Category Archives: Eugenics

U.S. Rep. Alma Adams, D-N.C. is seen during a voting rally for in Greensboro, N.C., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

Was Congresswoman Alma Adams arrested for demanding abortion rights? Not really. She was arrested for sitting down in the middle of a busy intersection to block traffic for publicity for abortion. Let me remind you more about Alma Adams.

Congresswoman Adams also served many years in the North Carolina House of Representatives. She was known for support for the victims of the North Carolina Eugenics Program and for her support for any and all abortions. As a result Planned Parenthood gave Representative Adams its honorary Margaret Sanger Award.

It is not well known that in 1967 North Carolina became the second state in the nation (after Colorado) to somewhat liberalize its 1881 abortion law. The main architect of the change was Dr. Wallace Kuralt, the head of Mecklenburg County Social Services. He was the main proponent of involuntary sterilizations in the post war era. The North Carolina program lasted until the early 70s. Kuralts eugenics orientation was the principal rationale for the 1967 liberalization of abortion law.

Margaret Sanger was the main proponent of eugenics in the U.S. as well as contraception. But Margaret Sanger wrote against abortion in her 1920 book The American Woman.

In 2011 during debate on the Womans Right to Know Act, Rep. Adams made a passionate speech against women having the right to know the truth about abortion. I asked a Page to deliver to Rep. Adams, after her speech, a copy of Sangers 1920 Essay opposing abortion. She paced around looking very angry.

Now in the United States House of Representatives, Congresswoman Adams just voted for a bill that goes way beyond even Roe v. Wade. She and all but one Democratic member have taken a position supported by only 10-15% of North Carolina voters.

Has she cancelled her Margaret Sanger award yet?

Paul Stam was the Majority Leader of the North Carolina House in 2011 and Speaker Pro Tem in 2013-2016. He practices law in Apex. For more information http://www.paulstam.info.

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STAM: Alma Adams, eugenics and radical abortion The North State Journal - North State Journal

Op-Ed: Policymakers must follow frameworks that dismantle systems and institutions that are incompatible with all life, especially the lives of Black women.

EDITORS NOTE: Hear Us is a column series that features experts of color and their insights on issues related to the economy and racial justice. We acknowledge that the series title does not honor the experience of Deaf people, so were revisiting the columns name so as to not uphold audism. Follow the series here and at #HearUs4Justice.

WRITERS NOTE: Throughout this op-ed, I use the terms disabled people and people with disabilities interchangeably. The use of identity-first language honors the linguistic shift that self-advocates within the disability community have ushered in over the past years, while affirming that our community is not a monolith and each of us has a right to self-identify as we so choose.

Todays COVID crisis leaves no doubt that U.S. policymakers continue to view disabled people as disposable. The unfathomable loss of life over the last two and a half years is the outcome of policy choices rooted in organized abandonment and eugenics.

The COVID crisis is a mass disabling event, and its a stark reminder of the profound consequences when policymakers ignore ableisms central role in maintaining economic and racial oppression. Advocates of Disability Justice (DJ) a framework created by disabled queer activists of color have long sounded the alarm on the harms of ableism, an entrenched system that targets disabled people, persecuting and punishing them because their bodies and minds dont uphold socially constructed norms. DJ represents a point of departure from the solely rights-based and single-issue focuses of the past, advancing instead an intersectional and collective vision for liberation and justice.

As too many people still yearn to return to normal a time marked by deep inequities made worse by COVID, and in which our economy and society only worked for the powerful, non-disabled, wealthy and white few it is crucial that we confront ableism in ways that center those most harmed by its reach. This is an especially important consideration for those of us working to break free from the shackles of white supremacy and capitalism.

July 26, is National Disability Independence Day, honoring the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into law in 1990. As societal pressures and state interests have redefined the legal bounds of disability over time, the primary issue that policymakers, organizers, and advocates must contend with remains the same: who wields power and who is rendered powerless by systems and policies in place.

Thirty-two years after the ADAs passage, Black disabled women remain disproportionately burdened by the preservation and justification of ableist oppression.

The Entanglement of Disability, Race, and Gender

The legal classification of disability in the US has always been tied to ones ability to produce labor, which is itself heavily racialized and gendered. This, of course, goes all the way back to the legitimization of chattel slavery. From the antebellum period to today, tools of social control, including pathologization and medicalization, have been wielded to structurally marginalize certain groups in service of the economic and political interests of the predominantly white, wealthy few in power. The resulting matrix of mass institutionalization, eugenics, and criminalization continues to marginalize disabled Black women today, causing toxic stress and premature death.

As noted above, our governments eugenic response to COVID has accelerated the rising prevalence of disability in the U.S. In 2021, 1.2 million more people identified as having a disability compared to 2020. Much like race, the incidence of disability is more heavily concentrated in certain geographic areas and within specific communities. Consistently, Black people as a whole have rates of disability up to 2.5 times greater than white people.

Additionally, only 27% of working-age Black disabled women had a job in 2020, which is especially alarming when juxtaposed to white women with disabilities and white disabled men at 33.7 percent and 40.3 percent, respectively. In the same year, 25% of Black adults with disabilities lived in poverty, compared to 14% of white disabled adults. Disabled people as a whole are shut out of the paid labor economy at extraordinarily high rates, with Black disabled women especially affected. And because the state rations access to healthcare and other life-sustaining resources by employment status, the consequences of such economic disenfranchisement are life-altering. Even when Black disabled workers are able to access the labor market, they are met with pay inequity (among other injustices), receiving only 68 cents for every dollar earned by white workers with no disability.

Ableist oppression reaches far past the workplace. Prisoners at the state and federal levels are about 2.5 times as likely as the general adult population to report having a disability or chronic illness. In this domain too, Black women are especially harmed as they are more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts. People with mental health disabilities, Black women in particular, face constant risk of involuntary institutionalization, showing one way that carcerality and surveillance extend beyond the walls of prisons and jails.

Together, these policy arrangements cast Black disabled people and their lives as expendable. Similar to the Black Women Best (BWB) framework, Disability Justice (DJ) serves as a point of departure from single-issue advocacy. Jointly applied, these frameworks have the potential to disrupt the drivers and consequences of ableist systems, including economic domination and exploitation. It should be noted that DJ centers the liberatory possibilities of community organizing and grassroots movement-building, but its 10 core principles offer a pathway toward transformative policymaking too.

Disability Justice and Black Women Best

Disabled people, Black women in particular, deserve to thrive. The DJ framework acknowledges the innate value of human life and, in line with BWB, holds a vision born out of collective struggle, as stated by Patty Berne and elevated by Sins Invalid. As Bernes working draft on Disability Justice further explains, central to DJ is the understanding that:

All bodies are unique and essential.

All bodies have strengths and needs that must be met.

We are powerful, not despite the complexities of our bodies, but because of them.

All bodies are confined by ability, race, gender, sexuality, class, nation-state, religion, and more, and we cannot separate them.

At minimum, DJ and BWB policymaking must unconditionally provide access to the life-giving resources and community-rooted care that we all need and deserve. By centering Black women, we are better positioned to craft policies capable of facilitating such transformative change for all marginalized groups. Additionally, complementary policy measures must be taken, including those that divest from criminalization and surveillance; disrupt and reverse the capture of public goods by private interests; and meaningfully include and center Black disabled women in the ideation, design, and implementation of DJ and BWB policy.

Abolitionist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore reflects that where life is precious, life is precious. To dismantle all policies that are, by design, incompatible with all life, BWB must be jointly applied with DJ. When Black disabled womens lives and their needs are viewed as precious and protected as such then everyones lives and needs will no longer be controlled by the oppressive people and systems that deny us the collective space to not just live, but thrive.

Azza Altiraifi is the senior policy manager at Liberation in a Generation.

