Those making this argument use\u00a0images like this:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/CRqQXVA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
They\u2019re\u00a0wrong. Many Planned Parenthood clinics are located in poor and minority neighborhoods because\u00a0poor 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<\/a> to say things she never said. More importantly, though, there is no effort to impose a eugenics campaign against poor and minority women.<\/p>\n Actually, I take it back, there is<\/em> such a campaign, but it\u2019s not being waged by abortion\u00a0advocates, it\u2019s being waged by conservatives. In fact,\u00a0many of the policies Republicans promote today, including their war on welfare,\u00a0bear\u00a0an 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\u2019 use of government tax and benefits policy.<\/p>\n Early twentieth century eugenics elided poverty, crime, and low IQ, and held that the government should discourage the procreation\u00a0of the wrong kind of people through policies that pushed sterilization on those judged unfit\u2014the criminal, the poor, and those determined to be\u00a0\u201cmentally defective.\u201d In other words, social problems were viewed as genetic problems that could be fixed through ensuring that only \u201cfit\u201d individuals bred.<\/p>\n This image states that \u201csome people are born to be a burden on the rest\u201d and that \u201cevery 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.\u201d It further states that \u201cevery 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\u201d and that \u201cevery 50 seconds a person is committed to jail in the United States. Very few normal persons every go to jail.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s another image, in which eugenics supporters hold up signs:<\/p>\n The signs state \u201cI am a burden to myself and the State. Should I be allowed to Propagate?\u201d and \u201cI must drink alcohol to sustain life. Shall I transfer the craving to others?\u201d and \u201cWould prisons and asylums be filled if my kind had no children?\u201d and \u201cI cannot read this Sign. By what right have I children?\u201d The idea showcased here is at odds with modern progressive ideas, which hold that when crime or poverty are\u00a0passed 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\u00a0social programs.<\/p>\n In the 1920s and 1930s, certain types of criminals\u00a0were routinely sterilized. At the same time, poor individuals were told that they would only receive continued government aid if they would undergo \u201cvoluntary\u201d\u00a0sterilization. In 1934, the movie Tomorrow\u2019s Children<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n You can watch the full movie here:<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Oug_AHSeFqk<\/a>\n 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 \u201cdefective\u201d 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n In 2012, Pennsylvania lawmakers\u2014almost all Republicans\u2014attempted to pass a provision<\/a> 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\u2019s an attempt to use welfare benefits to control the amount of children born to\u00a0the poor and indigent.<\/p>\n Republican narratives about \u201cwelfare queens\u201d 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 \u201cthey\u201d\u2014i.e. the dependent and unfit\u2014are outbreeding \u201cus\u201d\u2014the able and fit. Any use of the \u201cwelfare queen\u201d stereotype of necessity brings up fears of large numbers of children being born into unfit families.<\/p>\n And don\u2019t 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<\/a> for women having children out of wedlock. \u201cMaybe we have to say \u2018enough\u2019s enough, you shouldn\u2019t be having kids after a certain amount,\u201d Paul\u00a0said. Note that here the line between \u201cfit\u201d and \u201cunfit\u201d 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\u00a0seen as automatically unfit and morally suspect, and poor teens were sometimes\u00a0sterilized\u00a0after bearing a child or two\u00a0outside of wedlock.<\/p>\n Remember that in other circumstances Republicans\u00a0tend to\u00a0encourage people to have children. It is primarily conservatives who are concerned\u00a0about low birth rates among native-born white Americans. And yet, Republicans have counterintuitively ensured<\/a> that the child tax credit individuals\u00a0with children currently receive benefits the upper middle class more than it benefits the\u00a0poor. Republicans have also promoted<\/a> measures to ensure that<\/a> undocumented residents cannot\u00a0receive the child tax credit, regardless of whether they pay taxes.<\/p>\n In other words, conservatives are using the government\u2019s tax and benefits structure to promote the births they want (those to married, documented, and non-poor families) and discourage the births they don\u2019t want (those to unmarried, undocumented, and poor families). It is incredibly disingenuous of\u00a0conservatives to accuse Planned Parenthood of eugenics for the placement of its clinics\u2014ignoring the fact that poor and minority women often lack access to regular doctors\u2014while at the same time promoting policies that would make early twentieth century eugenics promoters proud.<\/p>\n We can absolutely talk about whether\u00a0abortions due\u00a0to 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\u00a0other features of eugenics\u2014those that involve\u00a0crime, poverty, and being on the public dole\u2014it is Republicans, and not Democrats, who are\u00a0building on\u00a0past eugenic ideas. Indeed, conservatives go\u00a0beyond purely\u00a0voluntary 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.<\/p>\n We should all find this concerning.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":28959,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/slowlorisblog.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/03\/flashing-light-sign-at-fitter-family-contests-via-aps-archives.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.wisconsinhistory.org\/700001020010\/0102000166-l.jpg\")
<\/p>\n