RACISM AND ABORTION PART 1
“God created human beings in His own image,
in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” (Genesis
1:27)
In my last installment I demonstrated how “Slavery
and Abortion” are closely linked by several core commonalities.
It is well-known that at the center of
slavery, of course, lies racism, the idea that skin color makes some people
less worthy of life and freedom than others.
What is not so well-known is that racism is
a key driving force behind abortion.
It’s not that there isn’t plenty of
information about the racism-abortion connection available. But just as a great
many people once ignored or at least were unaware of the obvious racism that
lies behind slavery, a great many people now ignore or are unaware of a
likewise obvious relationship between racism and abortion.
From the founding of our nation until the end of the Civil
War and the Emancipation Proclamation, every aspect of the economy in every
part of the country was invested in the slave business, whether illegal or
legal.
When the slaves were freed, the economic balance was upset.
The freed slaves had become a “liability”, released into the economy untrained
and uneducated.
Many whites, especially the elite, feared intermarriage,
migration to the North, and being overrun by the black race.
The first solution discussed was colonization, “sending the
Africans back to Africa”. This plan was rather quickly dismissed as rounding
them up, loading them on ships, and shipping them off might appear too much
like slavery all over again. The political climate of the times would not
tolerate this; in short, it would have been politically incorrect. But a more
palatable replacement was at hand.
Frances Galton was of a wealthy family that profited from the
slave trade. He was a cousin of Charles Darwin, who himself believed the
superior whites would soon wipe out the other inferior races. Galton only
“rejected” slavery after it ended, along with many others wealthy white
elitists who “founded” the “science” of eugenics. They believed blacks were “unfit”
and unable to have or live in a civilized society.
The first eugenic attempt was to try to pit all whites
against all blacks. But then (as now), there were too many people who either
weren’t racist enough or who wanted to keep their racism quiet in this new era
in which all people have been declared equal by decree and by Constitutional
amendment. Also, just being racist didn’t mean that whites wanted to kill
blacks. Such eugenics were too blatantly negative.
Next was a positive eugenics shot at black genocide. The
idea was to push whites to have so many children that blacks would be so
outnumbered that they would fade out of society. But that clearly wouldn’t work,
as the blacks were multiplying faster than the whites.
So the next genocidal move was to try to get blacks to have
fewer children and basically commit racial suicide. However, as with the
previous “positive” eugenics endeavor, Africans in America were not inclined to
cooperate.
Enter eugenicist Margaret Sanger, who taught that blacks
were increasingly taking “us” over and that “we”, meaning wealthy elitist
whites like her husband, were subject to their needs. She said these
“inferiors” should never have been born. [1]
Birth control could make that happen, could ensure that
fewer and fewer blacks were born. Sanger became the “front woman” for the
eugenics movement, which bankrolled her. However, birth control, while somewhat
effective, would still take too long. So she advocated putting birth control
chemicals in the water and food supplies of certain areas of the country that
were high in black and other minority populations.[2]
This was also apparently too politically unwise and perhaps impractical as
well. Nevertheless, there are advocates for spiking water and food supplies in
certain areas with birth control chemicals to this day.[3]
Sanger was also an early advocate for abortion and
infanticide. At times she spoke against abortion on demand, but on other occasions
she favored not only abortion but also infanticide. In the very volume in which
she had denounced abortion wrote, "The most merciful thing that the large
family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”[4]
She was a chameleon, changing colors and appearing to change her ideas with shifting
political climates or just in different circumstances with different audiences
in mind. This situational flexibility held true in her American Birth Control
League, later Planned Parenthood, and it does to this day.
The country was not ready for elective abortion or
infanticide, so Sanger initiated the Negro Project, in 1939. The key was
“Negative eugenics focused on preventing the birth of those it considered
inferior or unfit”, whether by birth control and sterilization, or by
immigration laws that kept “undesirables” out and segregation laws that kept
them separate from the rest of society to avoid interbreeding.[5]
There were laws against interracial marriage into the 1960’s, sponsored by
eugenicists.
Indeed, Sanger advocated for “corralling” “inferiors” in
segregated camps much like concentration camps.[6]
There she probably hoped to spike the water and food supplies with birth
control, more easily focus negative eugenics efforts such as forced
sterilization, and prevent interracial marriages.
She “persuaded a few reluctant, yet incredibly influential,
black ministers to join in her Birth Control movement. To dispel the rising
doubts among those who objected to Birth Control on religious and moral
grounds, Sanger wrote that “the ministers work is also important…offering to
train him in their ideals because “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”.[7]
For years forced sterilizations were legal, and most states
had laws for forced sterilizations. They started in California but were done in
all areas of the country. The last state to have legal forced sterilizations
was Oregon. “Oregon did its last sterilization in 1981 and did not abolish its
eugenics board until 1987. Sterilization was disproportionately to blacks and
the poor, often against their will. Welfare benefits depended on it, and that
included their children, even to 10 years old.”
I
n 1969 a Planned Parenthood president attacked a eugenics
board for a declining number of sterilizations, almost all of which were done
to blacks.”[8]
Many forced sterilizations took place in PP facilities. But while they
continued legally until 1981, they were by this time on the decline.
Another attempt at black genocide, legal forced
sterilization, was failing. As was a less subtle effort, the lynching of blacks
by the Ku Klux Klan and other racist groups, and their supporters. The KKK was
supported by Margaret Sanger and the racist eugenicists, and Sanger spoke at
their rallies.[9]
The victory of the Afro-American civil rights movement and
laws giving them equal rights, at least legally, spelled the gradual end of the
plan to exterminate blacks by legal forced sterilization, and of the “contributions”
of lynching as well. The eugenics boards asked the government to put birth
control in the water supplies of “urban” areas. This was discussed in the
United Nations in 1969[10],
but once again this idea failed, at least for now.
So what were the racist eugenicists, racist organizations
like Planned Parenthood, and the racists who supported them to do now?
“What is striking is that lynching came to a gradual end in
1968 at about the time abortion was decriminalized, starting in Colorado in
1967, California in 1968, and New York in 1970. Roe v. Wade followed in 1973.”[11]
Racists dealt with their “crisis”, the end of legalized
slavery, by instituting legalized birth control and sterilization, and by supporting
lynching. Now they, through Planned Parenthood and other abortion
organizations, had another lethal weapon, against their new “crisis”, the civil
rights victory—legalized abortion on demand.
Having given some background and history on racism and
eugenics, in Part 2 we will examine more directly the connection between racism
and abortion.