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Moving from Rights to Justice: Uprooting Ableism and Cultivating Disability Justice - Next City

When the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade on 24 June, permitting the state criminalisation of abortion in America, the only thing everyone could agree on was that it was a historic decision. Unfortunately for America, the history it was based on was largely fake. The ruling, Dobbs v Jackson Womens Health Organization, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, claims that in reversing Roe v Wade, the court restores the US to an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment [that] persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973, when Roe legalised abortion. This assertion, however, is easily disproven.As historians have exhaustively explained, early American common law (as in Britain) generally permitted abortions until quickening, or perceptible foetal movement, usually between 16 to 20 weeks into a pregnancy. Connecticut was the first state to ban abortion after quickening, in 1821, which is roughly two centuries after the earliest days of American common law. It was not until the 1880s that every US state had some laws restricting abortion, and not until the 1910s that it was criminalised in every state. In the wake of Dobbs, social media was awash with examples from 18th- and 19th-century newspapers that clearly refuted Alitos false assertion, sharing examples of midwives and doctors legally advertising abortifacients, Benjamin Franklins at-home abortion remedies, and accounts of 19th-century doctors performing therapeutic (medically necessary) abortions.

Dobbss inaccurate claims about the history of US abortion law is one of many reasons why it is so controversial. It is arguably the most divisive ruling since 1857, when the supreme court found that Dred Scott, who had been enslaved and was suing for his freedom, had no standing in US federal courts as a Black man. The Dred Scott decision was a casus belli of the US civil war four years later, and there are many reasons to fear that Dobbs could prove as divisive.

Another proximate cause of the civil war was the Fugitive Slave Act, which led Harriet Beecher Stowe to write what was until 1936 the most popular American novel ever, Uncle Toms Cabin, condemning the cruelty of slavery and the insanity of the fugitive slave laws. The Fugitive Slave Act impelled states to return enslaved humans to their enslavers, even if they were residing in free states that did not recognise slavery, and financially incentivised remanding people into slavery. It was this division that prompted Lincoln to give his famous house divided speech, saying that a nation could not endure half-slave and half-free: because an individuals human rights were drastically changing from state to state. Dobbs has created for pregnant women an analogous situation to the fugitive slave laws, with the bounty hunter laws it has permitted in states like Idaho and Texas, where women may be prosecuted by the state in which they reside for obtaining an abortion beyond its borders. It will create legal chaos, triggering inter-state conflict, as fights over extradition and a states legal rights beyond its own borders will certainly erupt once more.

But there is yet another, less well-known cause for all this in civil-war era America. Although most people today assume that anti-abortion laws were motivated by moral or religious beliefs about a foetuss right to life, that is far from the whole story. In fact, the first wave of anti-abortion laws were entangled in arguments about nativism, eugenics and white supremacism, as they dovetailed with a cultural panic that swept the US in the late 19th and early 20th century as a result of the vast changes in American society wrought by the conflict. This panic was referred to at the time in shorthand as race suicide.

The increasing traction today of the far-right great replacement theory, which contends that there is a global conspiracy to replace white people with people of colour, and has explicitly motivated white supremacist massacres in the US, is often said to have originated with a French novel called The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail. Published in 1973, the same year that Roe v Wade enshrined American womens rights to reproductive autonomy, it is a dystopian account of swarthy hordes of immigrants sweeping in and destroying western civilisation. But there were many earlier panics over white extinction, and in the US, debates around abortion have been entangled with race panic from the start. The fight to criminalise abortion may have successfully passed itself off as a moral crusade, but its origins are rooted in a political one.The idea of race suicide was popularised in the early 20th century largely by Theodore Roosevelt, who urged white women to have more babies to protect native American society against diminishing birth rates. He harangued Americans that intentional childlessness rendered people guilty of being criminals against the race. Roosevelt gave speeches declaring: I believe in children. I want to see enough of them and of the right kind.

The Dobbs opinion explicitly rejects arguments that anti-abortion laws were historically motivated by eugenicist nativism, rather than by religious or moral beliefs. It says that the opposition was only able to produce one prominent proponent of the idea that earlier anti-abortion laws were driven by fear that Catholic immigrants were having more babies than Protestants and that the availability of abortion was leading White Protestant women to shirk their maternal duties. Yet even a cursory survey of American discourse a century ago shows how utterly ubiquitous this idea was, as newspapers and lectures and sermons warned that abortion would mean that Catholics and other foreign-born immigrants would outnumber Protestant, native-born Americans. To take just one example among thousands, a 1903 editorial on population statistics noted that the Protestant population of the US was increasing by 8.1% while the Catholic population was increasing by 21.8%. This alarming condition of things was reflected by physicians reporting on the average more than five abortions a month, none of them in Catholic families. The piece was headlined Religion and Race Suicide.

As a concept, race suicide goes back to the aftermath of the civil war. The fundamental problem of primogeniture ensuring the legitimacy of property succession in a male-dominated society had an even nastier twist in a slave society. Under the laws of American slavery, the more children a Black woman produced, the more human capital her enslaver acquired, while the more white children a white woman produced, the more political capital white men accrued in a representative democracy in which only white men voted and made laws on behalf of all white citizens. But the civil war, and the civil rights amendments that followed it, upended the legal foundations for that old racial and gendered hierarchy. They would have to be rebuilt, and controlling Protestant white womens reproduction to ensure the reproduction of the Protestant elite was central to that project.

The war had devastated a generation of white men, with estimates of around 750,000 dead, or 2.5% of the population, as the ratio of white men to women plummeted after the war. White women were gaining self-determination, forcing their way into higher education and professions. (Men were fighting back: as historians have shown, when American male doctors professionalised in the mid-19th century, one of their projects was to hobble the competition by undermining the legitimacy of midwives and nurse practitioners in caring for pregnant women, and assert their sole control over womens reproduction, which included supporting anti-abortion laws, except when under their care.) Contraception and medical standards were improving while urban industrialisation mitigated against the need for large families to work farms. As a result, white Americans fertility rates dropped precipitously across the 19th century, with families having an average of seven children in 1800, falling to four by 1900. A newly emancipated racial underclass was suddenly shifting the nations power structures, even as huge waves of immigration threatened to undermine Anglo-Saxon cultural and political dominance.

Already in existence as a phrase, race suicide rapidly became shorthand for the protection of white purity. The expression was used in the former Confederate states to describe mixed-race marriages: an 1884 editorial railed against anyone who approves of miscegenation for tolerating the great shame and crime of race suicide. It was invoked to restrict Asian immigration: to allow coolie competition,, wrotedeclared a 1900 editorial in baldly racist terms, is to commit race suicide.

Soon spokesmen for the patriarchal class (politicians, physicians, preachers and professors) were making explicit claims about the racial obligations of Protestant adults to sustain their political dominance.

When Roosevelt and other prominent figures such as sociologist Edward A Ross took up the cry, a panic about race suicide began sweeping the nation, as elite Americans explicitly discussed how to maintain their political dominance if their numbers were dwindling. Antirace suicide clubs were formed, as students at Ivy League universities pledged to have no fewer than five children. By 1918, the US armys campaign for sexual hygiene among soldiers included an educational film called Beware of Race Suicide! Meanwhile, editorials across America called for lawmakers to prevent the awful waste of life at present so great due to abortions and stillbirths: and, more important still, to refuse the right of marriage to the hopelessly diseased and unfit. The argument was straightforwardly eugenicist; soon it was shaping bestselling books, such as Madison Grants 1916 The Passing of the Great Race, which Hitler referred to as his bible.

When the resurgent Ku Klux Klan paraded in Louisiana in 1922, they bore banners that read White Supremacy, America First, One Hundred Per Cent American, Race Purity and Abortionists, Beware! People are sometimes confused by the Klans animus against abortionists, or impute it to generalised patriarchal authoritarianism, but it was much more specifically about race purity: white domination can only be maintained by white reproduction.

Along the way, improvements in medical science had revealed the gradual development of a human foetus and eliminated the simpler idea of quickening, as moral and existential questions about the beginnings of human life became more complex. By the late 1920s and 30s, the successful criminalisation of abortion had sent it underground, while purporting to protect the purity of white women. By 1938, abortion had become so synonymous with the phrase that a film about a criminal abortion ring that preys on young women was titled Race Suicide.

In a forgotten 1928 bestseller called Bad Girl, a married young white woman considers an abortion to maintain her freedom; having decided to keep the baby, she casually employs a racist slur in thinking about the Black mothers with whom she will have to share a ward: But I guess you dont care who your neighbours are once the pain starts, she reflects. The same point is made from an anti-racist perspective in Langston Hughess 1936 story Cora Unashamed, in which a white girl dies from the abortion her mother forces her to undergo rather than see her bear the child of a Greek immigrant. Cora, the Black protagonist, although racially and economically subjugated, has at least borne her own illegitimate mixed-race child free of these lethal hypocrisies.

