Abortion

[bejkuy]

<<<I'd like to know how the hell you came up with mandatory abortion for imperfect fetuses. It would help if you'd take the time to actually show your reasoning, but I'll work in the blind here. I believe that a right to life is established at birth, and that is what allows for abortion. I believe the right of liberty allows for an individual to make their own decisions regarding reproduction. The sterilization of the mentally retarded without consent would be impermissible because it would violate their right to make their own choice about future heredity. If one can show consent for a mercy killing, I believe that is totally permissible because the right to decide whether one wishes to continue their life, when ravaged by disease, should be fundamental. I don't believe abortion should be mandatory. I believe it should be a personal decision. If someone wishes to keep a defective fetus, that should be their right, but I would on the other hand allow for someone to voluntarily terminate that pregnancy. I don't know how you came up with those ideas. I personally feel you simply decided to put down a host of things that you think will either malign me or reflect a non-textual inference you made about my legal views. In any case, I hope your knowledge of my actual legal views on those topics assauges you. >>>

Simmer down my liberal friend.  I did not accuse you have harboring such vile notions.  I simply made the logical correlation between abortion on demand up through 9 months (overwhelmingly done for convenience) and the next logical progressions of legalized euthenasia (my state), mercy killings, sterilization, etc.

The leap to such practices would be much shorter in a society that allowed partial birth abortion than one that valued and protected the lives of ALL it's citizens and future citizens

[Beet]

What are mercy killings, and isn't sterilization already legal? I think you can get sterilized if you want to, I just haven't heard of anyone I know personally wanting to do that.

Also, look at it this way. You are getting your ass kicked in a battle and the general orders a withdrawal. On the way to regroup with your company, you see a soldier lying on the ground, the entire lower half of his body blown away, a gallon of blood pouring out. It is clear he is in great pain. He begs you to shoot him. Why don't you? Wouldn't you want the same favor?

[Gustaf]

What are mercy killings, and isn't sterilization already legal? I think you can get sterilized if you want to, I just haven't heard of anyone I know personally wanting to do that.

Also, look at it this way. You are getting your ass kicked in a battle and the general orders a withdrawal. On the way to regroup with your company, you see a soldier lying on the ground, the entire lower half of his body blown away, a gallon of blood pouring out. It is clear he is in great pain. He begs you to shoot him. Why don't you? Wouldn't you want the same favor?

A mercy killing is, I think, here meant to mean when you "pull out the plug" on people who are getting demented, suffering from nasty developing diseases, etc and want to be killed but can't do it themselves, b/c they're too handicapped. Euthanasia is the formal term I believe. Or maybe he is using it in general, in which case your soldier example is perfectly valid.

[Beet]

Yeah because he already said legalized euthenasia in the same sentence so I thought mercy killings must be something different.

[Gustaf]

Yeah because he already said legalized euthenasia in the same sentence so I thought mercy killings must be something different.

Ah, I didn't see that. Then I guess it might be people in coma, who can't say what they want.

[bejkuy]

<<<A mercy killing is, I think, here meant to mean when you "pull out the plug" on people who are getting demented, suffering from nasty developing diseases, etc and want to be killed but can't do it themselves, b/c they're too handicapped. Euthanasia is the formal term I believe. Or maybe he is using it in general, in which case your soldier example is perfectly valid. >>>

That's not what I was talking about.  I was referring to the "mercy killing" that went on in Nazi Germany of "defective" people.
I also was referring to mandatory sterilization.

Are you aware of the rascist beginnings of planned parenthood?

[Gustaf]

<<<A mercy killing is, I think, here meant to mean when you "pull out the plug" on people who are getting demented, suffering from nasty developing diseases, etc and want to be killed but can't do it themselves, b/c they're too handicapped. Euthanasia is the formal term I believe. Or maybe he is using it in general, in which case your soldier example is perfectly valid. >>>

That's not what I was talking about.  I was referring to the "mercy killing" that went on in Nazi Germany of "defective" people.
I also was referring to mandatory sterilization.

Are you aware of the rascist beginnings of planned parenthood?

