Source: Lord Adrian The British Medical Journal Vol. 1, No. 4977 (May 26, 1956), pp. 1189-1192. It is true also that what can be done elsewhere depends in part on what the public opinion of the country allows; preventive health services are bound to interfere with individual liberty, whether they condemn a slaughterhouse or send …
Category: individual freedom
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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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