It was the same year Margaret Mitchell published Gone With the Wind, which replaced Uncle Toms Cabin as Americas bestselling novel. It is also, by no coincidence, a tale of slavery and the civil war, although instead of condemning slavery, it defends it and condemns the war that ended it. The plot of Gone With the Wind is driven less by war, however, than by pregnancy and childbirth. Melanie Wilkes narrowly survives her first labour only to die following a later miscarriage. Scarlett miscarries one child, loses a daughter and contemplates a back-alley abortion.

This focus on the dangers of pregnancy for 19th-century women is part of Gone With the Winds white feminism but is also inextricable from its white supremacism. Melanie wont move north after the war because her son would go to school with Yankees and Black children. Wanting her children to bear witness, and to bear power, she teaches them to hate the Yankees, who have set the darkies up to lord it over us, who are robbing us and keeping our men from voting! Scarlett thinks in similar terms when contemplating her plantation Tara, the red earth which would bear cotton for their sons and their sons sons. Meanwhile Rhetts love for the daughter he forcibly stops Scarlett from aborting is more than paternal adoration and displaced love for Scarlett. Mitchell also makes clear that Rhetts devotion to his daughter is a reflection of his dedication to his people his race and his determination not to let them die out.

By 1939, the year Gone With the Wind premiered as a film, the subtext of race suicide had become manifest. Reporting the latest population statistics, a California paper declared the race suicide prophecies we have heard for many years dont seem to have been justified, as theres evidently life in the white race yet.

Fifteen years later, the United States launched into another of its periodic surges of violence in the onward fight for civil rights and a multiracial democracy. Another landmark supreme court ruling, Brown v Board of Education in 1954, desegregated American public schools. In response, social conservatives began setting up private Christian schools, which also happened to be all-white. As late as 1968, evangelicals at a symposium refused to denounce abortion as a sin, citing individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility as justifications for ending a pregnancy. But with the passage of Roe in 1973, the picture altered, as ever more single women began exercising their rights to bodily autonomy. At the same time, the Nixon administration decided to remove the tax-exempt status of segregated white Christian schools, causing leading social conservatives to seek a wedge issue. As historians have shown, archival correspondence reveals they found in abortion a socially acceptable pretext for a battle that would mobilise social conservatives and allow them to fight for white Christian patriarchy as they understood it, reproducing their dominance.

The day after Dobbs revoked American womens right to reproductive autonomy, Republican congresswoman Mary Miller of Illinois publicly thanked Donald Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, for putting on to the court the justices who created the historic victory for white life in the supreme court. She later claimed it was a slip of the tongue, but the crowd cheered nonetheless. Anyone who was startled by this reaction to the injection of race into a decision supposedly about womens rights does not know the history of abortion law in America. It has always been a contest not only over womens reproduction, but also over the reproduction of political power because in a (putatively) representative democracy, power is a function of population. The assault on womens rights is part of the wider move to reclaim the commanding place in society for a small minority of patriarchal white men. And, as Alitos decision shows, where legal precedent and other justifications cannot be found, myth will fill the vacuum.

The Wrath to Come: Gone With the Wind and the Lies America Tells by Sarah Churchwell will be published by Head of Zeus on 4 August.

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Body politics: the secret history of the US anti-abortion movement - The Guardian

Tuesday, July 26, 2022 17:30

ABC has chosen Alyssa Farah Griffin as the new permanent co-host of The View to fill Meghan McCains vacant seat, sources familiar with the matter tell Fox News Digital. Griffin, who served in the Trump administration as a White House director of strategic communications, was one of several candidates who had served as a repeat guest host in a lengthy audition to become the sole conservative voice on the liberal daytime talk show. A spokesperson for ABC News told Fox News Digital, We do not have a co-host announcement to make at this time. Stay tuned. Fox News Digital also reached out to Griffin for comment. Reports previously indicated that she and Lincoln Project adviser Tara Setmayer were two of the finalists in the homestretch of the decision-making. THE VIEW MOCKED OVER REPORT SHOW IS STRUGGLING TO FIND NEW REPUBLICAN HOST: ANTI-CONSERVATIVE LUNATICS However, a source tells Fox News Digital that a lot of people at ABC wanted the job given to Ana Navarro, a frequent guest host of The View and suggested her candidacy was officially quashed following her controversial comments on CNN last month when she pointed to her own relatives with Down syndrome, autism and other disabilities to defend abortions following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Some critics accused her of essentially promoting eugenics. Another source told Fox News Digital that Navarro is apoplectic that she didnt get the job. Navarro is nominally a Republican but detests her party, openly supporting Democrats and imploring viewers to vote for them. Fox News Digital reached out for comment to one of Navarros representatives. ALYSSA FARAH SAYS GOP IS ON THE WRONG SIDE OF SAME-SEX MARRIAGE ISSUE: SHOULD BE THE EASIEST VOTE Others who have sat in the vacant seat since McCains departure include former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former NBC Sports reporter Michele Tafoya and Daily Blast Live host Lindsey Granger. ABC was long searching for whats been described in reports as a conservative unicorn to fill the vacant seat, someone who has credibility among Republicans but who never promoted election fraud allegations following the 2020 presidential race. Griffin resigned from the Trump White House in December 2020 and has been an outspoken critic of her former boss as well as Republicans broadly, particularly as a View co-host and as a contributor on CNN. THE VIEW GUEST HOST ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN SLAMS STEVE BANNON AS LIAR, SAYS HES CRAZY Critics have accused her of betraying conservative principles and shifting her politics for convenience. She has defended her stances and said she has alienated her own family members with her turn against former President Trump. Variety reported that ABC News will officially announce Griffins new gig in the coming weeks ahead of the 26th season that will air in the fall. It is uncertain, however, whether Griffin can bring the same energy to the famed table of The View as her predecessor did. Meghan McCain joined The View in October 2017 and was widely credited for juicing the shows ratings during the Trump era, particularly for her fiery exchanges with her liberal colleagues like Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg. While she was no fan of Trump following his constant attacks on her late father, Arizona Sen. John McCain, she remained critical of Joe Biden a longtime family friend and liberal Democrats. McCain parted ways with The View a year ago, citing her family based in Washington, D.C., as a large motivator in her decision. In her memoir, McCain said she was the subject of toxic, direct and purposeful hostility by her liberal colleagues in front and behind the cameras. She is now a columnist for the Daily Mail.

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'The View' will tap Alyssa Farah Griffin as permanent co-host following Meghan McCain exit, sources say - FOX Bangor/ABC 7 News and Stories

Pro-life conservative evangelicals erupted into unanimous jubilation at the news of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. But while united in their celebration, they are divided in their vision for the future of the pro-life movement and unaware of its past.

Karen Swallow Priortweeted, Our work now is just starting: We must help and support moms, dads and babies. Love them all and in so doing making abortion unimaginable.

In an opinion piece for theNew York Times,she argued, We are our brothers and our sisters keepers, and it does take a village to become who we are. In that spirit of community, she recommended a number of whole-life approaches, includinga public policy agenda the Southern Baptist Convention recommended at its 2022 meetings that includes alleviating hunger and strengthening low-income families.

But a closer look at the SBCs public policy agenda shows it also highlights adoption, discrimination against LGBTQ people, and support for faith-based schools.

Many people balked at her statement, including Kristin Du Mez, whoasked Prior directly, If this support wasnt there to actually *prevent abortions* (small-scale pregnancy crisis centers and free diaper coupons if you attend Bible study not withstanding) why should we expect conservative Christians to step up now?

And given the anti-social-justice rhetoric coming out of men like John MacArthur and Voddie Baucham as well as evangelicalisms track record of dismissing social concerns as being woke, CRT, or big government, its understandable that many would be skeptical of Priors vision.

The Gospel Coalitionpublished one piecesaying that whole-life approaches are little more than a lazy slander of the pro-life cause, that they distort pro-life priorities, and are too exhausting even for Superman, among other things.

They publishedanother piececlaiming overturning Roe v. Wade is a story about God.Hehas heard our prayers and used our efforts, andhehas done a great work. Italicizing the words he in an article celebrating the taking away of womens rights seemed odd.