Yes, I am, since it was common goods in Sweden during the 30s. I am abhorred by much of what we're talking about.

[nclib]

I'd like to know how the hell you came up with mandatory abortion for imperfect fetuses. It would help if you'd take the time to actually show your reasoning, but I'll work in the blind here. I believe that a right to life is established at birth, and that is what allows for abortion. I believe the right of liberty allows for an individual to make their own decisions regarding reproduction. The sterilization of the mentally retarded without consent would be impermissible because it would violate their right to make their own choice about future heredity. If one can show consent for a mercy killing, I believe that is totally permissible because the right to decide whether one wishes to continue their life, when ravaged by disease, should be fundamental. I don't believe abortion should be mandatory. I believe it should be a personal decision. If someone wishes to keep a defective fetus, that should be their right, but I would on the other hand allow for someone to voluntarily terminate that pregnancy. I don't know how you came up with those ideas. I personally feel you simply decided to put down a host of things that you think will either malign me or reflect a non-textual inference you made about my legal views. In any case, I hope your knowledge of my actual legal views on those topics assauges you.

migrendel,

I think the issue that separates abortion from euthanasia, mandatory sterilization, mercy killings, etc. is the fact that the fetus is still in a woman's body.

Also, I admire your passion for abortion rights. On an earlier page, I mentioned the March for Women's Lives (April 25 in Washington, DC), which I believe will be the largest abortion rights demonstration in US history. Are you familiar with this? I know DC is a long way from Cambridge but it would be great if you could make it.

[nclib]

<<In order to believe that abortion = holocaust, you'd have to believe that:

1) The Jews killed in the Holocaust lived inside the bodies of Gentiles
2) Abortion doctors and pro-choice women want to rid the world of fetuses (or unborn babies, as you would say)
3) Women seeking abortions want to cause harm to their fetus>>

North Carolina Liberal,
I never said that abortion was the holocaust, rather I stated that to many Americans, the last 30 years has been similar to a holocaust.
Obviously the situation is different.  If I said a 18 year old basketball player was the next Micheal Jordan would that mean he would have to be 6-5, be born in New York, go to NC, and play for the Bulls?

In regards to the rest of your post, Yes, most pro-lifers are people of faith.  Yes, agnostics and athiests, are likely to favor abortion rights.  (Hitler, Mao, not meant as a cheap shot)  Human life is sacred to REAL people of faith.

The issue isn't about control.  I no more want to control women than   I'm basically a libertarian on most issues EXCEPT abortion.  It's about the protection of a future person.  Don't try to put a convicted murderer who needs to face his crime in the same category as a baby who is full of opportunity and promise.

Have you seen a modern ultrasound?  It's a child.  They kick, they hickup, they react to noise.

Abortion is the saddest part of America's history.  When will we wake up?

Regarding your point about the Holocaust, I realize that you were saying that the situation is very different from the Holocaust--I apologize if my post suggested otherwise. You were just saying that the severity was similar. Regardless, I don't think that they are at all comparable since the perpetrators of the Holocaust were evil.

I do believe that abortion is a woman's choice. Nevertheless, I would prefer that fewer abortions were necessary. I feel the way to tackle this is not to make abortion illegal, but to reduce the need through means such as family planning, sex education, and birth control.

Regarding women's rights, I didn't mean to say that you were against women's rights--only that pro-lifers in general have a poorer record on women's rights. They are much more likely to support paternalistic traditions. In a study of activist pro-lifers in Canada, 85% considered feminism and homosexuality a threat to the family.

