Eugenics and the foundation of abortion

Rekaar. · Post by **Rekaar.** » February 23, 2005, 12:10 pm

Apart from the evidence of eugenicist influence contained in the Roe decision itself, one of the clearest links between the eugenics movement and U.S. abortion policy is visible in the American Eugenics Society's 1956 membership records, which reveal that its members included a Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger, and at least two of its presidents, William Vogt and Alan Guttmacher.10 This fact alone ought to give abortion-rights advocates second thoughts about their pro-choice politics: The AES had an ugly history of multiple ties to prominent Nazis in Germany, and its members even assisted Hitler in crafting the 1933 German sterilization laws.11 The group retained, while Hitler was in power, top Nazi scientists-Drs. Rudin, Fischer, and Ruttke-as advisers and journal contributors.12

Among the AES members - after the Holocaust - was Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a co-director of the Rockefeller-funded Kaiser Wilhelm Eugenics Institute in Germany.13 Before 1940, Verschuer had founded the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Research at Frankfurt University,14 and retained Dr. Josef Mengele as his assistant.15 Verschuer had written a widely circulated paper in which he described the need for a "complete solution to the Jewish question."16 At one point, he provided Mengele with a recommendation letter, which praised Mengele's "reliability, combined background in anthropology and medicine, and capacity for clear verbal presentation of difficult intellectual problems."17 It was Verschuer who made the fateful recommendation to Mengele that he request a transfer to Auschwitz, which offered a "unique possibility" for biological research.18 At Auschwitz, Mengele dissected people after they were tortured and killed, and sent his "research" to Verschuer.19 Before the Holocaust, the AES had lobbied successfully for the Johnson Act, the restrictive 1924 immigration law that-among other things-caused the steamship St. Louis to be refused entry to the U.S. in 1939; the ship returned to Europe, where many of the Jews aboard were killed.20

The AES lobbied, with equal success, for involuntary-sterilization laws in the U.S., which were to claim an estimated 63,000 victims.21 The laws were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1927 case of Buck v. Bell,22 which was cited in Roe. Some states-Oregon, Virginia, South Carolina, and California-have recently extended official regrets and/or apologies for those laws.23

If you like history you should enjoy this article. When I first started reading I was thinking "whoa, those are some wild claims." He backs them up with a lot more research I care to do though.

article

Rivera Bladestrike · February 23, 2005, 12:14 pm

What a pathetic long shot jab at pro-choice people.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » February 23, 2005, 12:29 pm

You know people are getting desperate when they pull out the nazi card.

OMG!!! Pro-Choice'ers are NAZIS!!

Laughable.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » February 23, 2005, 12:42 pm

if abortion was truly like the Holocaust, the vatican would not be denouncing it, and would be secretly aligned with the abortion clinics.

miir · Post by **miir** » February 23, 2005, 12:49 pm

She's a right-wing, bible thumping nutjob.

Entertaining read nevertheless.

Niffoni · Post by **Niffoni** » February 23, 2005, 1:16 pm

Voronwë wrote:if abortion was truly like the Holocaust, the vatican would not be denouncing it, and would be secretly aligned with the abortion clinics.

owned.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » February 23, 2005, 1:41 pm

wtf does this have to do with someone being pro-choice or rethinking their 'decision' to be pro-choice? I don't give a flaming fleas fuck on a rats ass who else or what other 'organizations' agree with my being pro-choice. I'm pro-choice because I choose to be.

Not everyone here is a lemming that believes what they're told to or what their heros for the day do.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » February 23, 2005, 1:46 pm

God forbid that people choose when and with whom they breed!

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » February 23, 2005, 2:19 pm

masteen wrote:God forbid that people choose when and with whom they breed!

It isn't breeding anymore. It's "Fucking... with Consequences"

Deward · Post by **Deward** » February 23, 2005, 3:18 pm

During World War II, most Wisconsinites were against entering the war in Europe. Wisconsin has a large German population. According to this article, it would make them all nazi-loving Jew killers. Association with bad people doesn't make you bad. I am sure if people knew about the death camps they would not have supported their views. I think I read once that the majority of the world knew nothing of the death camps until they were liberated. I think there were rumors but it was so far fetched that most people didn't believe.

Tenuvil · Post by **Tenuvil** » February 23, 2005, 6:11 pm

The beauty of false logic.

And it's only fitting that troll nonpareil and defender of stupid people's intellectual capacity Reeker would post it.

Go the fuck away again assbag.

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » February 23, 2005, 8:35 pm

The depths of your stupidity know no bounds. Bravo!

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » February 23, 2005, 9:29 pm

Though to be fair, Eugenics (as a pure science) is not nessecarily evil unto itself. Preventing downs syndrome people from breeding amongst themselves (as they surely might if left unchecked) is, at a basic level, a form of Eugenics as you are proactively preventing faulty and undesired genetic traits from continuing to be propogated. Laws against cousins having children are also based on eugentics principles, as you are preventing the emergance of recessive and harmful genes. Like all sciences, Eugenics has good and evil applications (read A Brave New World for excellent intellectual stimulation on the subject).

However, simply because someone supports Eugenics which the Nazis happened to have a corrupted version they practiced, does not tie them with the Nazis. If you are going to make that level of Batman leap of logic, you might as well say that America is tied to the Nazis for researching atomic weapons during WW2, and indeed there is more evidence to support that conclusion since many of the top scientists working on the Manhattan project were in fact Germans (many of them exiled as a result of Nazi Germany's eugenics views, ironically enough). It can also be argued that the current administration has stronger ties to Nazi Germany, as the Bush Family were convicted of war proffiteering during WW2 for contributing to the Nazi War Machine well after the US had entered the war against the Axis (and in fact George H. Bush entered the Navy as an airman to help restore some of the lost prestige of his family) while simultaneously not contributing to the American war effort. In fact there is a lot more evidence to tie the Bush family to Nazi Germany than there is to tie the Abortion movement to the Nazis, as anyone with ten minutes of time and access to the internet can determine.