The pro-life conservative evangelical visions for moving forward after Roe v. Wade would seem to be to an attempt to convince evangelicals to embrace social action to a degree they never have before.

Then they publishedanother articlethat claimed: As the church applies a robust ethic of each persons dignity, it requires us to care for individuals holistically. The churchs involvement in adoption and foster care are good examples. Contrary to the criticism that Christians only care about the issue of life up until the moment of birth, a recent study concluded believers are nearly three times more likely to adopt than the general public.

So the pro-life conservative evangelical visions for moving forward after Roe v. Wade would seem to be to an attempt to convince evangelicals to embrace social action to a degree they never have before, to demonize supporting mothers and babies as lazy slander, to offer theological thoughts and praises about the topic, or to promote sexual discrimination, adoption and Christian education.

When we found out in January 2009 that we were having a miscarriage after a number of years of hoping for a baby, Ruth Ellen and I began to consider pursuing adoption more seriously. Like many young conservative evangelical married couples, we longed to be parents as a way to love the vulnerable. And adoption seemed to be a great way to fulfill our desire to be parents while reflecting our theology that God had adopted us.

Little did we know, however, that as good as our intentions may have been, we also were being influenced by an evangelical adoption industry that had been shaped for decades by theologies of patriarchy and white supremacy.

Although slavery and adoption may seem like totally different pictures of the gospel, both converged through patriarchy and white supremacy in the worlds of evangelical education and adoption.

Two of our favorite theologians at the time were John MacArthur and John Piper. While MacArthur believes slavery is the heart of the gospel, Piper believesadoption is the heart of the gospel. And although slavery and adoption may seem like totally different pictures of the gospel, both converged through patriarchy and white supremacy in the worlds of evangelical education and adoption.

But to understand how education and adoption may play a role in conservative evangelicalisms strategy for the future, we need to reflect on how they were formed in the past.

At the dawn of the 20th century, leaders in the United States noticed the falling birth rate of Western nations and began to discuss the problem of race suicide. President Roosevelt warned of this looming danger, writing in a letterto pastor Franklin C. Smith in 1911: To advocate artificially keeping families small, with its inevitable attendants of pre-natal infanticide, of abortion, with its pandering to self-indulgence, its shirking of duties, and its enervation of character, is quite as immoral as to advocate theft or prostitution, and is even more hurtful in its folly, from the standpoint of the ultimate welfare of the race and the nation. You say that your ministry lies among well-to-do people; that is, among people of means and upper-class workers. I assume that you regard these people as desirable elements in the state. Can you not see that if they have an insufficient quantity of children, then the increase must come from the less desirable classes?

Can you not see that if they have an insufficient quantity of children, then the increase must come from the less desirable classes?

Roosevelt also was concerned about how progressive religious journalism was covering his fear of fewer white children being born, complaining: To me the most horrifying part of this movement is to find nominally religious journals like theIndependentcontaining articles by women and clergymen, apologizing for and defending a theory of conduct which, if adopted, would mean the speedy collapse of this republic and of western civilization. The action of theIndependentin this matter was a scandalous offense against good morals and a cause of shame to men of real religious feeling.

The themes of patriarchy and white supremacy paired with the fear of feminism and non-white people were laying the groundwork for what would be considered the American biblical family.

In an article subtitledEugenic Mythologies and Internet Evangelism publishedinThe Journal of Legal Medicine, Paul A. Lombardo explains how eugenics began in 1873 as a way of saying that physical, mental and moral deficiencies were based in heredity and were passed down predictably within families from generation to generation.

Just asJohn MacArthur arguedthat the inhabitants of Africa were destined by God to be perpetually a servile people to European and Jewish families due to the curse of Canaan in Genesis 9, the promoters of eugenics argued that the intergenerational poverty of Black families was proof that Black families were under the curse of Exodus 20:5, where God promised to visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. A fear spread of problem families, seemingly infected with bad heredity that explained their social failure over many generations that was evidenced in moral evil and social dependency and was used to promote eugenic political policies, Lombardo explained.

The famous evangelist Billy Sunday bought into eugenics, often preaching against one God-forsaken, vicious, corrupt man and woman to breed and propagate and damn the world by their offspring, and arguing that children have a right to be born cleanly into the world and not be damned into the world before birth by a predetermined heritage of blight.

Children have a right to be born cleanly into the world and not be damned into the world before birth by a predetermined heritage of blight.

In his article, Lombardo shows how supporters of eugenics believed a society of sound individuals would stabilize the state; a clean physical race could be the first step to reform.

In a piece titledThe Eugenics Roots of Evangelical Family Values, Audrey Clare Farley adjunct professor of U.S. history at Mount St. Marys University shows how evangelicals promoted positive eugenics after World War II in order to increase the breeding of the fit (able-bodied, middle-class whites), providing a far more respectable face for the movement.

One leader of the evangelical eugenics movement, ironically, was an atheist named Paul Popenoe, who founded the Los Angeles-basedAmerican Institute of Family Relationsin 1930 with the goal of strengthening families by removing what he thought to be obstacles to white reproduction, such as rape, masturbation, pornography, female frigidity, and feminist yearnings. Farley shows how Popenoe promoted complementarian gender distinctions and prohibited inter-racial marriage and homosexual relationships, while training pastors and psychologists to follow his patriarchal, white supremacist, homophobic vision.

One psychologist Popenoe influenced was James Dobson, who served as Popenoes assistant, a detail Farley notes was conveniently not mentioned in Dale Busss book, Family Man: The Biography of Dr. James Dobson.

Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, has been the single most influential figure in shaping the modern American evangelical view of biblical family values through a daily radio broadcast, books, films and online content.

In aLos Angeles Timesarticle titled Childs IQ Depends on Mother from 1968, Mary Barber identified Dobson as the assistant director of PopenoesAmerican Institute of Family Relations. In the article, Barber says Dobson pointed out that everyone is a victim of some degree of impoverishment but the barren surroundings of a ghetto probably is the worst for providing intellectual growth for children.

In another 1976 Los Angeles Times article titled Husbands Advised to Change Priorities, Dobson told wives not to cage their husbands, to be quiet and not run him down, while admitting his views of gender distinctions may sound chauvinistic.

Dobson also applied what he learned at Popenoes AIFR in a 1972 article titled A Successfully Defiant Child Lacks Respect. In theDaily News-Postcolumn on parenting, he said theres no substitute for spanking and that if a little child doesnt obey immediately, then mother tweaks the little muscle between his neck and shoulder.

Dobson still was touting Popenoes teachings as late as 1994 in an article titled Men, Women Differ in Every Cell of Their Bodies, where Dobson named Popenoe and then went on to parrot Popenoes views of gender and sexuality.

Popenoes influence not only included Dobson and the millions of evangelicals Dobson shaped.

Popenoes influence not only included Dobson and the millions of evangelicals Dobson shaped. He also wrote for Ladies Home Journal, was a guest on conservative evangelical shows, and was cited in Herbert MilesSexual Happiness in Marriage, J. Allan PetersonsThe Marriage Affair, and in Tim and Beverly LaHaysThe Act of Marriage.

Given his fathers atheism, Popenoes son David told the Institute of American Values, My father was no more religious than ever, but (evangelicals) were his new professional and ideological allies and protges.

To that Audrey Clare Farley added, Such history reveals how fears of racial decay have shaped the conservative imagination of morality.

As patriarchal, complementarian, homophobic, narratives of eugenics shaped conservative evangelicalism over the decades, their demand for more children grew.

One such movement was the Quiverfull movement. As Kristin Du Mez details inJesus and John Wayne: Quiverfull women had a critical role to play in birthing an army of God; the culture wars needed as many soldiers as possible. Outbreeding opponents was the first step to outvoting them, and in their reproductive capacities, women served as domestic warriors.

Du Mez pointed out that the Quiverfull movement began gaining national traction in the homeschool movement as the Duggar family grew in popularity due to their TLC show19 Kids and Counting. Combining the reproductive capacities of women with educating children, the Quiverfull movement would provide combatants in the war against Islam.

In an interview withBaptist News Global, Audrey Clare Farley explained how conservatives have tapped into the fear of race suicide and turned to eugenics through education.

It is important to understand that character education has historically been tied to eugenics.

