Category: legislative eugenics

Eugenics Quote of the Day: Eugenics is Not likely to Infringe on Individual Freedom

Paul Popenoe in his widely used 1920 textbook, Applied Eugenics.  pg 364-365.  “Not likely” indeed! It is charged that eugenics infringes on the freedom of the individual.  This charge (really that of the individualists more than of socialists, strictly speaking) is based mainly on a misconception of what eugenics attempts to do.  Coercive measures have …

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Eugenics Quote of the Day: Compulsory Abortion is Constitutional–says John Holdren

QUOTE: Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society. [HT] Other quotes by John Holdren: AND: One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate …

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Eugenic Quote of the Day: Compulsory Vaccination and Compulsory Sterilization? Justified on the Same Principle

Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 1927 Buck vs. Bell decision upholding the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck, ‘feeble-minded.’  [Reference] An Act of Virginia, approved March 20, 1924, recites that the health of the patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives, under careful safeguard, &c.; …

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The Duty of the State in the Treatment of the Deformed: R. Z. Mason, Appleton WI, 1879

R.Z. Mason, mayor of Appleton, WI, “The Duty of the State in its Treatment of the Deaf and Dumb, the Blind, the Idiotic, the Crippled and Deformed, and the Insane.” [Source / Italics added, bold text added] In the progress of modern civilization, the state has come slowly to a recognition of certain duties and …

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George Bernard Shaw and Murder by the State, Marriage, and Eugenics

The following article was found in the March 4th edition of The Daily Express in 1910.  Reproduced under Fair Use Provisions. If anyone has any corrections they would like to post to the text (which was hard to read) please pass them along.  Images of the most readable text are at the end of this …

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Eugenics and Family Planning Associated Together from the Beginning, Family Planning and Population Control Likewise

One of the ‘pioneers’ of ‘family planning,’ Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was also an avowed eugenicist and advocate for population control.  That is, like many advocates of ‘family planning,’ out of one side of their mouth they talk about a “woman’s right to choose” while on the other side they say, “but …

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Life Unworthy of Life Yesterday and Today, Science, Secularism, and the Sanctity of Life

This foreword is reprinted with permission of the author and may not be copied and re-posted.  The foreword originally appears in the translation of Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche’s Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life lifeunworthyoflife.com | Buy on Amazon | Kindle Life Unworthy of Life Yesterday and Today, Science, Secularism, and the …

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The Lethal Chamber Proposal, 1930 Letter to Editor by Dr. Richard Berry

A little known fact is that those with a eugenics mindset had been talking about ‘lethal chambers’ and ‘segregation camps’ for a long time before the Nazis actually used them.  Here is one example. The Lethal Chamber Proposal To the Editor, Eugenics Review   SIR,-I observe in your issue of April 1930, page 6, that you …

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Amicus Curiae Brief submitted in support of abortion by the Zero Population Growth and a Chapter of the National Organization for Women

What is below was compiled and produced by Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel in their Before Roe v. Wade:  Voices that shaped the abortion debate before the Supreme Court’s ruling.  The ellipses reflect deletions by those authors.  Anyone who can locate the full, unabridged text, is kindly asked to contact the administrators of this …

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Abortion As Eugenics Tool: Harrison Brown and “The Challenge of Man’s Future”

Today, abortion is nearly always described in terms of a woman’s reproductive right in relation to family planning, but it is not understood that abortion was widely seen by eugenicists as a means of reducing the human population, and especially certain sub-populations (eg, black people, handicapped people, etc).  Part of this is intentional–if it was …

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