There as been a lot of talk and coverage about the Anti-Abortion billboards posted in various cities that warn of Black children being an “Endangered Species” [click here for a mashup of articles and perspectives]. That’s an interesting term “species”. I feel that using that term to describe a race of people lessens their humanity. We normally usually use this term when referring to animals, mammals, or beasts, not people. Oddly, it brings to mind the 20th Century Eugenics movement.
Eugenic ideology was popular in the early 20th century. Just Google eugenics and you’ll find out. There is a documented link between Abortion in America and eugenics that should not be overlooked.
Eugenicists strongly espoused racial supremacy and “purity”,” particularly of the “Aryan” race. Eugenicists hoped to purify the bloodlines and improve the race by encouraging the “fit” to reproduce and the “unfit” to restrict their reproduction. They sought to contain the “inferior” races through segregation, sterilization, birth control and abortion. – source
You may not be aware but, there was a time in America where many black people were sterilized due to these types of beliefs. The excuses given were that those who were feeble minded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, and/or criminal were not fit to live with the rest of society and should not be allowed to procreate. Feeble-mindedness and criminal tendencies were often cited in the case of blacks. Unwed mothers also fell victim. However, I should note that poor whites and other immigrants also suffered from sterilization. Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 is just an example:
Eugenics Activists Bend the Law to Target Minorities
From the very beginning the motive behind the eugenics laws had been to eliminate ethnic minorities, especially “Negroes.”
Writing in an infamous 1893 “open letter” published in the Virginia Medical Monthly, Hunter Holmes McGuire, a Richmond physician and president of the American Medical Association, asked for “some scientific explanation of the sexual perversion in the Negro of the present day.” McGuire’s correspondent, Chicago physician G. Frank Lydston, replied that African-American men raped white women because of “[h]ereditary influences descending from the uncivilized ancestors of our Negroes.” Lydston’s solution to this problem was not lynching, but surgical castration which “prevents the criminal from perpetuating his kind.”[14]
In 1935, a decade after the passage of Virginia’s eugenics laws, Plecker expressed the desire to use forced sterilization on minorities in correspondence with Walter Gross, director of Nazi Germany’s Bureau of Human Betterment and Eugenics. Plecker described Virginia’s racial purity laws and requested to be put on Gross’ mailing list. Plecker commented upon the Third Reich’s sterilization of 600 children in Algeria who were born of German women to black fathers. “I hope this work is complete and not one has been missed,” he wrote. “I sometimes regret that we have not the authority to put some measures in practice in Virginia.”[15]
Despite lacking the statutory authority to sterilize black, mulatto and American Indian children simply because they were “colored”, a small number of Virginia eugenicist in key positions found ways to achieve their end. The Sterilization Act gave State institutions, including hospitals, psychiatric institutions and prisons, the statutory authority to sterilize persons deemed to be “feeble minded” — a highly subjective criterion.
Did you know that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a devout eugenicist who created the Negro Project. Many say it was designed to sterilize unknowing black women and others she deemed as undesirables of society? Here’s some of her writing:
In A Plan for Peace (1932), for example, Sanger proposed a congressional department to: “Apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.” source
Gamble wrote a memorandum in November 1939 entitled “Suggestions for the Negro Project,” in which he recognized that “black leaders might regard birth control as an extermination plot.” He suggested black leaders be placed in positions where it would appear they were in charge.36Yet Sanger’s reply reflects Gamble’s ambivalence about having blacks in authoritative positions: “I note that you doubt it worthwhile to employ a full-time Negro physician. It seems to me from my experience … that, while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors, they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table, which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubts. They do not do this with white people and if we can train the Negro doctor at the clinic, he can go among them with enthusiasm and … knowledge, which … will have far-reaching results among the colored people.37″
Another project director lamented: I wonder if Southern Darkies can ever be entrusted with … a clinic. Our experience causes us to doubt their ability to work except under white supervision.38
Sanger knew blacks were a religious people—and how useful ministers would be to her project. She wrote in the same letter: “The minister’s work is also important and he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. 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 [emphasis added].39″ – Source: Tanya L. Green
- Maafa 21 – Black Genocide in 21st Century America – This amazing documentary was produced by Life Dynamics, it emphasizes the themes of eugenics, abortion, and the African-American community. The film was written and directed by Mark Crutcher. [It was very, very eye-opening for me]
- http://www.blackgenocide.org – This site includes a side by side comparison of the Holocaust, American Slavery, and Abortion.
- Planned Parenthood is the black community’s worst enemy Examiner.com
I’ve never officially been pro- or anti- choice, but I believe each woman and her partner should have the right to choose. I also believe that if you think abortion is wrong, you should be able to voice your opinion and lobby for it. In the end, I believe that the will of the people will prevail, in terms of law making. The problem is when the people don’t have all of the facts. We as African-Americans must figure institutional racism into the equation when thinking about abortion and it’s role in our communities. Get the facts.