It is important to understand that character education has historically been tied to eugenics. In the early 20th century, the high-water mark of the eugenics era, some racial purists asked if it was possible to form respectable (read: white) citizens by molding their character. Most believed it was impossible. Those with bad genes that is, the poor, disabled, immigrants and people of color could not be made into noble citizens. Character education was really for those who were well-bred. It would help to make the naturally fit even stronger.

Scholars have placed Bill Gothard and Dr. James Dobson within this tradition. Both men targeted conservative white Christians with their ideas about discipline and biblical family values, which were meant to form citizens who could fight evil, secular culture. But, of course, neither Gothard nor Dobson explicitly rejected people of color, and so those BIPOC children who were subjected to their programs were essentially urged to adopt worldviews with roots in segregation and eugenics.

One of the most popular strategies conservatives are using today, and one that was highlighted in the SBCs 2022 public policy agenda, is the issue of school vouchers.

Farley explains: The rise of school vouchers is part of this project. Conservatives proclaim that vouchers enable disadvantaged students and those of color to access a better education. But the rights goal is to bankrupt public schools and divert tax dollars toward academies that indoctrinate youth with rightwing politics the very politics that have stalled racial progress in education and beyond.

And as child liberationist theologianR.L. Stollar points out, for many evangelicals, homeschooling is the perfect option for training these culture warriors because 48 states have no protections for at-risk homeschooled children. These states have fallen into line with total parental sovereignty, giving parents absolute power that has resulted in child abuse and trafficking.

Eugenics received another boost in 1987 through Ben Wattenbergs bookThe Birth Dearth.Ellen Goodman wrotein theWashington Postat the time: Wattenberg is a demographer for the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute and no slouch in the pop sociology division. He builds his thesis on one indisputable fact: Today, with little warning, the total fertility rate of American women has dropped to 1.8, slightly below the replacement level.

The major problem confronting the United States today is there arent enough white babies being born. If we dont do something about this and do it now, white people will be in the numerical minority and we will no longer be a white mans land.

Wattenberg argued that The Birth Dearth is due to low fertility among the middle and upper middle class.He said, The major problem confronting the United States today is there arent enough white babies being born. If we dont do something about this and do it now, white people will be in the numerical minority and we will no longer be a white mans land.

He was especially concerned that a decreasing white population would lead to no longer being able to support the defense systems which are the basis of national power and security.

Goodman interpreted, He outright says that its women who hold the fate of the Western world in their hands. Or, more precisely, in their wombs.

Wattenberg offered three potential solutions. He said we could pay women to have babies, but that unfortunately we would have to pay women of all colors to have babies. He said we could increase immigration, but that unfortunately most of the immigrants would be non-white people. So he argued that the third and best option was to stop abortion. Rememberthat 60% of the fetuses that are aborted every year are white, he said. If we could keep that 60% of life alive, that would solve our birth dearth.

In June 2020, Kevin DeYoung entered the fray. He wrote an article called Its Time for a New Culture War Strategy seemingly ignorant of the entire culture war strategy his movement had been using for the previous century. He was very upset that the Supreme Court defined sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity. And just like the homophobia that had permeated the eugenics movement, DeYoung had enough.

DeYoung has been one of the most vocal leadersagainst social justice, joining the likes of Owen Strachan, John MacArthur and Voddie Baucham.

He said: Heres a culture war strategy conservative Christians should get behind: Have more children and disciple them like crazy. Strongly consider having more children than you think you can handle. You dont have to be a fertility maximalist to recognize that children are always lauded as a blessing in the Bible.

After arguing against birth control, DeYoung said: Do you want to rebel against the status quo? Do you want people to ask you for a reason for the hope that is in you? Tote your brood of children through Target. There is almost nothing more counter-cultural than having more children.

There is almost nothing more counter-cultural than having more children.

Then with the stroke of prophetic vision, he concluded, The future belongs to the fecund.

To be fair, he did briefly mention loving God, people and the truth. But the thrust of his article was not about love, but about getting your wife constantly pregnant with a ton of babies.

Just as eugenics attempted to shift toward a positive message after World War II, the evangelical adoption movement attempted to shift toward a more positive branding in 2007, led by the likes of Rick Warren. As Kathryn Joyce notes, Promoting adoption would help rebrand U.S. evangelicals from moral scolds to childrens champions.

In the spirit of DeYoung, one evangelical leader said evangelicals should get as many people in the church to adopt and adopt as many kids as you can.

The way these adoption agenciesspoke negativelyof the birth mothers and families mirrored the way the promoters of eugenics spoke negatively of minority mothers and families through the 20th century. And as Chrissy Stroopdetailed, the result of this missionary project was corner-cutting and human-rights abuses that would lead to severe trauma that can never be erased.

Farely told BNG There is absolutely a connection between the ideas of Popenoe, Wattenberg, DeYoung, and some proponents of evangelical adoption: All view the family as a means to promote whiteness. For Popenoe and Wattenberg, the goal was very explicitly to outbreed people of color. For DeYoung and many adoption proponents, an acceptable outcome is rearing children who carry water for whiteness as culture warriors. In the latter scenario, a Black or brown child can be made to support the racist politics and theology of white evangelicalism, which have so devastated communities of color around the globe that families within those communities are forced to give up their infants to more advantaged and in many minds, deserving families.

There is absolutely a connection between the ideas of Popenoe, Wattenberg, DeYoung, and some proponents of evangelical adoption: All view the family as a means to promote whiteness.

To be fair to evangelicalism, the problems here are much bigger than evangelicalism. Unfortunately, the leaders of conservative evangelicalism like to present themselves as preaching the objective universal truth outside of culture revealed by God in the Bible. But they are seemingly unaware how their supposedly objective truth is culturally situated in a broader culture of white supremacy.

Farely pointed to other Christian groups as well: In the last few decades and especially the last few years, white Catholics have also taken pains to induct children of color into the logic of white supremacy. Beyond crusading against BLM and CRT, many bishops, priests, school leaders and parents have pushed the narrative that racism is a spiritual problem, rather than a social one. As religion scholar Matthew J. Cressler hasdemonstrated, this narrative can be traced to Catholic segregationists. When throwing bricks at civil rights activists failed to stop desegregation, white Catholics appealed to a supposedly God-ordained division between the spiritual and political realms. As in Protestant circles, then, the rhetoric of colorblindness only emerged as a means to obstruct Black advancement. Yet Catholic children today are taught this way of thinking flows from the gospel.

With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, evangelicals are focusing on assimilation by adopting babies and educating them into their vision for the world. They believe this strategy is going to save the eternal souls of babies and win a culture war they are waging.

But while young couples should be encouraged and equipped to care for the vulnerable, they need to realize that doing so within the adoption and education industries of evangelicalism is promoting a patriarchal, complementarian, homophobic, physically and spiritually abusive narrative of white supremacy that has been forged by presidents and pastors alike for more than a century.

Rick Pidcockis a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. Hes a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He recently completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog atwww.rickpidcock.com.

Related articles:

What has John MacArthur actually said about race, slavery and the Curse of Ham? | Analysis by Rick Pidcock

Kristin Du Mez explains white evangelicals and abortion on NPR show; Ed Young preaches Mothers Day sermon on abortion

Our Father: A quiverfull of racism and anti-reproductive rights | Opinion by Erica Whitaker

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There's a straight line from eugenics to 'biblical family values' to white supremacy and the anti-abortion movement - Baptist News Global

Its no wonder many people are wary of behavioral genetics. The field, which examines how the DNA were born with affects our behaviors, has been hijacked by eugenicists, white supremacists, and run-of-the-mill bigots as a way to justify inequality for minorities, women, poor people, and other disadvantaged groups for over a century.

But anyone interested in egalitarian goals should not shy away from the field, argues psychologist Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden. Instead, they should embrace it as a tool to inform policies that promote equality.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on agricultural biotech and biomedicine? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Genetic research has even been used to justify eugenics: the belief that genetics indicate a natural human hierarchy that determines ones social value and standing. Eugenicists have advocated for sterilizing or otherwise attempting to eradicate individuals or entire cultural groups deemed genetically inferior or unfit due to their genes.

In response to this historic misuse, many people and organizations with egalitarian values have chosen to ignore, degrade, or ban funding for research on genetic and biological differences.

