter, to take command of a wide-body jet with its 350 passengers or for a trucking company to permit such a person to roam the highways in a fifty-ton truck. A corporate board of directors might be considered irresponsible to stockholders should it elect a president and a chief executive who might be genetically predisposed to manic-depression or Alzheimer's disease. A police force could hardly wish hiring and arming a young man or woman who was genetically predisposed to schizophrenia. Almost certainly voters, or at least the press, will demand to know the genetic profile of presidential candidates, while opposition senators may well inquire into the genetic predispositions of presidential nominees to the cabinet and the Supreme Court.
Right now our society runs on the premise that everyone has a biologically equal chance to be anything he or she wants. But what will happen when, in fact, the scientists find strong evidence that everyone's fate is greatly affected by the inheritance of a group of very specific and identifiable genes?
Indeed, by late 1989, a handful of social ethicists were beginning to discuss among themselves their fear that the gene discoveries would lead to the creation of a new social stratum called the biological underclass. People identified as having certain genetic weaknesses, they argued, might be discriminated against by employers, they might have difficulty getting health and life insurance. Businesses, for instance, might be less willing to hire people predisposed to illnesses that could drive up the employer's health insurance costs. Employers might want to begin screening prospective workers to detect their genetic susceptibilities. The ethicists sprinkled their talk with such new dark-sounding terms as 'genetic discrimination,' 'genetically unemployable,' and 'genetic labeling.'[52]
Bishop and Waldholz then turn their attention from the implications of the Genome Project for the born to those that will inevitably one day heavily impact the preborn;
Indeed, among geneticists involved in Huntington's disease, there is a quiet, but intense debate over the ethics of aborting any fetus whose disease won't erupt until later in life. Perhaps by then there will be a cure, or at least treatments to mute the disease's symptoms, some say. Others argue, however, that abortion for even the slightest of risks is justified.
'I've had several conversations with people who say, 'Well, with prenatal tests we can wipe out the gene in a generation or two merely by not allowing any fetus at risk to be born,' says Hayden.
'Preimplantation diagnosis of genetic disease provides an alternative to the therapeutic abortion offered to couples at risk of producing children with severe inherited disorders,' Holding and Monk asserted. 'Preimplantation diagnosis could allow identification of normal and mutant embryos and the replacement in the mother of only those embryos shown to be free of the defect.'
The experiment introduces an entirely new dimension into the concept of prenatal genetic diagnosis, that of making a genetic diagnosis before pregnancy, thereby circumventing the question of abortion.
Such 'preimplantation diagnosis' holds staggering implications for the use of the gene discoveries that are destined to come out of the mapping of the human genome. As prenatal genetic diagnosis becomes simpler and easier, the temptation will arise to use it for less severe genetic aberrations. It appears highly likely that young couples, possibly those in the next generation, will be able to make choices about the genetic traits of their children that would astonish today's generation. As the genetic secrets of stature are uncovered, for example, couples would be able, if they desired, to select the height of their children within certain limits. As the gene mapping proceeds, other traits affecting intelligence, athletic or musical ability, even personality could become matters of parental choice.[52]
The implications of this project are vividly clear. It will be theoretically impossible to wipe out a defective gene unless coercion is employed on a massive scale because, without the use of force, there will always be those parents who value human life as a gift from God. If such people are allowed to "spawn defective children," defective genes will never be eradicated.
Bishop and Waldholz go on to describe how, in the future, only the rich will be able to select their offsprings' traits by an extensive program of genetic testing. Thus, the rich would progressively become more and more advantaged over the poor in areas such as intelligence, beauty, and physical prowess. And, of course, since only the rich could afford "genetic choice," taxpayers would be forced to fund it for the poor just as with abortion.
Pro-abortionists, of course, support the Genome Project because, as they like to say, "genetic engineering will greatly reduce the need for abortion."
References: Eugenics.
[1] Charles Frankel. "The Specter of Eugenics." Commentary, March 1977, page 27.
[2] United States Supreme Court decision Buck v. Bell, 274 US 200 (1927), at 207.
[3] Kurt Hirschhorn, M.D. "Practical and Ethical Problems in Human Genetics." Birth Defects, July 1972. The National Foundation, March of Dimes. page 17.