[migrendel]

I decided to make a preemptory strike, bejkuy. Rather than allowing you to make the typical statements about Planned Parenthood, and its founder, Margaret Sanger, being a racist organization, I'll put her views on civil rights in context and rebut all the common use of quotations that seem to show racism:
Sanger and Eugenics
Eugenics is the science of improving hereditary qualities by socially controlling human reproduction. Unable to foment popular opposition to Margaret Sanger's accomplishments and the organization she founded, Sanger's critics attempt to discredit them by intentionally confusing her views on "fitness" with eugenics, racism, and anti-Semitism. Margaret Sanger was not a racist, an anti-Semite, or a eugenicist. Eugenicists, like the Nazis, were opposed to the use of abortion and contraception by healthy and "fit" women (Grossmann, 1995). In fact, Sanger's books were among the very first burned by the Nazis in their campaign against family planning ("Sanger on Exhibit," 1999/2000). Sanger actually helped several Jewish women and men and others escape the Nazi regime in Germany ("Margaret Sanger and the 'Refugee Department'," 1993). Sanger's disagreement with the eugenicists of her day is clear from her remarks in The Birth Control Review of February 1919:

Eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother (1919a).

Margaret Sanger clearly identified with the issues of health and fitness that concerned the early 20th-century eugenics movement, which was enormously popular and well-respected during the 1920s and '30s, when treatments for many hereditary and disabling conditions were unknown. However, Sanger always believed that reproductive decisions should be made on an individual and not a social or cultural basis, and she consistently repudiated any racial application of eugenics principles. For example, Sanger vocally opposed the racial stereotyping that effected passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, on the grounds that intelligence and other inherited traits vary by individual and not by group.

In 1927, the eugenics movement reached the height of its popularity when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell, held that it was constitutional to involuntarily sterilize the developmentally disabled, the insane, or the uncontrollably epileptic. Oliver Wendell Holmes, supported by Louis Brandeis and six other justices, wrote the opinion.

Although Sanger uniformly repudiated the racist exploitation of eugenics principles, she agreed with the "progressives" of her day who favored

incentives for the voluntary hospitalization and/or sterilization of people with untreatable, disabling, hereditary conditions
the adoption and enforcement of stringent regulations to prevent the immigration of the diseased and "feebleminded" into the U.S.
placing so-called illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, and dope-fiends on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct
Planned Parenthood Federation of America finds these views objectionable and outmoded. Nevertheless, anti-family planning activists continue to attack Sanger, who has been dead for over 30 years, because she is an easier target than the unassailable reputation of PPFA and the contemporary family planning movement. However, attempts to discredit the family planning movement because its early 20th-century founder was not a perfect model of early 21st-century values is like disavowing the Declaration of Independence because its author, Thomas Jefferson, bought and sold slaves.

Sanger's Outreach to the African-American Community
In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning clinic in Harlem that sought to enlist support for contraceptive use and to bring the benefits of family planning to women who were denied access to their city's health and social services. Staffed by a black physician and black social worker, the clinic was endorsed by The Amsterdam News (the powerful local newspaper), the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Urban League, and the black community's elder statesman, W.E.B. DuBois.

Beginning in 1939, DuBois also served on the advisory council for Sanger's "Negro Project," which was a "unique experiment in race-building and humanitarian service to a race subjected to discrimination, hardship, and segregation" (Chesler, 1992). The Negro Project served African-Americans in the rural South. Other leaders of the African-American community who were involved in the project included Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. The Negro Project was also endorsed by prominent white Americans who were involved in social justice efforts at this time, including Eleanor Roosevelt, the most visible and compassionate supporter of racial equality in her era; and the medical philanthropists, Albert and Mary Lasker, whose financial support made the project possible

A passionate opponent of racism, Sanger predicted in 1942 that the "Negro question" would be foremost on the country's domestic agenda after World War II. Her accomplishments on behalf of the African-American community were unchallengeable during her lifetime and remain so today. In 1966, the year Sanger died, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts. . . . Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her.

Charges of racism against Sanger are most often made by anti-choice activists who are unfamiliar with the history of the African-American community or with Margaret Sanger's collegial relationship with that community's leaders. The tangled fabric of lies and manipulation woven by anti-choice activists around the issues of class, race, and family planning continues to be embroidered today, more than three-quarters of a century after the family planning movement began.