Dr. Harden takes the opposite stance. Despite or perhaps because of this historic misuse, she argues that people interested in equality cannot ignore genetic differences. To do so would allow the misinterpretation and abuse of genetic research to go unchallenged.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here

Continued here:

Viewpoint: In response to historical misuse of genetics to defend eugenics, some egalitarians call for defunding. Here's why that's not the solution -...

Americans are having trouble seeing things from other points of view lately. And not just lately. People in the United States have had this problem since before there was a United States. So maybe it's just a problem of being human. One of many.

For example, there is the Dobbs ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court last week, which overturned Roe v. Wade and the "right" to end a pregnancy. Or, in another point of view, end the life of a living person in the womb before he or she is allowed to be born.

Here are some of the things we've read in the paper about that ruling, from a certain point of view:

"It is unconscionable that a group of politicians, who mostly neglect families that look like mine, now have the power to endanger women's health and criminalize our doctors for offering appropriate life-saving care."--Tennessee state Sen. London Lamar, as quoted in The Washington Post.

"Today is a dark day in our nation's history, and this decision is a devastating confirmation of what Black and brown reproductive justice organizers have been sounding the alarms about for years: This Court will stop at nothing to strip away our reproductive freedom and our fundamental human right to bodily autonomy."--U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, in a statement.

"Women of color, poor women, Black women are often the canary in the coal mine on these issues. Their experience really telegraphs where we are going with this."--Melissa Murray, New York University law professor.

Or, from another point of view, the latest ruling by the United States Supreme Court prevents Black and brown children from being aborted.

This past week, Star Parker, one of our syndicated columnists, reminds us that about one-third of all abortions in the United States are performed on Black women. Another way to say that, one-third of all children prevented from being born are Black.

We are also reminded of the writings of Justice Clarence Thomas in 2019 in a concurring opinion on an abortion case, in which he dedicated 12 pages in his opinion to repeating the awful history of eugenics in this country and around the world. He warned his colleagues that the high court's continued backing of Roe at the time might lead to abortion-by-racial-category and, in effect, eugenics. There was talk at the time that anti-abortion leaders should pass laws to challenge Roe not on privacy issues, but on discrimination.

According to The Washington Post, "Not all states report racial and ethnic data on abortion, but among those who do (29 states and D.C.), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that a disproportionately high share are women of color. In 2019, the abortion rate for Black women was 23.8 per 1,000 women. For Hispanic women, it was 11.7 per 1,000. And for white women, it was 6.6 per 1,000."

So, from a different point of view, could it be said that children of color could be disproportionately saved by the Dobbs ruling?

A good part of the country, and not just in a few high legal circles, seem to think so.

Read more from the original source:

Another point of view - Arkansas Online

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court, dominated now by a bloc of six arch-conservatives, overruled Roe v. Wade. Under the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, the states are now free to make abortion illegal, and to shut down whatever abortion clinics still remain in conservative states. The decision was and will remain controversial.

The abortion issue has been much disputed from the moment Roe v. Wade was decided, although a significant majority of Americans support legal access to abortion, at least in the first trimester. Public opinion, in fact, has never run as strongly in favor of abortion as it does right now. Yet, in many states, abortion was severely restricted, even before this latest decision. A pregnant woman in these statesand soon in perhaps as many as half of the statesis (in effect) forbidden to terminate a pregnancy. By government fiat, that individual is ordered to carry her baby to term. Legal abortion will no longer be possible, except in cases where the pregnancy is life-threatening to the mother. Illegal abortion will become more common, as will interstate travel to seek abortion services in a friendlier state. But for some people, a states ban on abortion will result in a forced pregnancy and, if she and the fetus survive to term, a forced birth.

Many of those women, in states without legal abortion, will be poor; many will be Black or Brown; many will be minors. Women with money, time, and freedom of movement can, at least for now, escape to another state to exercise what used to be a constitutional right. People from Texas can go to New Mexico. Women in Indiana can cross the border into Illinois. Many will do this, though some states have indicated they intend to pass laws trying to prevent this type of travel. But many who would have sought an abortion in their home states simply will not be able to travel to find care. The legislatures of right-to-life states are willing, even eager, to force pregnant women, whatever their age, class, or race, to go through pregnancy and give birth. Only days after the Dobbs decision was issued, media reported a story of a 10-year-old pregnant rape victim who was denied an abortion in her home state of Ohio under the states draconian new law that had just taken effect. Some of the state laws go to great lengths to ban all abortions; they have no exceptions for pregnancies caused by incest or rape; and certainly not for hardship, poverty, or the fact that the fetus is suffering from severe or even lethal defects that might lead to stillbirth or death shortly after birth.

Eugenic Ideas and American Law

Abortion law has a fairly long history. The opinions in Dobbs go into this history, in enormous detail. Lawyers and historians have documented the many errors the majority makes in its cherry-picked and sometimes erroneous recounting of history. But even if the facts they rely on were accurate, there is a way in which the majority simply fails to get the story right. Arguably, the intellectual and political background of abortion law is almost the exact opposite of what drives the antiabortion movement today. Criminal abortion bans in the United States date to the late nineteenth century in many states. Prior to that time, abortion was hardly regulated at all. But the movement to impose criminal bans had a social connection to the eugenics movement. The point of the movement was to prevent the wrong people from giving birthpeople who were considered criminal, or degenerate, or feeble-minded. It was not to force them to carry a baby to term; but not to carry it in the first place.

At the time, the eugenics movement was flourishing. It had many backers in high places; and it was considered, by many scholars, to be supported by the lights of modern science. The basic idea was simple: research showed (it was thought) that crime, perversion, feeble-mindedness (a term commonly used in laws at the time), and general rottenness, were genetic traits; they ran in families; they were handed down from generation to generation. As we elaborated in more detail in a prior column, there was an entire field of science devoted to proving that these various traits were hereditary. Although many are familiar with the horrific eugenic practices in Nazi Germany, those ideas originated in the United States. Degenerates multiplied like rabbits, or so the eugenicists argued. Unless something was done, the country might be swamped with them. Society needed reproduction to be centered among the respectable; among good people, educated people, people healthy in body and mind. The eugenics program thus had two prongs: to encourage the right people to have babies (positive eugenics); and to prevent the wrong people from having children at all (negative eugenics).

One way to shut off the supply of bad babies at the source was to sterilize their potential parentsthose likely to produce bad seed. Indiana passed the first sterilization law in 1907. It applied to residents in state institutions. If a committee of experts felt it was advisable, confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists and imbeciles, could be sterilized. Californias sterilization law was enacted in 1909. California was one of the most enthusiastic states in this dubious business. Thousands of young Californians, in state hospitals, were sterilized before 1940. Sterilization laws were controversial; but they were mostly upheld by the courts. The Supreme Court weighed in in 1927, in the notorious case of Buck v. Bell. Carrie Buck, who was white (and poor), was said to be the daughter of a feeble-minded woman, to be feeble-minded herself, and the mother of a feeble-minded child. The Court, in a short and snappy opinion, gave its approval to Virginias sterilization law. As Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, three generations of imbeciles are enough. Sadly, the burden of these laws fell mostly on poor women and women of color, who were sterilized on the basis of the flimsiest evidence, or no evidence at all. Carrie Buck, in fact, was a woman of normal intelligence; and so was her daughter.

In addition to the involuntary sterilizations that were authorized by law, many women were sterilized against their will and sometimes even without their knowledge by doctors who simply implemented their own social beliefs with a scalpel. The Mississippi appendectomy is a term used to describe the practice common at some teaching hospitals in the South of giving poor, black women hysterectomies without informed consent.

In addition, state legislatures took steps to tighten their marriage laws. Some states eliminated so-called common-law marriage. These were informal marriagesno witness needed; no marriage licensethat were perfectly legal in many states. The problem was that the state had very little control over these marriages. The newer marriage laws now piled on formalities, including blood tests, and the marriage codes made people ineligible to marry if they had certain traits or diseases believed (often incorrectly) to be heritable. The general point was to prevent unfit people from marrying (and presumably having children). In Washington State, for example, under a law passed in 1909, no common drunkard, habitual criminal, epilectic, and no imbecile or person who was feeble-minded; or who had a venereal disease, was entitled to get married.

