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This is truly disturbing:
Abortion Soars in Quest for Perfect Babies
Those with conditions that can usually be corrected medically - such as deformed feet and cleft lips and palates - are instead being terminated.
And the number of abortions of Down's syndrome babies now outstrips live births, despite the fact that those with the condition can live a long and fulfilling life.
'These figures are symptomatic of a eugenic trend of the consumerist society hell-bent on obliterating deformity - and at what cost to its own humanity? ' said ethicist Jacqueline Laing, of London Metropolitan University. 'We are obliterating the willingness of people to accept disability. Babies are required to fit a description of normality before they are allowed to be born.'
Doctors say improvements in technology, such as ultra-sound and blood tests, have helped increase the number of babies diagnosed with abnormality before birth. But a number are disturbed that abortions are being carried out on the grounds of the baby's serious disability when in fact it has a correctable condition such as feet abnormality or cleft lip.
Campaigner Patrick Cusworth said: 'Such statistics are an indictment of a society which places a conditional value upon its citizens, based upon how "useful" they may prove to be in later life.'
It's not enough to kill a child because you don't want the burden of raising it, now you can kill them if you don't like the way they'll look. I mean seriously, a cleft palate??
It should come as no big surprise that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a rabid eugenicist. In her "A Plan for Peace," she writes:
c. to keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.
d. to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.
...
Having corralled this enormous part of our population and placed it on a basis of health instead of punishment, it is safe to say that fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense---defending the unborn against their own disabilities.
She wasn't just talking about people with defects:
In November 1921 the review issued a clarion call: "Birth control, to create a race of thoroughbreds." Sanger suggested that parents should "apply for babies as immigrants have to apply for visas." By 1925, she was a true convert to eugenics, setting up birth control clinics in poor neighborhoods populated by "Latins" and "Slavs" (both groups heavily Catholic) and "Hebrews" - groups she had targeted as threats because of their increasing numbers. She spoke of those who were "irresponsible and reckless," among them those "whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers."
Eugenicists like Sanger concluded that the poor were both stupid and immoral, fueling campaigns for sterilization during the Depression. (By 1932, 27 states had compulsory sterilization laws.)
The philosophy that some people are better off dead or not being born - not only for their own sakes but for the sake of others - remains alive and well. Bigotry and racism still compete for followers and manifest themselves in programs from "racial cleansing" to eugenic abortion. As one example, Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, one of Sanger's contemporary disciples, lauds abortion for lowering the numbers of children born with Down's syndrome and insists on more funding for Planned Parenthood and its policies.
Sanger's legacy, Planned Parenthood, continues to target minority and poor neighborhoods with its school-based and other programs. U.S. abortion kills proportionately more black babies than white. Planned Parenthood also exports its elitist population control programs to the Third World.
70 percent of the clinics operated by Planned Parenthood in the U.S. are in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. For every three black babies born, two are aborted. Forty-three percent of all abortions in the U.S. are performed on black women.
Some abort because the life of the mother in is danger, a legitimate decision, though I imagine heartbreaking nonetheless.
Others abort because the child gets in the way of their life, why be burdened with responsibility for your actions. Some because they want a better baby, they hope to have better luck next time. Some have an ideological devotion to "population control," which means that non-whites should stop having so many damn kids. With all these justifications to pick from, no wonder it's called pro-choice.
I have flat feet and asthma, I wonder if one day the societal consensus will be that I shouldn't have been born, that my drugs to breathe are an undue burden.
Posted by Owen at June 2, 2004 06:34 PM | TrackBackAbortion aside, I am always suspicious of those "more blacks and hispanics than whites suffer from X" type of statistics. I think the real relationship here may be between ((economic class and X) and (economic class and skin color)), not directly between (skin color and X). Sadly, poverty is not distributed unilaterally in our country.
Eugenics-wise, I believe that the core of eugenics (and the part that makes it so abhorrent) is all the forced sterilization and pre-arranged matings (not really marriages); i.e., eugenics is a global system which would be instituted and enforced by the state. Abortion is something that individuals choose to practice on their own. Thus, it's not eugenics, because the state does not force it on its citizens (last time I checked, anyway).
Also, "population control" means "all of us should stop having so many kids, because our planet is limited in surface area". It has nothing to do with skin color; in fact, the Chinese government institutes a strict policy of population control, even though all of its citizens are Chinese (and there are lots of them, too). Contraceptives are actually the major component of population control, and in the US, they are available to anyone who can afford them (and they're not that expensive).
As for my personal beliefs, I think that abortion/no-abortion is not a clear-cut choice (yes conservatives, this means you, and yes liberals, this also means you). I don't think a fertilized cell counts as a child (because then my skin cells would count as siblings), but I also don't think that there's no upper limit to it (because then you could strangle babies with impunity). On the far right side of the spectrum there are the traditional Catholics and Jews, who don't even believe in contraceptives; Owen is somewhere closer to the middle, because he (apparently) believes that the mother's life is more important than the embryo's. I have heard many arguments from all sides, and none of them convinced me -- in the end, they all amounted to religious faith, be it Christian or political.
Seeing as there is no possible way, in principle, to reconcile different kinds of faith (or some other baseless conviction), I think that the door to abortion should be at least left open, and contraceptives should still be commercially available. We already have many more unwanted children than parents willing to adopt, after all.
