In March 1973, two months after Roe was handed down, Frederick Osborn, a former head of the American Eugenics Society and the president of the Rockefeller funded Population Council, changed its name to the “Society for the Study of Social Biology.” The announcement said: “The change of name of the Society does not coincide with any change of …
Category: American Eugenics
Frederick Osborn, Galton and Mid-Century Eugenics, 1956 Eugenics Review published lecture and “Voluntary Unconscious Selection”
Frederick Osborn, president of the Population Council and steadfast advocate for eugenics, in a 1956 speech recorded in the Eugenics Review. [SOURCE] […] Galton never envisaged any system of arbitrary controls, except for the more serious mental and physical handicaps, which should be treated like a form of communicable disease. But he did propose that …
Leon Cole on the Social Body and Our Duty to Future Generations
From The Relation of Philanthropy and Medicine to Race Betterment by Leon J. Cole, University of Wisconsin, at the First Conference for Race Betterment (1914) Among those who have in their treatment of this subject emphasized the importance of the natural selection viewpoint may be mentioned especially Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton, and Karl Pearson, the …
Helen Keller: Physicians Juries for Defective Babies, Article in the New Republic, 1915
Due to the successful sanitization of the past in regards to eugenics, it is largely unknown how pervasive eugenics attitudes were, and how expansive eugenicists believed their program to be. Here we have Helen Keller, writing in a prominent liberal magazine, advocating explicitly for infanticide–in the name of the race. For more information and the …
George William Hunter’s “Civic Biology” — the Eugenics Textbook at the Heart of the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’
The so-called ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ was a media sensation at the time, but how it actually went down was shamelessly skewed afterwards to make it seem that the evolutionists were humble seekers of truth and those who stood against them ignorant, religious bigots. This viewpoint was perpetuated effectively through movies on the trial such as …
Clarence Gamble–the problem is that people WANT many children!
“Family Planning” is often advocated for on the grounds that many people do not want many children, but the truth is the opposite–at least, until the propaganda is brought to bear on them. The need for this propaganda was recognized early, as this quote illustrates. Richard B. Gamble writes in the foreword (1977) of the …
Gordon Rattray Taylor: “The Biological Time Bomb” — the remaking of society via eugenics, family planning, and education
Gordon Rattray Taylor’s 1968 book, The Biological Time Bomb, was referenced in the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling as providing insight on future developments in America. Taylor’s book was released at a time when the term ‘eugenics’ had not yet fallen out of favor. Though he does not explicitly endorse many of the things …
Elaine Freeman in “The ‘God’ Committee”: infanticide and euthanasia logically flow from arguments for aborting children with birth defects
Elaine Freeman, The ‘God’ Committee, published May 21, 1972, in the New York Times [excerpt] [Opening vignette by Freeman] The baby is a mongoloid born with duodenal atresia, an intestinal obstruction. The parents, professional people in Maryland, refuse permission for the surgery that will enable the infant to survive, deciding that it would be unfair …
Letter by Theodore Roosevelt to Charles Davenport: Society should not permit degenerates to reproduce their kind.
From The Outlook, January 3rd letter of 1913 [Source] My dear Mr. Davenport: I am greatly interested in the two memoirs you have sent me. They are very instructive, and, from the standpoint of our country, very ominous. You say that those people are not themselves responsible, that it is “society” that is responsible. I …
The Eugenic Roots of Genetic Counseling
Charity requires us to believe that most contemporary genetic counselors are not at all motivated by considerations that we would term ‘eugenic.’ However, the founders of the field left no doubt about their motivations, stating them plainly and explicitly, and characterizing them as definitely constituting eugenics. The following material raises more than reasonable doubt that …
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