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1
Dark_Falcon  Jul 15, 2015 • 9:29:05pm

“‘Margaret Sanger had no choice but to engage eugenics. It was a mainstream movement, like public health or the environment today.”

My problem with those two sentences is that it means one of two things is true:

1. In the 1920’s Margaret Sanger did not find the eugenics movement odious and morally problematic.

2. Sanger found eugenics problematic but allied with it anyways because she needed to further her cause and doing so was worth the harm her allies were inflicting.

The first of those options speaks somewhat poorly of Sanger’s judgement, the latter says she was willing to make the kind of moral compromises politicians are routinely lambasted for making.. Either way, Sanger didn’t want to inflict genocide on black people, but there is no way to positively view her association with eugenics.

Instead, those who defend Sanger should admit she ultimately made a mistake in associating with the eugenics movement. But unlike some who made that mistake, Sanger did in fact realize she’d made it and got out before the defeat of Nazi Germany revealed the horrors eugenics countenanced. As the article notes, she’d founded the Negro Project just before WWII. She never really admitted her mistake publicly, but neither did mention or defend her previous pro-eugenics views.

Eugenics came to infamy after its German branch fell in with Hitler, but that horrid development was not one Margaret Sanger had a hand in. An accurate and non hostile way to describe Sanger’s association with eugenics is that it was a mistake she stopped making long before other who’d held such views. He actions in its service were wrong, but not vile and her whole career should not be condemned because of them.

2
FemNaziBitch  Jul 16, 2015 • 8:56:47am

Maria Montessori also used Mussolini to further her education ideals. That does not make her a fascist and many claim.

We either accept that people are products of their time and don’t have the advantage of 20/20 hinsight or we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Margaret Sanger was a courageous women who went up against the Roman Catholic Church and the US Government and WON.

We are ALL better off because of her efforts.

3
The Vicious Babushka  Jul 16, 2015 • 9:05:20am

A lot of otherwise reasonable, intelligent people were all approving of eugenics in the 1920’s. Then something happened in the world that caused them to rethink their views.

4
Kid A  Jul 16, 2015 • 4:41:21pm

This needs to be promoted.

5
CarolJ  Jul 16, 2015 • 5:08:00pm

I’ve always thought that Margaret Sanger pretty much had to at least go along with the few people who were willing to make birth control legal-and if eugenics was the way, so be it. And back then before Hitler, a lot of people-well meaning people-felt that scientific breeding was the way to improve health and the quality of people overall. I believe that’s where she was coming from. A few children who were fit and health instead of many kids who were born with defects or just died because they were too sick to live.

And she saved so many lives-of women for whom repeated pregnancies meant real health problems, for women who had too many kids to feed-for those who were otherwise trapped in a cycle that meant they couldn’t go to school or work.

As for black women-the antichoice people are running into the same demographic problems as the rest of the right: those who are most fanatical are aging out of the movement. They need new members who can at least relate to the emerging groups. But these groups see abortion as a personal choice and a misfortune like others, and don’t have any appetite for imposing things on others who don’t share that view.

This is a movement of rear-guard actions, like the opposition to gay rights. Abortion is nowhere near a Constitutional Amendment. Terrorism hasn’t worked. The Catholic Church is slowly walking away fro the obsession with abortion due to Francis-and with the pedophile scandals-no longer has the moral authority it once did to influence the public either.

6
The Vicious Babushka  Jul 16, 2015 • 5:11:40pm

Lizards PWN3D a wingnut this afternoon==>

7
JadeHelmCurious  Jul 17, 2015 • 7:13:58am

Posted by Girl with a Glock. Photoshop anyone?

8
EmmaAnne  Jul 17, 2015 • 6:04:55pm

Good article. Not whitewashing the icky parts, but putting them in context.


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