MARGARET SANGER, EUGENICIST & FOUNDER OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD REVEALS DISGRACEFUL OPINIONS IN HER OWN WORDS

Margaret Sanger (1883-1966), eugenicist, and founder of Planned Parenthood, has had some colourful things to say about various people. Here is a sample:

"The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." 
 Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race (Eugenics Publ. Co., 1920, 1923)

On blacks, immigrants and indigents:
"...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born." Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, referring to immigrants and poor people

On sterilization & racial purification:
Sanger believed that, for the purpose of racial "purification," couples should be rewarded who chose sterilization. 
Birth Control in America, The Career of Margaret Sanger, by David Kennedy, p. 117, quoting a 1923 Sanger speech.

On the right of married couples to bear children:
Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child, she wrote in her "Plan for Peace." Birth Control Review, April 1932

On the purpose of birth control:
The purpose in promoting birth control was "to create a race of thoroughbreds," 
Birth Control Review, Nov. 1921 p. 2

On the rights of the handicapped and mentally ill, and racial minorities:
"More children from the fit, less from the unfit -- that is the chief aim of birth control." 
Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12

On the extermination of blacks:
"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," she said, "if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." 
Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, by Linda Gordon

On respecting the rights of the mentally ill:
In her "Plan for Peace," Sanger outlined her strategy for eradication of those she deemed "feebleminded." Among the steps included in her evil scheme were immigration restrictions; compulsory sterilization; segregation to a lifetime of farm work; etc. 
Birth Control Review, April 1932, p. 107

On adultery:
A woman's physical satisfaction was more important than any marriage vow, Sanger believed. 
Birth Control in America, p. 11

On marital sex:
"The marriage bed is the most degenerating influence in the social order,"
Birth Control in America, p. 23
 
On abortion:
"Criminal' abortions arise from a perverted sex relationship under the stress of economic necessity, and their greatest frequency is among married women." 
The Woman Rebel - No Gods, No Masters, May 1914, Vol. 1, No. 3.

On the YMCA and YWCA:
"...brothels of the Spirit and morgues of Freedom!"), 
The Woman Rebel - No Gods, No Masters, May 1914, Vol. 1, No. 3.

On the Catholic Church's view of contraception:
"...enforce SUBJUGATION by TURNING WOMAN INTO A MERE INCUBATOR." 
The Woman Rebel - No Gods, No Masters, May 1914, Vol. 1, No. 3.

On motherhood:
"I cannot refrain from saying that women must come to recognize there is some function of womanhood other than being a child-bearing machine." 
What Every Girl Should Know, by Margaret Sanger (Max Maisel, Publisher, 1915)

This article has been amended by Mikiverse Politics from the original article created by Diane S. Dew. Copyright © 2001 Diane S. Dew www.dianedew.com
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EUGENICS: COMPULSORY STERILIZATION IN FIFTY AMERICAN STATES

Originally published in The Mikiverse on the 8/3/10, it has now been relocated to Mikiverse Politics.
July 16, 2012.
From: http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/
American eugenics refers inter alia to compulsory sterilization laws adopted by over 30 states that led to more than 60,000 sterilizations of disabled individuals. Many of these individuals were sterilized because of a disability: they were mentally disabled or ill, or belonged to socially disadvantaged groups living on the margins of society. American eugenic laws and practices implemented in the first decades of the twentieth century influenced the much larger National Socialist compulsory sterilization program, which between 1934 and 1945 led to approximately 350,000 compulsory sterilizations and was a stepping stone to the Holocaust. Even after the details of the Nazi sterilization program (as well as its role as a precursor to the "Euthanasia" murders) became more widely known after World War II (and which the New York Times had reported on extensively and in great detail even before its implementation in 1934), sterilizations in some American states did not stop. Some states continued to sterilize residents into the 1970s.

While Germany has taken important steps to commemorate the horrors of its past, including compulsory sterilization (however belatedly), the United States arguably has not when it comes to eugenics. For some states, there still is a paucity of reliable studies that show how and where sterilizations occurred. Hospitals, asylums, and other places where sterilizations were performed have so far typically chosen not to document that aspect of their history. Moreover, until now there has never been a website providing an easily accessible overview of American eugenics for all American states.

This site provides such an overview. For each state for which information is available (see below), there is a short account of the number of victims (based on a variety of data sources), the known period during which sterilizations occurred, the temporal pattern of sterilizations and rate of sterilization, the passage of law(s), groups indentified in the law, the prescribed process of the law, precipitating factors and processes that led up a state’s sterilization program, the groups targeted and victimized, other restrictions placed on those identified in the law or with disabilities in general, major proponents of state eugenic sterilization, “feeder institutions” and institutions where sterilizations were performed, and opposition to sterilization. A short bibliography is also provided.

While this research project was initially intended to give short accounts for each state, it quickly moved beyond this goal. For those states for which detailed monograph-length studies are availabe, it merely summarizes existing scholarship, but for other states for which such information is not readily available, it establishes the core parameters within which a state's eugenic sterilizations were carried out. As part of this research the current state of the facilities where sterilizations occurred or that served as feeder institutions is addressed.

This research brought into relief one particular piece of information that might not be known even to the specialists in the field. In Nazi Germany, during the peak years of sterilization between 1934 and 1939, approximately 75-80 sterilizations occurred per year per 100,000 residents. In Delaware, during the peak period of sterilizations (late 1920s to late 1930s), the rate was 18, about one fourth to one fifth of Germany's during its peak period, or half of Bavaria’s in 1936.^[1] While the difference in the sterilization rate for a totalitarian regime with a federal sterilization law soon to commit mass murder on a historically unprecedented scale and a democratically governed state in a democratic nation remains significant,^[2] it is much smaller than one might perhaps expect.

Contributions to this project were made by sophomore honors students at the University of Vermont as part of an Honors College course on Disability as Deviance. These students wrote up the primary accounts, which were then edited and amended by Lutz Kaelber, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Vermont, who is solely responsible for its contents and any errors or omissions. Research that went into this project was supported in parts by grants of the College of Arts and Science’s Dean’s Office and the Center for Teaching and Learning, and by funds of the University of Vermont's Honors College.

Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois

Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana

Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island

South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

Comments or questions? Email:

Link to "Eugenics" and Nazi "Euthanasia" Crimes gateway page.

Stories about this site and project: UVM Today, 03/04/2009; Honors College Newletter, 03/24/2009
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^[1] Calculations based on available population figures. For Bavaria's number of sterilizations, see Max Spindler, Dieter Albrecht, and Alois Schmid, eds. 2003. Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte. Munich: Beck, pp. 551-2. For additional comparison: The Canadian province of Alberta's rate was about 9 during its peak period of eugenic sterilizations between 1929 and 1939 (Grekul, Jana, Harvey Krahn, and Dave Odynak. 2004. "Sterilizing the 'Feeble-Minded': Eugenics in Alberta, 1929-1972." Journal of Historical Sociology 17, 4, p. 377).^[2]Apart from its link to genodical policy, the Nazi sterilization policy remain unique insofar as "only here was compulsion applied so consistently; nowhere else a bureaucracy existed that was as comprehensive and efficient in its racial hygiene; and only here eugenics was theoretically and practically integrated into a centralized and institutionalized racial policy" (Michael Schwartz. 2008. " Eugenik und 'Euthanasie': Die internationale Debatte und Praxis bis 1933/45." In Tödliche Medizin im Nationalsozialismus: Von der Rassenhygiene zum Massenmord, ed. Klaus-Dietmar Henke. Cologne: Böhlau, p. 90).