November 20, 2010 7:03 AM
Margaret Sanger, eugenicist: in her own words
Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood
In Her Own Words
"The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."
Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race
(Eugenics Publ. Co., 1920, 1923)On blacks, immigrants and indigents:
"...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born." Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, referring to immigrants and poor peopleOn sterilization & racial purification:
Sanger believed that, for the purpose of racial "purification," couples should be rewarded who chose sterilization. Birth Control in America, The Career of Margaret Sanger, by David Kennedy, p. 117, quoting a 1923 Sanger speech.On the right of married couples to bear children:
Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child, she wrote in her "Plan for Peace." Birth Control Review, April 1932On the purpose of birth control:
The purpose in promoting birth control was "to create a race of thoroughbreds," she wrote in the Birth Control Review, Nov. 1921 (p. 2)On the rights of the handicapped and mentally ill, and racial minorities:
"More children from the fit, less from the unfit -- that is the chief aim of birth control." Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12Read more at In Her Own Words
Posted in Planned Parenthood, Pro-Life Issues | Permalink
Comments
Keep the history lessons coming, Barbara! Now...what about elder abuse and euthanasia? Did this get started in Sanger too? I've been wondering about this lately because the attitudes about abortion seem to be connected to the attitudes towards getting rid of the elderly as well.. Are the two completely connected, historically speaking?
Posted by: Lisa | November 20, 2010 1:44 PM
Lisa, I remember back in the days leading up to Roe v. Wade scoffing at Christians who warned that legalizing abortion would create a slippery slope.
Back in those days, no one - even radical feminists like me - would have sneered at predictions that we would be seeing 1.5 million abortions/year, genetic selection, the breakdown of the family, increase in breast cancer. Yet here we are.
I now believe those Slippery Slopers were right - as are so many prophets who are scoffed at for telling the truth. And because we have brought up a couple generations with so little regard for the sanctity of life, it spreads across the board to elderly people.
If we believe that the value of a human life is only what is assigned to it by the mother - worthy of birth or of death - then we can apply that utilitarian approach across the board: Is this life worth what it costs to support it? If and when we see the Obama death panels, we will be acknowledging the ultimate outcome of that philosophy.
Posted by: Barbara | November 20, 2010 3:36 PM