[4] George J. Marlin and Richard P. Rabatin. "G.K. Chesterton and Eugenics." Fidelity Magazine, June 1990, pages 33 to 43.
[5] Simon Clough. A Candid Appeal to the Citizens of the United States, Proving that the Doctrines Advanced and the Measures Pursued by the Abolitionists Relative to the Subject of Emancipation, are Inconsistent with the Teachings and Directions of the Bible and that those Clergymen Engaged in the Dissemination of these Principles Should be Immediately Dismissed by their Respective Congregations as False Teachers. New York, 1834. Also see Richard H. Colfax. Evidence Against the Views of the Abolitionists, Consisting of Physical and Moral Proofs, of the Natural Inferiority of the Negroes. New York, 1833. Also see W.P.N. Fitzgerald. A Scriptural View of Slavery and Abolition. New Haven, 1839. Also see R. Yearson. The Amenability of Northern Incendiaries ... Charleston, 1835, page 5.
[6] James Tunstead Burtchaell. "The Holocaust and Abortion." Supplement to the newsletter of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Volume 9, Number 11.
[7] Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf (1925). New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1971. Pages 214 and 215.
[8] Charles Darwin. The Descent of Man. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, London, and Toronto. Section I, Chapter 5. Also quoted in ALL About Issues, June-July 1986, page 42.
[9] The Eugenics Society. "Aims and Objects of the Eugenics Society," 1938. Described in Nancy B. Spannaus, Molly Hammett Kronberg, and Linda Everett (Editors). How to Stop the Resurgence of Nazi Euthanasia Today. Transcripts of the International Club of Life Conference, Munich, West Germany, June 11-12, 1988. Executive Intelligence Review Special Report, September 1988. EIR, Post Office Box 17390, Washington, D.C. 20041-0390.
[10] Marie Stopes, Radiant Motherhood, London, 1920, page 10. Quoted in Valerie Riches. Sex & Social Engineering. Family and Youth Concern, Wicken, Milton Keynes, Bucks., MK19 6BU, U.K. (United Kingdom).
[11] A. Rosenfeld. The Second Genesis: The Coming Control of Life. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969. Page 145.
[12] Dr. George Haldane, quoted in Paul Ramsey, Ph.D. "On In Vitro Fertilization." The Human Life Review, Winter 1979, pages 17 to 30.
[13] As quoted in R.G. Edwards and D.J. Sharpe. "Social Values and Research in Human Embryology." Nature 231:87-91(1971).
[14] Joseph Fletcher. "Ethical Aspects of Genetic Controls." New England Journal of Medicine (285:776-783, 1971). Available as Reprint #104 from the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, Hastings-On-Hudson, New York 10706.
[15] Eugenics Society. "Annual Report, 1966-67." Obituary on Margaret Sanger. Described in Spannaus, op.cit.
[16] M. Simms and Keith Hindell. Abortion Law Reformed. London. Described in Spannaus, op.cit.
[17] Debra Sanders. "Amniocentesis Risks." Women for Life Newsletter. London, 1980. Described in Spannaus, op.cit.
[18] Letter from Dr. Julius Adlam. Medical News. April 6, 1977. Described in Spannaus, op.cit.
[19] Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "A Five Year Plan 1976-1980." Section entitled "Summary of PPFA Patient Load: Goals for Contraception, Sterilization and Abortion (Thousands)." Described in Spannaus, op.cit.
[20] Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "1991 Service Report: A Tradition of Choice."
[21] "Interview: Garrett Hardin." Omni Magazine, June 1992, pages 56 to 63.
[22] Francis Galton. Inquiries Into Human Faculty. London: Macmillan, 1883. Page 25.
[23] Francis Galton. Memories of My Life. London: Melhuen Publishers. 1908.
[24] Sir Francis Galton. Westminster Gazette, June 25, 1908. Quoted in Albert Pearson, Life, Letters, and Labours of Sir Francis Galton, Volume IIIA, page 89. Cambridge University Press, London, 1924.
[25] Havelock Ellis. "The World's Racial Problems." Birth Control Review, October 1920, page 16.
[26] Quoted in Richard Hertz. Chance and Symbol. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Page 107.