This was the negative prong of eugenics. And while it certainly made life difficult for many individuals, it did not have much overall effect on the birth rate. The positive prong of the eugenic program was more difficult to implement than the negative prong. You could hardly insist (say) that graduates of elite colleges had a positive duty to get married and produce as many babies as possible. That was clearly not feasible. But one small step was possible: a crack-down on abortion. Indeed, laws against abortion became more restrictive in the late nineteenth century. There were many reasons for this development, but eugenic ideas were at least partly responsible. There were prominent abortionists who catered to upper-class women. The most notorious, perhaps, was the woman who called herself Madame Restell, in New York City, who lived in a mansion and charged high prices to her wealthy clients. Madame Restell and other abortionists were accused of a kind of crime against traditional Americawhite Protestant America. The lower classes, it was felt, were producing baby after baby; middle-class women on the other hand were killing or preventing babies from being born. This was one of the cardinal sins of abortion; it was weakening the stock of good, solid American babies.

The modern abortion controversy could hardly be more different. Eugenics no longer has any scientific credibility. Sterilization laws have been repealed or struck down. The class and race issue in the abortion controversy has been, in a sense, turned upside down. The abortionist is no longer someone like Madame Restell, catering to upper-class women who refused their duty of becoming a mother. Todays abortionist is a medical doctor, working for Planned Parenthood, or in another clinic, and using a procedure or a medication that is both safe and effective. The burden of abolition has fallen, and will fall, not on rich women, but on poor women and minority women, particularly as the cost and distance necessary to travel for care will both skyrocket. And those same groups will be the ones with more forced birthsadded on top of the disproportionately high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity they already suffer due to inequity in our healthcare system. And the core of the movement to abolish abortion is a moral and ideological cluster of ideas, which are in essence, deeply religious, and which are spearheaded by those religions that are traditional and dominated by men. Indeed, male domination, and resistance to the womens movement, is at least implicit in some aspects of the anti-abortion movement.

No Justices of the Supreme Court say, or are willing to say, that they are opposed to abortion because, according to the dictates of their faith, abortion is murder. What they can and do say instead is that Roe v. Wade was incorrectly decided (the Courts abortion jurisprudence is explored in more detail here). Abortion, according to the majority opinion, has no basis in constitutional law. That body of law provides no support for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Moreoverand this is crucial for the majoritya right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nations history and tradition. This may be true; but is obviously irrelevant. Are equal rights for women deeply rooted in American history and tradition? Not at all. Nor is racial equality deeply rooted in history and tradition. Modern civil rights law is precisely a rejection of the main line of American history. If the only rights the Court is willing to recognize are those that are deeply rooted in history and tradition, not much would be left of modern free speech jurisprudence, or due process of law.

Supreme Court decisions on matters of constitutional law almost always dip into the jungle of legal history. Conservative justices insist that constitutional decisions must be historically grounded, that is, based on the text of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Fourteenth Amendment, or whatever clause is at issue. But rummaging around in the past is rarely enlightening. The legal history of abortion, as we indicated, provides very little guidance for today, because the context in the past was so different from the context of our times. Indeed, history points if anything in the opposite direction from Dobbs. No court today, including the Supreme Court, would accept a statute that allowed people to be sterilized against their will without, at the very least, an exacting process to determine the need for it. Yet in 1927, in Buck v. Bell, the Court accepted an approach to involuntary sterilization that showed total disregard for the individuals bodily autonomy and right to reproduce. Overruling Roe v. Wade is, in a way, resurrecting the mindset of Buck v. Bell. It allows the state to control womens bodies in an analogous way: by forcing women to carry unborn children to term against their will. If we accept the idea that Buck v. Bell is no longer good law, then it is hard to accept the idea that a state should be able to make a womans choice to terminate her pregnancy a crimecertainly not at the point when the preborn child is a small clump of cells.

Justice Alito, after claiming that abortion is not deeply rooted in our history and tradition, goes on to say that, on the contrary, an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment was the norm up to the time of Roe v. Wade. The tradition was hardly unbrokenbefore the enactment of the criminal abortion bans, abortion was either unregulated or banned only well into the second trimester. But what is more significant is that the tradition rested on legal and social bases which were, as we tried to argue, substantially different from the legal and social concerns of today.

The plain fact of the matter is that Dobbs is a political decision; it is a decision that pleases the religious right; and which pleases one political party much more than the other. (It terrifies many others.) To be honest, most key decisions of the Supreme Court are political decisions. They come out of political contexts, and they have political and social consequences. Justices are nominated and confirmed in our times because the President who nominates them expects them to make the kind of decisions the President wants. Historical evidence does not provide solutions to hotly contested issues, especially when it is constructed by those with an agenda and without the training to decipher historical evidence. The majority in Dobbs called Roe v. Wade egregiously wrong from the start. It is entirely possible that some future Court will pin that label on Dobbs.

Read the original post:

To Be or Not to Be a Mother: A Timeless Question with New Urgency - Justia Verdict

On June 24th, the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. Wade the landmark 1973 ruling that made safe, legal abortion a constitutional right making good on the leaked draft that predicted the move back in May. In the week since, people have taken to social media to respond in horror and to share urgent information about how those in restricted states can still access abortion.

Many of those expressing their anger have also echoed a common sentiment: that if women are forced to give birth, men should be forced to get mandatory vasectomies. For some, the intention behind this is to show the absurdity of politically controlling another persons body and reproductive choices something that many only deem intolerable when applied to men. Or, as one Twitter user eloquently put it: The vasectomy debate is a hypothetical meant to illustrate that people view infringements on the bodily autonomy of women as neutral, while infringements on the bodily autonomy of men as human rights violations.

However, others appear to be more serious in their calls for mandatory vasectomies, urging those who create sperm and can get someone pregnant to go get a vasectomy. Part of the allure, the more sincere tweets allege, is that vasectomies are reversible, meaning a guy of any age, with or without kids, could use it like a temporary contraceptive.

Except, this isnt invariably the case. As well as not always being reversible and, in rare cases, failing at preventing pregnancy vasectomies arent as easy to access as you might think. Men face many of the same barriers as women seeking sterilization, including resistance from doctors based on the fact that they might change their mind, as well as an astronomical expense if they do decide to (and are able to) reverse it. Likewise, calling for forced sterilization of any kind misses the point in the argument for everyone having bodily autonomy. Importantly, vasectomies dont solve the abortion debate just as any form of birth control isnt an alternative for abortion, a vasectomy doesnt reduce the need for an abortion when one is needed.

In response to all this, Georgia Grainger, a PhD student at Glasgows Centre for the Social History of Health & Healthcare who researches the history of vasectomies, shared a Twitter thread explaining why shes going to lose her shit if she sees one more feminist suggest mandatory vasectomies for men, that vasectomies prevent abortion or that vasectomies are any kind of solution to this situation. Unsurprisingly, her thread got a lot of heat, both from anti-abortion and pro-abortion activists alike.

So, to delve deeper into the controversial debate and learn why mandatory vasectomies arent a solution I asked Grainger to expand on her thread, share the history of forced sterilization in the U.S. and highlight some of the conversations we should be having instead.

At one point, there actually were mandatory vasectomies for some men in the U.S. Can you briefly explain the history of that?

Mandatory vasectomies in the U.S. began in 1899 with [a physician named] Dr. Sharp, who began vasectomizing inmates at the Indiana Reformatory in Jeffersonville. At first he thought it might change their behavior to make them less likely to be violent or sexual kind of like castrating a dog for behavioral problems because they didnt fully understand the impact of hormones yet. For the record, a vasectomy doesnt impact testosterone production at all, whereas castration [which removes the testicles and is a totally different procedure] does. But even castration doesnt make people less violent, as far as were aware, so none of it really worked the way Sharp thought it would.

However, after beginning these sterilizations for behavioral reasons, the rise of the ideology of eugenics that bad traits (like criminality or mental disability) could be bred out of people led to vasectomies being used for that in early 20th century America. Thinking that men (and women) in prison or institutions for disabled people must have undesirable traits that shouldnt be passed onto future generations, states began to bring in legislation to authorize eugenic sterilization: vasectomies for men, and tubal ligation or hysterectomies for women.

