I recently came across a letter from the president of the National Lawyer’s Association. Her name is Rebecca Messall and her message is one that is rarely heard but profoundly important.
She takes up the subject of eugenics, the history of the American Eugenics Society and the “personnel overlap with Margaret Sanger’s birth control organizations and legislation.” The reason I found this of particular interest is because I haven’t seen such a forthright analysis of the real purpose behind Margaret Sanger’s activities – the elimination of the black community – since our own exposé and historical treatment of the American Eugenics Society.
You see, when we published Katherine O’Keefe’s article on the history of the American Eugenics Society, we repeated a few facts that are not well known amongst our citizenry, but are certainly undeniable if one takes the chance to study history. For example, O’Keefe writes:
Eugenics is a concept familiar to Americans as an overarching policy consideration of the Third Reich. "Eugenics" subsumes such notions as racial purity, racial superiority and the heritability of intelligence, virtue, or vice. Although Hitler is its most notorious proponent, eugenic thinking has been a prominent strand in Western intellectual history since the 1860's, when Darwin's disciple, Francis Galton, began to put about the idea that the governing classes of England ought to take it upon themselves to guide the development of the human genetic heritage. A good history of these early days of eugenic thinking can be found in The Legacy of Malthus by Allen Chase. A good short discussion of the early days of eugenics can be found in Aristotle to Zoos by Peter Medawar, a member of the English Eugenics Society. He quotes Galton, as follows:
I do not see why any insolence of caste should prevent the gifted class, when they had the power, from treating their compatriots with all kindness, so long as they maintained celibacy. But if these continued to procreate children inferior in moral, intellectual and physical qualities, it is easy to believe the time may come when such persons would be considered as enemies to the State, and to have forfeited all claims to kindness. (Fraser's Magazine 7[1873] quoted in Aristotle to Zoos by Peter and Jean Medawar, 1983 p. 87)
Margaret Sanger ascribed to these theories early on in her work, which had a chilling focus. As she wrote, "Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly … Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to maintenance of those who should never have been born." In other words, the only way to end financial support for the needy is to eliminate the needy.
As time has gone by, it has become more and more difficult to help people understand why these theories are not only still with us but are perhaps nearly palatable to far too many in government, academia and public policy positions. You see, as Messall points out, "It is not lost on most of us that the government's insistence on providing pervasive access to the pill in minority communities does in fact help spread AIDS and other infectious diseases by facilitating high-risk relationships." Messall is correct and she is echoing the same thoughts shared by many pro-life leaders within the black community who are rarely heard but who persist in spite of the cultural resistance their message encounters these days.
A long time ago, a black pro-life leader, Rev. Johnny Hunter, became so incensed by the utter lack of understanding among blacks regarding Planned Parenthood’s true goals that he started a program called the Say-So March. The purpose of the activity was to draw attention to the devastating effects that the disproportionate number of abortions within the black community is having on the black family and, in particular, black fathers. As you know, though only 12 percent of Americans are black, black mothers undergo 33 percent of all abortions in America. This too is but another sign of the eugenic underpinnings of the Planned Parenthood agenda.
It would serve the people of our nation well to pay a little more attention to the work cited in Messall’s excellent letter, in which she concludes her plea to end public funding for birth prevention by reminding us of the high cost of ignoring the facts with regard to the practice of eugenics in our nation today:
Planned Parenthood and the American Eugenics Society have cost our country 50 million aborted-American lives, plus the lives of the aborteds' children – another 20 million? 30 million? – plus the lives of those who were never conceived because of being prevented. Considering the biblical scale of this human loss – which, I add here, has landed disproportionately on blacks and other minorities – and considering that the Congress and the Courts have propped it up for all these years, the first step is surely to stop the flow of federal funding.
If you would like to join us in ending the practice of eugenics, then sign the petition that Stop Planned Parenthood International is circulating. The petition calls for an end to the use of our taxpayer dollars to eliminate minorities, including preborn children, who are the most threatened minority in the history of mankind.
Judie Brown is president of American Life League and a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