[27] As described in Beryl Suitters, former librarian of the International Planned Parenthood Foundation. Be Brave and Angry: Chronicles of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. IPPF, London, 1973. Also described in Elasah Drogin. "Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society." Catholics United for Life Publications, New Hope, Kentucky, 1986.
[28] Faith Schenk and A.S. Parkes. "The Activities of the Eugenics Society." Eugenics Review, Volume 60 (1968), pages 142 to 161.
[29] The Eugenics Society: List of Fellow and Members, October 31, 1971, page 17, and January 1, 1977, page 18.
[30] International Planned Parenthood Federation publications, including Report of the Working Group on the Promotion of Family Planning as a Basic Human Right (London, 1984, pages 21 to 24); Report to Donors (London, October 1983, page 13); and Resource Developments (London, July 1986, page 1).
[31] Gregory E. Pence, M.D. Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of the Cases That Have Shaped Medical Ethics, with Philosophical, Legal, and Historical Backgrounds. New York: Mc-Graw-Hill Publishers, 1990. Chapter 14, "Preventing Undesirable Teenage Pregnancies," pages 286 to 302.
[32] Stephen J. Gould. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W.W. Norton, 1981. Page 335. Also see the Washington Post of February 23, 1980, "Over 7,500 Sterilized in Virginia." The example shown is from Oregon statutes. The Oregonian, January 29, 1990, page A12. Also see Gerald N. Grob, Mental Illness and American Society, 1875-1940.
[33] Robert Lipton. The Nazi Doctors. New York: Basic Books, pages 23, 24, and 129. Also see Bernard Schreiber. The Man Behind Hitler. Pages 36 and 84. Described in Spannaus, op.cit.
[34] Allen Chase. The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pages 69, 103, 316, 349, and 635.
[35] Peter Roger Breggin, M.D. "The Psychiatric Holocaust." Penthouse Magazine, January 1979, page 11. Described in Spannaus, op.cit.
[36] Relf v. Weinberger, 372 F.Supp.1196(D.D.C1974), remanded for modification, sub nom Relf v. Matthews, 403 F.Supp.1235 (D.D.C.1975). Also see the "Women's Guide to Reproductive Rights." American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Freedom Project, 1981. Page 23.
[37] Cecil B. Jacobson, Chief, Reproductive Genetics Unit, George Washington University Hospital, Washington, D.C. Psychology Today, September 1975, page 22.
[38] Joseph Fletcher, during his address of the second national Symposium on Genetics and Law, held in May of 1979 in Boston and sponsored by the March of Dimes.
[39] W.N. Long, M.D., B.R. Brandshaw, Ph.D., and M. Burge. "Black Attitudes Regarding Contraception, Abortion, and Sterilization." Sarah Lewit (Editor). Abortion Techniques and Services: Proceedings of the Conference, New York, N.Y., June 3-5, 1971. Amsterdam: Excerpta Medica, 1972.
[40] Frederick Osborne of the American Museum of Natural History, Preface to Eugenics. New York, Harper and Row, 1940. Page 35.
[41] Norman E. Hines, Ph.D. Practical Birth-Control Methods. New York: Viking Press, 1946.
[42] Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D. The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921. Reprinted in 1971 by Negro Universities Press, Westport, Connecticut. Pages i, 8, 9, 90, 231, 298, 301, 302, 308, and 309 in the reprinted version. A classic racist book that clearly and vividly demonstrates the kind of thinking that led to eugenics, the current-day racist abortion program in the United States, and the Nazi mentality.
[43] H.L. Mencken. "Utopia by Sterilization." The American Mercury, August 1937.
[44] Robert N. Proctor. Racial Hygiene (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press), page 103.
[45] Paul Popenoe. Description of Ernst Rudin's "Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need." Birth Control Review, April 1933, Volume XVII, Number 4, page 82.
[46] C.S. Lewis. The Screwtape Letters. New York: Macmillan, 1964. Page ix.
[47] Dr. Horace Blacker, Eugenics Review, London, Volume 60, page 154.
[48] "Abortion Held Way to Avoid Tyrants." Los Angeles Times, May 20, 1970, part I, page 9.
