Modern Conservative Eugenics

Abortion opponents often claim that abortion as supported by the pro-choice movement is in fact eugenics. When I was pro-life as a young college student, I believed this argument wholeheartedly. The argument goes like this—Margaret Sanger supported eugenics and wanted to exterminate black people (the latter part of this is inaccurate), and Planned Parenthood today clinics are frequently located in poor or minority neighborhoods, therefore abortion advocates are intentionally targeting poor and minority women in a eugenics-inspired effort to decrease their numbers.

Those making this argument use images like this:

They’re wrong. Many Planned Parenthood clinics are located in poor and minority neighborhoods because poor and minority women often lack the access to regular doctors other women have and thus have more need of stand-alone birth control clinics. And while Margaret Sanger was an advocate of eugenics, many of her quotes have been taken out of context to say things she never said. More importantly, though, there is no effort to impose a eugenics campaign against poor and minority women.

Actually, I take it back, there is such a campaign, but it’s not being waged by abortion advocates, it’s being waged by conservatives. In fact, many of the policies Republicans promote today, including their war on welfare, bear an uncomfortable similarity to early twentieth century eugenics as practiced in the U.S. Understanding this requires understanding the history and goals of eugenics, and then looking critically at conservatives’ use of government tax and benefits policy.

Early twentieth century eugenics elided poverty, crime, and low IQ, and held that the government should discourage the procreation of the wrong kind of people through policies that pushed sterilization on those judged unfit—the criminal, the poor, and those determined to be “mentally defective.” In other words, social problems were viewed as genetic problems that could be fixed through ensuring that only “fit” individuals bred.

This image states that “some people are born to be a burden on the rest” and that “every 15 seconds $100 of your money goes for the care of persons with bad heredity such as the insane, feeble-minded, criminals and other defectives.” It further states that “every 48 seconds a person is born in the United States who will never grow up mentally behind that stage of a normal 8 year old boy or girl” and that “every 50 seconds a person is committed to jail in the United States. Very few normal persons every go to jail.”

Here’s another image, in which eugenics supporters hold up signs:

The signs state “I am a burden to myself and the State. Should I be allowed to Propagate?” and “I must drink alcohol to sustain life. Shall I transfer the craving to others?” and “Would prisons and asylums be filled if my kind had no children?” and “I cannot read this Sign. By what right have I children?” The idea showcased here is at odds with modern progressive ideas, which hold that when crime or poverty are passed from parent to child, the problem is not eugenics but lack of opportunity and the unavailability of resources. Progressives hope to solve crime and poverty through various social programs.

In the 1920s and 1930s, certain types of criminals were routinely sterilized. At the same time, poor individuals were told that they would only receive continued government aid if they would undergo “voluntary” sterilization. In 1934, the movie Tomorrow’s Children, in which a young woman was told she must be sterilized or her parents would lose access to their welfare benefits, dealt with this later theme.

You can watch the full movie here:

The situation is ultimately resolved when it is discovered, at the last moment, that the young woman in question was adopted, and thus does not have her parents “defective” genes. In other words, even a film critical of eugenics did not contest the underlying principal that some individuals had defective genes and should not breed.

Eugenics was ultimately discredited by Nazi abuses during WWII, and especially by the Holocaust. Even so, some states continued sterilizing criminals they deemed unfit into the 1970s.

In 2012, Pennsylvania lawmakers—almost all Republicans—attempted to pass a provision that would have denied women any increase in TANF benefits for children born while on TANF. If this sounds familiar after what has been discussed above, it should. It’s an attempt to use welfare benefits to control the amount of children born to the poor and indigent.

Republican narratives about “welfare queens” and swaths of society that live off handouts and have children to increase the amount of benefits they receive are built of exactly the same material as early twentieth century eugenics. There is perhaps an understanding that genetics are not the factor at play, but there is still a fear that “they”—i.e. the dependent and unfit—are outbreeding “us”—the able and fit. Any use of the “welfare queen” stereotype of necessity brings up fears of large numbers of children being born into unfit families.

And don’t think for a moment that this is an isolated or fringe thing. In 2014, none other than Rand Paul suggested that there should be a cap on welfare benefits for women having children out of wedlock. “Maybe we have to say ‘enough’s enough, you shouldn’t be having kids after a certain amount,” Paul said. Note that here the line between “fit” and “unfit” is here determined by whether or not a woman who is married. In the early twentieth century, women who had children out of wedlock were often seen as automatically unfit and morally suspect, and poor teens were sometimes sterilized after bearing a child or two outside of wedlock.

Remember that in other circumstances Republicans tend to encourage people to have children. It is primarily conservatives who are concerned about low birth rates among native-born white Americans. And yet, Republicans have counterintuitively ensured that the child tax credit individuals with children currently receive benefits the upper middle class more than it benefits the poor. Republicans have also promoted measures to ensure that undocumented residents cannot receive the child tax credit, regardless of whether they pay taxes.

In other words, conservatives are using the government’s tax and benefits structure to promote the births they want (those to married, documented, and non-poor families) and discourage the births they don’t want (those to unmarried, undocumented, and poor families). It is incredibly disingenuous of conservatives to accuse Planned Parenthood of eugenics for the placement of its clinics—ignoring the fact that poor and minority women often lack access to regular doctors—while at the same time promoting policies that would make early twentieth century eugenics promoters proud.

We can absolutely talk about whether abortions due to fetal disability are eugenic in nature, though in any such discussion it should be remembered that such abortions as currently practiced are voluntary, and not promoted by government policy. But when it comes to other features of eugenics—those that involve crime, poverty, and being on the public dole—it is Republicans, and not Democrats, who are building on past eugenic ideas. Indeed, conservatives go beyond purely voluntary means, using government tax and benefit structures to create coercive situations to promote or discourage the birth of those they view as desirable or undesirable.

We should all find this concerning.