Eugenics raises it’s head in the US again
Posted by Mike Malone | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 06-07-2010-05-2008
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I came across this story whilst doing a search for vasectomy stories.
Basically, it’s about a group offering alcoholics money to use birth control. Currently they are offering $500 to the first 100 women who have a sterilisation performed. The offer is also open to men.
Sounds OK to pay drug addicts and alcoholics to be sterilised? Maybe it is. No more kids born into that enviroment, costs the state less in the long term. However, the motives of the group appear to be somewhat more sinster. The campaign started in California, but moved to Pasadena having failed to get a law passed making birth control mandatory for drug addicts and alcoholics in California.
Critics have likened the project to the eugenics movement of the 1930s which sought to prevent reproduction by various groups considered to be socially undesirable. The groups founder dismissed the criticism as “Nonesense”.
However, in my opinion it’s EXACTLY what was proposed by the Eugenics movement:-
In the late 19th century, rising populations in prisons and institutions for the feeble-minded or paupers led to the public perception of a degeneration in society that relentlessly would lead to “race suicide”. The socially inadequate were considered to include:-(i) the mentally diseased, e.g. maniacs and schizophrenics(ii) the dependant members of society, e.g. the deaf, deformed and blind(iii) the delinquents, such as the wayward and criminals; (iv) the mentally deficient, e.g. the morons and idiots(v) the degenerates, e.g. sadists and drug habitués(vi) the infectious, such as those with tuberculosis, the syphilitics and lepers
The quote above is from the history of vasectomy article on the vasectomy-information site.
Is anyone surprised the law failed? As late as 2003, California was still issuing public apologies for it’s eugenics policy operated between 1909 and 1964.
Try Googling for “eugenics apology” and see what you get!
