Friday, July 17, 2009

Is it crowded in here?







The popular rationale for birth control and abortion is they empower women. But the more insidious argument is they are means for population control. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, justified these things on the grounds of eugenics: weeding out undesirables. Unfortunately, this is either unknown by the general populace or believed to be irrelevant to the contemporary debate on these issues. The thought process is that regardless of what Planned Parenthood’s origins might be, it is about women’s empowerment now.

However, in the last six months two high profile figures, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have resorted to population control arguments.

Here is Speaker Pelosi on birth control:

The family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in
terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health,
education, and some of those elements are to help the states meet their
financial needs. One of those — one of the initiatives you mentioned, the
contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.



And Justice Ginsburg on abortion:

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about
population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to
have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding
for abortion.


Hopefully, quotes like these will increase awareness about how Margaret Sanger’s policies are alive and well in the 21st century.

2 comments:

  1. You should go check out the complete white washing of Sanger's Wikipedia entry. No mention of eugenics at all!

    ReplyDelete
  2. eugenics is in the first paragraph on the wikipedia entry.

    ReplyDelete