And well, here's Sanger:
Choosing to believe the best of people, I don't think Sanger means to be patently offensive in her speech. It seems that she instead passionately believes that children should not come into this world, but that the world be properly prepared to care for them.
I mean, how many people, including myself, have said, "You ought to have a license to be a parent."?
But her suggestions would limit the birth of children only to the well born, and while we'd all like the silver spoon, it's hard not to think that something would be irreversibly lost in that scenario. I mean, by her suggestions there would be no more stories of plucky souls overcoming difficult beginnings, and we do love rags to riches stories.
I find her term "sub normal," particularly offensive - especially when it's only been a recent development that adequate care and education has led the realization that many children with disorders don't need to be institutionalized, that just need different care. Not to mention the tone the term takes on given the technology that is now being used to test and select embryos for implantation.
She and I can at least agree that government involvement is a bad, bad idea.
I guess it takes some amount of stick-to-it-tiveness to promote an idea and new society which Sanger had to have known would never take root - the ultimate impossible pipe dream - a place where all was well for every child, and every parent free to enjoy it.
She probably would have gained more ground, and being better remembered had she promoted adoption, better pre-natal health care, better parent education, and better education for all children.
10.13.2008
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3 comments:
I am sub normal.
Let there be no doubt, Sanger is evil. She believed in among other things: socialism, if not communism; "free love"; eugenics as later practiced by Germanys's Nazis and abortion. In other words, she had the moral character of a turnip and she and I could not be more different with respect to our regard for life. Having qualified my comments and biases, she was closer to the truth than you. I think she was trained as a nurse and actually believed in pre-natal care and health programs. She quickly learned the futility of these efforts. If you doubt the accuracy of her 1925 description of the human condition, look at it's accuracy in 2008. In fact I think I could make a good argument for reopening the asylums and stop using our penal system to control mental illness. The real difference I have with Sanger is her willingness to not only destroy "sub normal" life but to destroy all life since she realizes that life begins at conception. As long as it ain't me or mine I see nothing wrong with forced sterilization and asylums. I also disagree with your implication that in vitro procedures are acceptable or moral. Finally lest you doubt Sanger's wisdom, I urge you to review Acorns current voter registration efforts.
I was really surprised to see you confront Sanger. Now you can take a deep breath and get back to the other speeches. I don’t know why this one stymied you so but congratulations on your perseverance.
Perhaps because she wasn’t very effective relatively speaking, .I have never been able to work up to the level of passion and dislike that some have for this woman. I think this woman started out just seeing a problem and working to find a solution.
In her own family, she had ample experience with the problems incurred when there is no family planning. She was born in 1879 into a devout Roman Catholic family. Her own mother had 18 pregnancies resulting in 11 live births. Parishioners then didn’t look on the teachings of the church as suggestions; they actually lived their lives according to those principles from diet to birth control. Working in the slums of New York, she undoubtedly believed that if women only knew how to prevent pregnancy, there would be no more unwanted, unloved and unhealthy children. If women were only able to control this aspect of their lives, they would be able to control other parts of their lives. And so she tried to educate women about contraception. She was jailed for even giving women printed material about birth control. Opposed to her were husbands, the Catholic Church and the government. Women were afraid, economically dependent and bound to their husbands by law and custom.
In this speech I was really struck by the imagery of the train station and train after train of children arriving. The picture in my head was like the mop buckets in Fantasia; no matter what you do they just keep coming. She keeps trying to educate the women and she keeps getting put in jail and still the babies keep coming. She keeps pushing education and contraception up the hill. It is an exercise in futility and reaching the top of the hill in frustration she begins the slide down the other side. If education is not enough, let’s examine other options. Having identified the problem, she proceeds to more and more radical solutions. Education and accessibility of contraceptives don’t solve the problem; so up the ante. Pregnancies can be aborted and sterilization ensures no more pregnancies. It is just another step down the line to take the decision away from the individual and give it to someone else. When you get to this point, you have gone around the bend because surely everyone knows in a free society, this is impossible. Who would make the choices, what is the criteria and who is in charge.
She would be sad today to see that now when contraception and sex education is so accessible, we still have too many unwanted and unloved children.
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