[49] Robert A. Brungs. "Biotechnology and the Social Order." The Human Life Review, Winter 1979, pages 31 to 50.
[50] Linus Pauling. Foreword to "Reflections on the New Biology." UCLA Law Review, February 1968, page 269.
[51] John Maynard Smith. "Eugenics and Utopia." Daedalus, Summer 1989, page 91.
[52] Jerry E. Bishop and Michael Waldholz. Genome. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990. Pages 17 to 20, 278, and 308. Some quotes are by Michael Hayden of Vancouver, British Columbia, and by Cathy Holding and Marilyn Monk of the Medical Research Council's Mammalian Development Unit at University College, London.
Further Reading: Eugenics.
Bruce L. Anderson. The Price of a Perfect Baby: What Christians Should Know About the Genetic Revolution, Test-Tube Babies, Surrogate Motherhood, and Selective Genetics.
Originally entitled Let Us Make Man. Bethany House Publishers, 6820 Auto Club Road, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55438. 1984, 181 pages. This book deals with the Christian attitude toward the reproductive revolution, and discusses new questions: Should man create and destroy life in the laboratory? Does surrogate motherhood constitute a violation of God's laws? What impacts do these new technologies have on the family? Is the practice of making babies without pregnancy acceptable?
Birth Control Review.
DeCapo Press, a division of Plenum Press, 227 West 17th Street, New York, New York 10011. Telephone numbers: 1-(800) 321-0050, (212) 620-8000, and (212) 620-8495. Yes, it still exists, although Planned Parenthood fervently wishes it didn't; DeCapo Press still publishes the complete set of Margaret Sanger's Birth Control Review. This is the ultimate resource for settling arguments about what Sanger did and did not say and do. Volumes 1 and 2: 1917 and 1918. Volume 3: 1919. Volumes 4 and 5: 1920 and 1921. Volumes 6 and 7: 1922 and 1923. Volumes 8 and 9: 1924 and 1925. Volumes 10 and 11: 1926 and 1927. Volumes 12 and 13: 1928 and 1929. Volumes 14 and 15: 1930 and 1931. Volumes 16 and 17: 1932 to September of 1933. Volumes 16 through 24: October 1933 to January 1940.
Robert Bluford and Robert E. Petres. Unwanted Pregnancy.
New York: Harper and Row, 1973. A frightening book that advocates the elimination of the unwanted and undesirable, precisely as Binding and Hoche did more than a half-century ago as they laid the foundation for the Nazi mentality and resulting Holocaust.
James Burnham. Suicide of the West.
Regnery Books. Order from the Conservative Book Club, 15 Oakland Avenue, Harrison, New York 10528. This book dissects Neoliberalism to its rotten core. It examines the curious Neoliberal combination of guilt, arrogance, selective indignation and compassion, double-standards, fuzzy logic, good intentions, and self-righteousness. The book examines why Neoliberals can never rule, why Neoliberalism is the ideology of suicide, why it clashes with Christianity, why Neoliberals sneer at patriotism and other 'traditional' values, and why Neoliberals are driven to make war on these values.
G.K. Chesterton. What's Wrong With the World: The Superstition of Divorce, Eugenics, and Other Evils, and Other Essays.
450 pages, hardcover, softcover. Order from Ignatius Press, 15 Oakland Avenue, Harrison, New York 10528. Although a century old, these economic and sociologic writings by one of the most prolific and respected Christian writers of all time show conclusively that the anti-life philosophy has been with us for many years. Chesterton shows that lax moral standards will lead to eugenics, divorce, artificial contraception, abortion, and ultimately the dehumanization of man, the loss of respect for human life, and the destruction of the family. A 'must read' for Christian historical scholars.
Colleen D. Clements. Medical Genetics Casebook: A Clinical Introduction to Medical Ethics Systems Theory.
Humana Press, Crescent Manor, Post Office Box 2148, Clifton, New Jersey 07015. 1982, 233 pages. The author examines 130 actual case studies from a medical genetics program and attempts to apply systems theory to come up with a general decisionmaking process that allow hospital and other bioethicists to make decisions in difficult cases. The cases cover the gamut, including selective abortions and amniocentesis.