But go ahead and keep eating those cans of bullshit, Rekaar. As long as someone slaps "Jesus Tested, Jesus Approved" on the label, its ok right?

edit- For the record, I am a proponent of Eugenics as a means to advance the capabilities of the human race (as it is much safer means of speeding up natural selection than direct gene alteration) but we, as a people, are not yet advanced to the point as a society where someone can make rational decisions about which genetics should be retained and which should be bred out without prejudice or bias. People also have an irrational need to create children of their own genetic line that would prevent Eugenics from being practiced in its purest form. In an ideal world, traits relating to genetic disorders would be bred out while traits involving higher intelligence and physical well being would be promoted without any bullshit racist or homophobic agenda applied to them. Unfortunately, we live in a less than ideal world and there is no limit to the kind of Orwellian evil that the current world leaders could achieve if eugenics were practiced on a wide basis today.

VariaVespasa · Post by **VariaVespasa** » February 23, 2005, 10:12 pm

Besides, there's more than one way to skin a cat- we're on track to eventually use gene therapy to just crush most genetic defects where they live, and then we dont have to worry about restricting anyone's breeding since there wont be any defects to pass on.

Going out of our way to breed for bigger, stronger, smarter is another issue of course. and considerably more delicate given the potential for abuse. Personally I am entirely unconvinced that we actually know enough about all the intertwined cause and effect relationships involved in selective breeding to properly predict the effects of any given program, so I'd approach such attempts with extreme caution. It may seem easy enough, but a lot of the various breeds we have created have also gained little imperfections as a result which would sort of defeat the purpose. Labradors and their hip problems forinstance. And thats quite apart from the ethical issues involved, which are considerable.

*Hugs*
Varia

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » February 23, 2005, 11:20 pm

Jice Virago wrote:edit- For the record, I am a proponent of Eugenics as a means to advance the capabilities of the human race (as it is much safer means of speeding up natural selection than direct gene alteration)

It's really the antithesis of natural selection.

The reason the human race won't evolve naturally is because we've evolved far enough to have too much control over the process. A lot of the genetic defects that are becoming *more* prevalent in modern societies are because we keep these people alive to breeding age.

If you want to strengthen the human race tomorrow, bomb a medical research facility today!

There's little doubt we'll try to hack the genome, but the chances are that we'll just create more problems, as Varia said.

The Planet of Dr. Moreau comes to mind...

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » February 23, 2005, 11:29 pm

a quick study of primate societies should have the observer taking note of the importance of social status amongst the various members of a group.

As you proceed evolutionarily "upwards" through primates, into apes, you even see occassions where social status is conferred to offspring. The amazing intricacy of status and human society, most simply viewed as wealth, though trumps all comparisons to our evolutionary predecessors. We confer status to our offspring by sending them to better schools, by setting them up with inheritence to invest in houses, further wealth, etc.

So what.

So what is that the more wealth and status you have, the more likely you are to have successful offspring, thus propagating your genes with less liklihood of a "failure".

The factors that can lead to someone being "succesful" in society are not always the same factors that make one "successful" genetically, and the interplay is not something to be overlooked.

Rekaar. · Post by **Rekaar.** » February 24, 2005, 12:45 am

I'm somehow doubting that any of you that posted actually read all of it. It containts a ton of things I didn't know, and thus found interesting. I even put in a disclaimer that I thought he had wild claims. Why so much hate =(

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » February 24, 2005, 12:58 am

Because it's particularly rediculous propaganda attempting to link abortion with Nazis? Plus, I think you're confusing contempt with hatred.

Marbus · Post by **Marbus** » February 24, 2005, 11:45 am

Lets also remember that how human genetics really worked wasn't known until 1956 and some people obviously still don't know today. Before that time, when evolution and genetics were still fledgling sciences there was a LOT of talk about eugenics as a way to stop evil more than promote it.

Because genetics illnesses weren't understood they wanted to stop them before they continued. While they weren't correct in how genetics worked they did have obervations evidence that was not too bad. What they didn't know what that because random mutation, eugenics really won't work long term.

Lets also remember that Henry Ford, the champion of the common man in the 30s was an AVID Anti-Semite. The US Government even published booklets in the 1950s warning of Zionist empires. People think they can play the Nazi card and get everyone worked up and hating those people because everyone hate's Nazi's right? Problem is, too many of their own beliefs are often closer to the Nazi's then those they are attacking.

Good article with interesting ideas but not true. It's a lot like the book I recently read about the Knights Templar and they went along for 90% of the book doing a good job of proving each point and idea... then in the last chapter they jumped to the conclusion that Jesus was really and Isis Priest and he and Mary of Magdeline had like 7 kids... didn't even try to back it up... thought it was pretty funny. Just because you prove one point doesn't mean everything else will follow from there...

Marb

*~*stragi*~* · Post by ***~*stragi*~*** » February 24, 2005, 11:52 am

abortion should be retroactive.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » February 24, 2005, 12:58 pm

But then we wouldn't have you, stargi!

*~*stragi*~* · Post by ***~*stragi*~*** » February 24, 2005, 6:59 pm

oh yeah? i'm going to build a time machine and go back to 1974 and kick your mother in the womb until she coughs up blood. haha owned

Nick · Post by **Nick** » February 25, 2005, 3:43 pm

Holy shit evil stragi

Poor Masteen~