Deadly Medicine

A couple of weeks ago I visited the Oklahoma City Science Museum and viewed a traveling exhibit they have entitled, Deadly Medicine. It is all about eugenics. For lack of a better term eugenics could be described as a science, though it’s a sinister idea that seems undeserving of the title of science. Basically, eugenics involves the process of creating a “master race” by encouraging many children among the desired race of people and discouraging and even killing the offspring of undesirables. Who are the undesirables you may ask? Well, that’s entirely at the whim of the leader making the decisions.

A huge focus of this particular exhibit was the Nazi regime. Hitler’s policies were on display. It was very saddening, but quite interesting to read about all the steps he took to produce genetically flawless Germans. There were rules concerning who was allowed to marry who based solely on the heritage of the individuals. A German certainly could not marry a full blood Jew. He was disallowed from marrying a half Jew. If I remember correctly, a German could only marry if they could prove full German blood for four generations previous. Even someone with only partial Jewish blood could not marry a full blood Jew. For those families who could prove their German heritage, mothers were given medals when they bore a particular number of children. I saw a picture of a proud German grandmother showing her golden medal that symbolized her birth of twelve or more children.

There was a huge push to eliminate any genetic disability. Those with mental disabilities were labeled as “feeble minded” and either forcibly sterilized or simply killed. The exhibit made a brief mention of eugenics right here in the borders of America. The famous Supreme Court decision Buck v. Bell was exposed as an American eugenics policy whereby the mentally disabled could be forcibly sterilized against their will. Speaking for the majority, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared,

“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind… Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Carrie Buck was the first person to be forcibly sterilized in the United States under this decision. Eugenics was also the reason for laws passed that forbad interracial marriage. The exhibit mentioned Virginia’s law against this passed in 1927.

For those who’ve never been exposed to this type of information, this exhibit was a huge eye opener. Yet, the real missing link in this exhibit was the link between abortion and eugenics. Dr. Josef Mengele was the most active of the SS doctors at Auschwitz. Mengele routinely conducted experiments on humans. After the war, Josef Mengele practiced medicine in Buenos Aires in the 1950’s. He had a reputation as a specialist in abortions, which were illegal at the time.
Not all former Nazi doctors set up shop outside the borders of the United States. Villis Kruze was a former SS officer who, after the war, worked as an abortionist for Kaiser Permenente in Ohio and Hawaii.

One thing that the exhibit did not mention was that abortion was legalized in Germany in 1933 under the Third Reich. There were approximately 500,000 abortions annually in a country of 60 to 70 million people. In Nazi Germany, the “health of the mother” could refer to racial “health.” By definition, a Jewish or black mother was considered racially “unhealthy.” This is very interesting as "health of the mother" is favored loophole used today to try and detooth any pro-life legislation.

The biggest of all omissions in this exhibit, however, was the deafening silence in exposing the mother of the American eugenics movement, Margaret Sanger. How you can devote a museum exhibit to eugenics and not bring up Sanger’s name is beyond me. I can think of only two possible reasons for this.

1) This was an exhibit set up by the National Holocaust Museum, and Sanger’s eugenic bent targeted not only Jews, but Southern Europeans, Slavs, Latins, Blacks, Hispanics, Fundamentalists, and Catholics. Basically she was an equal opportunity eugenicist. Every non-Aryan – Red or Yellow, Black or White, all were noxious in her sight.

2) Perhaps the biggest reason that Sanger’s history was not included is that the modern mammoth organization that she formed holds tremendous political power. Planned Parenthood is an international “charitable” organization. There’s a tremendous financial incentive to keep under wraps the racist intentions of their founder, and the racist policies that they continue to advance today.

Margaret Sanger unashamedly called for the elimination of “human weeds,” for the “cessation of charity,” for the segregation of “morons, misfits, and the maladjusted” and for the sterilization of “genetically inferior races.” (Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (New York: Brentano’s, 1922), p. 101.)

Sanger had a particular hatred for blacks. In 1939, she designed a “Negro Project” in which she proposed the following:

“The mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among Whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.” (Madeline Gray, Margaret Sanger: A Biography (New York: Marek, 1979), p. 332)

Her solution , according to the same reference source, was to hire three or four:
“Colored Ministers, preferably with social service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities” to travel to various African-American enclaves and propagandize for birth control.

Commenting on this approach, she reasoned:
“The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the Minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
Sanger’s agenda against African Americans did not die with her. The worldwide organization she established, Planned Parenthood, continues to promote her racist agenda. Today 78% of Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority communities. Blacks make up 12% of the population, but account for 35% of all the abortions in America.

It is vital that we expose Margaret Sanger for who she was, and Planned Parenthood for the evils they continue to employ today. For more information check the sources I have provided in the footnotes above and in the references I have listed below.

References:
http://www.blackgenocide.org/
http://www.blackgenocide.com/
Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood by George Grant, Highland Books, Fourth edition 2000