Donald DeMarco, Ph.D. In My Mother's Womb: The Church's Defense of Natural Life.
Hardcover, paperback. Order from: Life Issues Bookshelf, Sun Life, Thaxton, Virginia 24174, telephone: (703) 586-4898. An eloquent defense of the Catholic Church's defense of human life. An examination of abortion's languages and perspective, the unborn, contraception and bio-engineering. Also covered are the Church's perspective on new technologies, including in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, fetal experimentation, and genetic engineering. See especially Chapter 1, "Abortion and Church Teaching," pages 7 to 25, "Abortion and Bio-Engineering," pages 82 to 88, and "In Vitro Fertilization," pages 143 to 159.
Greenhaven Press. Biomedical Ethics: Opposing Viewpoints.
Greenhaven Press Opposing Viewpoints Series, Post Office Box 289009, San Diego, California 92128-9009. 1987, 216 pages. Each section includes several essays by leading authorities on both sides of each issue. The questions asked are: "Is Genetic Engineering Ethical?;" "Are Organ Transplants Ethical?;" "Should Limits Be Placed On Reproductive Technology?;" "Should Animals Be Used in Scientific Research?;" and "What Ethical Standards Should Guide the Health Care System?" Authors include Tibor R. Macan, Malcolm Muggeridge, and the Ethics Committee of the American Fertility Society. A catalog is available from the above address and can be obtained by calling 1-(800) 231-5163.
Greenhaven Press. Science and Technology: Opposing Viewpoints.
Volume I. Greenhaven Press Opposing Viewpoints Series, Post Office Box 289009, San Diego, California 92128-9009. 1989, 440 pages. Each section includes several essays by leading authorities on both sides of each issue: Creationism in the schools, current artificial birth technologies, genetic engineering, organ transplants, animal experimentation, and the Strategic Defense Initiative are just a few of the topics whose main pro- and con arguments are thoroughly covered in this excellent 440-page volume. This topic is covered by a series of books, beginning with a basic set of essays entitled Sources and continuing with an additional and updated annual series of essays. A catalog is available from the above address and can be obtained by calling 1-(800) 231-5163.
Germaine Greer. Sex & Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility.
Harper & Row Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, New York 10022. 1984, 550 pages. Greer faced head-on the most deep and avoided questions relevant to Western society and fertility: Is our obsession with world overpopulation causing us to reject our own fertility? Why do we reject the few children we have so that they will inevitably reject us in our old age? Greer examines chastity, attitudes towards fertility, sterility, and childbirth; abortion and euthanasia; and the histories of the birth-control and eugenics movements.
Garrett Hardin. "Abortion for the Children's Sake."
In Abortion and the Unwanted Child (C. Reiterman, editor). New York: Springer, 1971. Population controller Garrett Hardin has toned down his virulent pro-abortion rhetoric since the early 1970s, but this book captures him at his raving best (worst?). The title alone gives some idea of how out of touch with moral reality he really is.
Beverly Wildung Harrison. Our Right to Choose: Toward a New Ethic of Abortion.
Beacon Press, 1983. 334 pages. Reviewed by Mary Meehan on pages 5 and 9 of the November 24, 1983 issue of National Right to Life News. The author, a self-styled "Christian woman," shows us just how far self-deception can be carried as she advocates third-trimester abortions and other atrocities. There is nothing "new" about this 'ethic;' pro-life activists recognize it as the eternal black cloud of death and self-centeredness that has surrounded the anti-life philosophy and those enslaved by it since the beginning of time. This book is good for reading if one is interested in how the anti-life rationalization works.
D. Gareth Jones. Brave New People: Ethical Issues at the Commencement of Life.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 255 Jefferson Avenue SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503, telephone: (616) 459-4591. 1985, 225 pages. This book was so 'controversial' (which means that Leftist censors didn't like it), that it was withdrawn from the market after its original release in 1984. The author addresses complicated issues that apply to the beginning of human life: In-vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, cloning, and genetic tinkering.
Carol Levine (Editor). Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Bio-Ethical Issues.
Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc., Guilford, Connecticut. 1984, 297 pages. Leading thinkers on both sides of bioethical issues express their opinions in scholarly essays on subjects including abortion, in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, involuntary sterilization of the retarded, informed consent, active euthanasia, withholding treatment from handicapped newborns, suicide, the insanity defense, animal experimentation, prisoners volunteering for research, justifiable deception in research, organ harvesting from the dead, and genetic engineering. A good primer on the bioethical issues.
Robert Jay Lifton. The Nazi Doctors.
Basic Books, 1986. 561 pages. Reviewed by Eugene F. Diamond, M.D., on pages 5 and 15 of the August 13, 1987 issue of National Right to Life News. This excellent book describes in great detail how the original Holocaust was begun by the medical profession. It also warns about how such an event could happen in our country. The book provides invaluable and detailed information on the psychology and history of the Nazi biomedical Holocaust. Special treatment is given to the sterilization programs, the role of the doctors, and a detailed description of the Holocaust operating at the Auschwitz death camp.
Robert G. Marshall and Charles Donovan. Blessed Are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planning Parenthood.
Ignatius Press, San Francisco. Reviewed by Mary Meehan on page 5 of the November 29, 1992 National Catholic Register. This volume provides lots of detail on the Planned Parenthood connections with racist eugenics, the effort to capture the Black leadership, and its ability to tap into hundreds of millions of dollars of tax and private money.
Father Vincent P. Miceli. The Roots of Violence.
229 pages. Order from Our Lady's Book Service, Nazareth Homestead, R.D. 1, Box 258, Constable, New York 12926, telephone: 1-800-263-8160. This book explains the roots of the violence that is flooding our society today. It examines in detail our general apostasy from the word of God, and our society's resulting allegiance to the corrupt morals and secular values of the world.
Pope St. Pius X. Encyclical Letters "On the Doctrines of the Modernists (Pascendi Dominici Gregis)" and "Syllabus Condemning the Errors of the Modernists (Lamentabili Sane)."
July 3, 1907. Compact 4-1/2" X 7", 77 page booklet for 50 cents from the Daughters of St. Paul, 50 St. Paul's Avenue, Jamaica Plain, Boston Massachusetts 02130, telephone: (617) 522-8911. This booklet, although the better part of a century old, describes the current situation in the world perfectly. In general terms, it details how a turning away from the precepts of the Christian Church, and the rejection of Jesus as Lord and Savior, has led us to the current deplorable situation in the world.
Professor Charles E. Rice. Beyond Abortion: The Theory and Practice of the Secular State.
Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1979. 159 pages. Order from Keep the Faith, 810 Belmont Avenue, Post Office Box 8261, North Haledon, New Jersey 07508, telephone: (201) 423-5395. Reviewed by Donna Steichen in the Spring 1980 issue of the International Review of Natural Family Planning, pages 72 to 74. An examination of the underpinnings and workings of this secular state and how they inevitably lead to loss of faith, abortion, and euthanasia. A very good examination of the anti-life philosophies and how they originate and self-perpetuate in a society that turns away from God. Professor Rice shows us that there can be no real turning away from anti-life practices like abortion, infanticide, and other euthanasia, unless we acknowledge God as our master.
Margaret Sanger. Woman and the New Race.
Reprinted in 1969 by permission of the Sanger Estate by the Maxwell Reprint Company, Fairview Park, Elmsford, New York 10523. Any pro-life activist who wants to become familiar with the real attitudes and philosophy of the anti-life movement and Neofeminism in general should read this book. It is an utterly fascinating treatise by one of the original Neofeminists.
Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D. The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921. Reprinted in 1971 by Negro Universities Press, Westport, Connecticut. A classic racist book that clearly and vividly demonstrates the kind of thinking that led to eugenics, the current-day racist abortion program in the United States, and the Nazi mentality.
United States Government. Mapping Our Genes, The Genome Projects: How Big, How Fast?
Focuses on how to assess the rationales for conducting human genome projects, how to fund them, how to coordinate scientific and technical programs, and international impacts and repercussions. Serial Number 052-003-01106-9, 1988, 224 pages. Order by mail from Superintendent of Documents, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402, or by telephone from (202) 783-3238.
© American Life League BBS — 1-703-659-7111
This is a chapter of the Pro-Life Activist’s Encyclopedia published by American Life League.