In total, 30 states had legislation for eugenic sterilization [at first, this was for prisoners and those in institutions, but after World War II, poor people and minorities were targeted, too]. Some had involuntary eugenic sterilization, where doctors could perform it without the patients consent, while others had voluntary eugenic sterilization, where patients were often promised shorter prison times or other benefits if they consented. But as many of those sterilized had developmental or mental disabilities, how much they could consent is unclear.

In 1927, the Supreme Court upheld the case Buck v. Bell which has never been overturned allowing non-consensual (compulsory) sterilization of the unfit (disabled people) in Virginia. Approximately 64,000 Americans were sterilized for eugenic reasons by 1963, with 39 percent of those being men given vasectomies. A disproportionate amount of those sterilized were people of color, with Black and Latinx people in particular being sterilized in huge numbers. Though this practice isnt well-known, disabled people can still be sterilized against their consent in 31 states not through old laws that have not been repealed, but through current and sometimes recently enacted laws.

Why, then, are mandatory vasectomies not a solution to the current abortion situation?

While I completely understand the anger of having our bodies controlled, I see a lot of people calling for mandatory vasectomies as a response, suggesting that men could have their vasectomies reversed when they want to be a father or, sometimes, when they prove theyre capable of being a father. These calls are usually not serious although Ive seen some people say they are completely serious and are instead to show how absurd abortion bans are.

However, there are a few issues I have with them. First is that they spread false information that vasectomies are just long-acting reversible contraceptives (like IUDs). This isnt true. A lot of vasectomies cant be reversed. But, beyond that, many men have been forcibly vasectomized throughout U.S. history as far as I understand, the estimates are over 30,000 men in the 20th century.

So mandatory vasectomies arent really a useful tool to show how absurd the abortion ban is, as theyve already been used legally for over a century in America. Many people calling for them arent aware of this aspect of U.S. history, because its not widely taught. So I think this is a really important time to educate people on the fact that what theyre satirically calling for has happened in recent U.S. history.

How did people respond to your Twitter thread criticizing calls for mandatory vasectomies?

Ive had hundreds of people tell me theyve learned a lot, and that they didnt know about the involuntary eugenic sterilization programs in U.S. history. Ive had some people say that even with that knowledge, theyd continue calling for mandatory sterilization, which is absolutely their choice, but I think the number of people saying they didnt know about it and would no longer use that argument really demonstrates why this kind of education is necessary.

Ive been surprised that some feminists were angry at me for, as they put it, centering the discussion on men. I can understand that anger especially at a time when there is so much anger to feel but Im only sharing my research specialism, which does happen to be about mens contraceptive choices, as well as responding to posts already centering men by suggesting we force vasectomies. Im not trying to make this about mens feelings at a time when I believe womens feelings and experiences should be forefront; instead Im trying to educate people about the reality of forced sterilization, and how its not as unlikely a scenario as people might think and that it has historically been used to disproportionately affect people of color and disabled people.

What do you think of the skyrocketing interest in vasectomies post Roe v. Wade being overturned?

Ive seen a lot of men talk about how this development has encouraged them to book their vasectomy consultation, which I think is fantastic. Vasectomies are a relatively low-risk option, and are as reliable as other contraceptive options. I definitely recommend that any men who dont want children, or who already have as many children as theyd like, think about whether a vasectomy is an option for them, and talk to their doctor about it.

However, the increased interest in mandatory vasectomies is upsetting, because it demonstrates how little people recognize that, historically, restricted reproductive rights for women have also come alongside restricted reproductive rights for marginalized men. Yes, the men on the Supreme Court are unlikely to ever be subjected to mandatory vasectomies, but there are thousands of men across the U.S. who a lot of the conservative right-wing would probably be quite happy to vasectomize, and I dont think we should encourage them even as a rhetorical device.

What conversations about vasectomies, birth control and abortion should we be having instead?

Something that a lot of women dont realize is how difficult it can be for men to even access vasectomies. Were used to being told that were too young, will change our minds and other patronizing things when we ask for permanent sterilization options, and I think its easy to assume that men wouldnt be told that, but they are. Ive heard from countless men whove tried to get a vasectomy but were told they had to be over 35 if they didnt have children, or over 30 if they did, and that theyd have to have their wifes permission, or, if they werent married, they wouldnt be approved for one.

So, along with better provision of contraceptive options for women and fewer restrictions on access to them, we also need to be making it easier for men to take responsibility when they want to. We need reproductive choice for everyone.

I know you dont have a ton of abortion access where you are either. How does it feel watching the events in America unfold? Whats it been like in the U.K.?

Its difficult to watch. Im from Northern Ireland, which has never had legal access to abortion; recently abortion itself was decriminalized there, but theres no actual health-care provision for it (no abortion clinics, doctors, etc.), so pregnant people still have to travel to England to get an abortion. Theres also been an uptick in anti-abortion protests in Scotland where I live now alongside an increase in right-wing attacks on LGBTQ+ rights.

Though not as severe as the shift in the U.S, I think our anti-choice, anti-queer campaigners are being encouraged by the developments in the U.S, and are seeing it as their time to be louder here too, which is scary. It demonstrates how international these ideas and trends are, and how important it is for us to learn from and support one another. A lot of campaigners in Europe especially in Ireland and Poland have spent decades campaigning for abortion rights and providing illegal-but-safe abortions, so theres a lot of knowledge and strategies there for American campaigners to pull from as well. Theres solidarity on this side of the Atlantic for American women right now, as we know the struggles all too well.

Brit Dawson is a London-based journalist who mostly writes about sex, women's rights and sex work. She is also the staff writer at Dazed.

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A Vasectomy Historian on Why Male Sterilization Won't Solve the Abortion Problem - MEL Magazine

In this op-ed, Anja Herrman explores why disabled people should be centered in the fight for reproductive rights.

While my generation has, up until now, always had the right to a legal abortion, not all of us were able to exercise it. On June 24, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to legislate away abortion rights. But for disabled people like me, Roe was never enough, as the government has long legislated our reproductive health away. As many of us now rally for the restoration of our rights, we must center the voices of disabled people. Were still fighting for the kind of freedom that most Americans take for granted.

The United States has a long history of trying to control people with disabilities. In the early 1900s, supporters of the eugenics movement advocated for the forced sterilization of anyone they believed to be unfit in order to preserve good bloodlines. Who was fit or unfit? Largely, anyone who wasnt a wealthy, white, nondisabled person. The eugenics movement was supported (even encouraged!) by the U.S. government. In 1927, the Court decided in Buck v. Bell that the government was within their rights to sterilize people declared disabled, because three generations of imbeciles are enough. This abhorrent repudiation of disabled people's humanity is one of the most shameful in our countrys history but its far from over. A recent report by the National Womens Law Center found that 31 states (and Washington DC) explicitly allow the forced sterilization of disabled people. Laws like these destroy the idea that disabled people should be able to make these choices for ourselves and instead allow others to manipulate our bodies.

Though Im young, I have always seen parenting in my future, but this possibility may be denied to me because of my disability. In the U.S., a parents disability is sometimes considered in determining custody cases. When he was a judge on the DC Court of Appeals, now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh decided in Doe ex. rel. Tarlow v. District of Columbia that DCs statute allowing the principality to forcibly perform an abortion on an intellectually disabled individual was constitutional, thus denying a disabled woman a chance at being a mother. Tarlow shows how the fight against Roe has never been about babies, but about control. Kavanaugh voted to overturn Roe.

This isnt to say that a disabled person cant also be forced to become a parent. Disabled people are much more vulnerable to sexual assault than their nondisabled peers. Now, in a post-Roe world, this means that I could be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy resulting from assault to term.

As we rally around abortion rights, its crucial that we center disabled people to achieve real justice. To truly accept and include disabled people like me, there needs to be a recognition that abortion isnt the only thing we need to have true control over our reproductive lives. Instead of letting me make my own reproductive health choices, lawmakers have become far too comfortable with policing bodies like mine.

As a disabled teen, I deserve to be able to make choices about my body and my future. Im asking pro-choice advocates to see the value of including disability in our fight for change. If disabled people dont get a seat at the table, then future generations wont truly have the right to choose. Its time to get the government out of disabled peoples uteruses once and for all.

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Disabled People Never Had Full Autonomy Over Our Reproductive Rights - Teen Vogue