Posted by: Bugmaster at June 2, 2004 07:37 PM1. Population control is default against non-whites. Whites have fallen below replacement levels, we're dying off. About the China example, it's one example, fair enough, but even it's not really working. In the countryside they often have more than one child. On a sidenote, because of this policy, those that adhere to it often want a boy not a girl, so they end up killing girls after they're born.
2. The Malthusian proposal that we're running out of space is flat out wrong, at least in the sense of the near future. We have plenty of room to expand into. The current estimates (as of my 2001 geography class) are that the Earth can sustain 10 billion people. Constant technological improvements push that number up. Furthermore, once a country industrializes, they tend to slip below the replacement rate - ie. what happened to Europe. It's likely that the same will happen to India, China, etc....
In short, there is no "population problem." However, it may be the case that there is a "consumption problem" based on our excessive Western lifestyle.
3. Eugenics can be enforced by the state, but if society as a whole decided that only babies with such and such characteristic should be born, I would classify it as eugenics. Take, for example GATTACA, where the government didn't explicitly forbid free births. Do you not see a problem in our consumerist society turning on ourselves, so that we try to pick and choose the perfect children.
4. You're definition would classify parentally arranged marriages as eugenics, I think that's a bit of a stretch. Admittedly, there's a bit of selection inherent in picking a mate, be it by yourself or through you're parents. But it's usually done for purposes of power and ability to raise a child, not out of the attributes that would be imparted to the child, as is the case in eugenics.
5. From what I've heard, there are actually more parents wanting children than babies available for adoption. It's true that certain babies are not as wanted, ie. those with severe disabilities, but on the whole, I've heard it's very difficult to adopt a baby. I'll look around on the net for some figures, though.
Posted by: owen at June 2, 2004 08:00 PM1. Owen's remarks are justifiable. However, we can judge something according to exogenous standards. For example, we can judge who should get education or a haircut or a lube job by more than who needs education, a haircut, or a lube job (respectively). Thus, although the immediate impact of population control may be anti-white (whatever this means), it can be justified on other grounds.
2. I side with Owen on this one. In college I took an interesting class about why Malthus was wrong (it was from a Marxist perspective). Moreover, those who predict global doom can only do so by keeping the current technological variables unchanged.
3. Owen makes much sense. The problems of designer eugenics reveals the larger problem with utilitarianism without rights-talk. We need arbitrary baselines so as to protect ourselves from our own passions.
4. Bugmaster seems more justified. There is no necessary limit to what we consider "eugenical." If humans intentionally do something to affect its genetic pool then it is "eugenical."
5. I'm skeptical of Owen's adoption claim. Although it may be correct for white American babies, it certainly isn't correct for kids from poor countries. However, Owen may be on to something: we should do as much as possible to allow demand to match up with supply. Thus, Richard Posner's argument for a baby market makes much sense.
Posted by: Grant at June 3, 2004 01:22 AM1. Wait a minute... Are you saying that population control is bad because it reduces the number of white people ? So, if the situation was reversed, and white people were breeding more than blacks, it would be ok ? Just checking. China-wise, you're right about the countryside and parents killing their own kids. My take on it is that this is what happens when you have a totalitarian government, massive overpopulation, and the resulting poverty, all in one place.
2. I think you should go to India, or Africa, or yes, China, and tell them that all their problems stem from our overconsumptive Western lifestyle -- and that the reason they have mass famine and poverty. Oh, and the reason that our society keeps population under control is, IMO, the fact that we have contraceptives widely available, and education in place that tells people how to use them. Furthermore, I think it would be disingenious of you to claim that we can fit an infinite population onto the Earth. Yes, we could theoretically turn the entire planet into a Coruscant-esque metropolis, but a). who wants to live like that ?, and b). that's still finite.
3. I was under the impression that in GATTACA, the whole genetic perfection deal was enforced by the state. In fact, that's why they had all that gene police enforcing it, right ? Oh, and also, I don't know what you mean by "do you not see a problem in our consumerist society turning on ourselves"; when I hear "consumerist society", I always think of New Age hippies who coined that term (well, or they adopted it, whatever). I don't respect them.
4. I would absolutely classify arranged marriages as eugenics, as long as they were arranged by the state with the goal of breeding a whiter race or whatever. I think we agree on this one.
5. I'll wait for the figures; I've never tried adopting anyone (not even a kitten), so I don't have first-hand experience.
Posted by: Bugmaster at June 3, 2004 04:08 AM1. I think Grant and I agree on this one.
2. Marx vs Malthus. Round one. Fight ! Grant is right about technological variables, but the problem is that they are constant in many countries, especially thirld-world ones.
3. I am not sure how you can even argue against utilitarianism (or any other moral system) without first presupposing that your own moral system is correct. This would be an interesting discussion, but totally out of scope for this thread.
4. I guess my writing was too unclear, sorry. I think that what makes eugenics, er, well, eugenics is the fact that the state enforces it. For example, when some white hicks decide to only marry other white hicks to keep the race pure, that's just random prejudice; when the state tells you to only marry white people, it's eugenics.
5. What's this baby market you speak of ? Remember, there are some uneducated masses here (that's yours truly), so you'll have to provide links or quotes if you want to name-drop effectively.
Posted by: Bugmaster at June 3, 2004 04:20 AM