Text 8846, 92 rader
Skriven 2005-02-08 13:49:34 av EARL CROASMUN (1:10/345)
     Kommentar till en text av VERN HUMPHREY
Ärende: Re: Unborn
==================
I accept the fact that you sincerely believe the things you are saying
in this thread. But no credible history of eugenics has Sanger as
anything more than a minor figure in the later stages of the movement,
and several make no mention of her at all.  Kevles, Ludmerer, Hasian,
Haller, and others have covered the subject pretty solidly.  Since you
are discussing the "popularizing" of eugenics, the Hasian book with its
extensive research of magazines and newspapers of the time is especially
useful.  But none of them agree with you.

-> EC>My above-quoted paragraph pretty directly disproves that.  It was
-> EC>"popular" long before Sanger became well-known for her extensive work on
-> EC>birth control, let alone her occasional mention of eugenics.  How can
-> EC>anyone think she "popularized" it in comparison to people such as Oliver
-> EC>Wendell Holmes or Theodore Roosevelt?

-> Holmes ruled on it, in a case involving supposedly "feeble minded"
-> people.  But far more people knew of Margaret Sanger,

Utterly untrue.  People who had heard of Sanger at all between 1914 and
1926 knew of her as a birth control advocate who opened clinics, lobbied
state legislatures for legalization of birth control, and occasionally
got arrested for mailing "obscene" literature.  One had to dig through
her work in low-circulation places to even FIND her views on eugenics!

The Supreme Court ruling, on the other hand, was national and
international news.  And it had the force of law behind it.  Heck, in
one short phrase ("three generations of imbeciles...") Holmes made a
larger and longer-lasting imprint on the public consciousness than
EVERYTHING Sanger EVER said on the subject!  And he didn't just "rule"
on it: he enthusiastically endorsed the underlying theory in an official
ruling by the United States Supreme Court.

-> and she was a
-> committed activist -- as Holmes and Roosevelt were not.

She was a committed activist who occasionally made comments on eugenics.
Where in the WORLD do you get the idea that Theodore Roosevelt was not a
"committed activist?"  Although he did not originate the concept of
"race suicide," he gave it national popularity in major speeches and in
articles in some of the biggest magazines of the day!  Even if he had
done nothing else, his popularization of that phrase did more to
"popularize" eugenics than anything Sanger ever said or did.  But he did
much more, such as publicly advocating sterilization and immigration
controls based on eugenical concepts -- while a sitting President of the
United States!  And this was a decade before anyone had even HEARD of
Sanger!

-> EC>And the earlier claim was that the NAZIs got their eugenics ideas from
-> EC>her.  That belief is even more absurd, since many of the early American
-> EC>eugenists (pre-dating Sanger's minor fame) got THEIR ideas from German
-> EC>eugenists such as Ploetz.  Later on the legal and ethical justifications
-> EC>were bolstered by the 1920 book by Binding and Hoche, both Germans.

-> That part is true -- but the Germans did know of her and read her ideas.

I'm sure they read many things and knew of many people, including the
various US states that passed sterilization laws and the various court
rulings on them.  Sanger would be a minor footnote at best.
Baden-Powell and the Boy Scout movement would have been a bigger and
more relevant matter for them to follow.

But they would have been much more likely to read her ideas on the whole
idea of who controls the decision-making, since her basic message was
that women should decide how many or how few times they should get
pregnant, whereas the German policy was that women had an obligation to
have more babies to make the nation stronger.  She was in direct
opposition to their (and Roosevelt's) beliefs along those lines.

-> EC>-> Sanger was to eugenics what Darwin was to Spencerianism.  He didn't
-> EC>-> invent it, but his writings make it possible.

-> EC>Factually and historically incorrect.  In the '20s and '30s, Sanger was
-> EC>an extremely minor figure in the eugenics movement.  That minor role has
-> EC>been grossly inflated in the last twenty years, by propagandists who
-> EC>want to attack her beliefs on birth control indirectly by attaching her
-> EC>to a now-unpopular idea that a large part of the American and
-> EC>international population believed in before they ever HEARD of Margaret
-> EC>Sanger.

-> I agree that her role in birth control was larger than her support for
-> eugenics, but her contribution was tying the two together.

Nonsense.  Eugenics was "popularized" before anyone outside of New York
labor and socialist circles had ever HEARD of Sanger.  Eugenics was
discussed in the leading magazines of the day.  It was taught in
schools.  It was displayed in exhibits at county fairs and state
fairs across the country.  And the relationship between contraception
and eugenics had been discussed for decades -- predating even Roosevelt
and going back to the 19th century European Neo-Malthusians!

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