[12th Doctor]

I decided to make a preemptory strike, bejkuy. Rather than allowing you to make the typical statements about Planned Parenthood, and its founder, Margaret Sanger, being a racist organization, I'll put her views on civil rights in context and rebut all the common use of quotations that seem to show racism:
Sanger and Eugenics
Eugenics is the science of improving hereditary qualities by socially controlling human reproduction. Unable to foment popular opposition to Margaret Sanger's accomplishments and the organization she founded, Sanger's critics attempt to discredit them by intentionally confusing her views on "fitness" with eugenics, racism, and anti-Semitism. Margaret Sanger was not a racist, an anti-Semite, or a eugenicist. Eugenicists, like the Nazis, were opposed to the use of abortion and contraception by healthy and "fit" women (Grossmann, 1995). In fact, Sanger's books were among the very first burned by the Nazis in their campaign against family planning ("Sanger on Exhibit," 1999/2000). Sanger actually helped several Jewish women and men and others escape the Nazi regime in Germany ("Margaret Sanger and the 'Refugee Department'," 1993). Sanger's disagreement with the eugenicists of her day is clear from her remarks in The Birth Control Review of February 1919:

Eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother (1919a).

Margaret Sanger clearly identified with the issues of health and fitness that concerned the early 20th-century eugenics movement, which was enormously popular and well-respected during the 1920s and '30s, when treatments for many hereditary and disabling conditions were unknown. However, Sanger always believed that reproductive decisions should be made on an individual and not a social or cultural basis, and she consistently repudiated any racial application of eugenics principles. For example, Sanger vocally opposed the racial stereotyping that effected passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, on the grounds that intelligence and other inherited traits vary by individual and not by group.

In 1927, the eugenics movement reached the height of its popularity when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell, held that it was constitutional to involuntarily sterilize the developmentally disabled, the insane, or the uncontrollably epileptic. Oliver Wendell Holmes, supported by Louis Brandeis and six other justices, wrote the opinion.

Although Sanger uniformly repudiated the racist exploitation of eugenics principles, she agreed with the "progressives" of her day who favored

incentives for the voluntary hospitalization and/or sterilization of people with untreatable, disabling, hereditary conditions
the adoption and enforcement of stringent regulations to prevent the immigration of the diseased and "feebleminded" into the U.S.
placing so-called illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, and dope-fiends on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct
Planned Parenthood Federation of America finds these views objectionable and outmoded. Nevertheless, anti-family planning activists continue to attack Sanger, who has been dead for over 30 years, because she is an easier target than the unassailable reputation of PPFA and the contemporary family planning movement. However, attempts to discredit the family planning movement because its early 20th-century founder was not a perfect model of early 21st-century values is like disavowing the Declaration of Independence because its author, Thomas Jefferson, bought and sold slaves.

Sanger's Outreach to the African-American Community
In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning clinic in Harlem that sought to enlist support for contraceptive use and to bring the benefits of family planning to women who were denied access to their city's health and social services. Staffed by a black physician and black social worker, the clinic was endorsed by The Amsterdam News (the powerful local newspaper), the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Urban League, and the black community's elder statesman, W.E.B. DuBois.

Beginning in 1939, DuBois also served on the advisory council for Sanger's "Negro Project," which was a "unique experiment in race-building and humanitarian service to a race subjected to discrimination, hardship, and segregation" (Chesler, 1992). The Negro Project served African-Americans in the rural South. Other leaders of the African-American community who were involved in the project included Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. The Negro Project was also endorsed by prominent white Americans who were involved in social justice efforts at this time, including Eleanor Roosevelt, the most visible and compassionate supporter of racial equality in her era; and the medical philanthropists, Albert and Mary Lasker, whose financial support made the project possible

A passionate opponent of racism, Sanger predicted in 1942 that the "Negro question" would be foremost on the country's domestic agenda after World War II. Her accomplishments on behalf of the African-American community were unchallengeable during her lifetime and remain so today. In 1966, the year Sanger died, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts. . . . Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her.

Charges of racism against Sanger are most often made by anti-choice activists who are unfamiliar with the history of the African-American community or with Margaret Sanger's collegial relationship with that community's leaders. The tangled fabric of lies and manipulation woven by anti-choice activists around the issues of class, race, and family planning continues to be embroidered today, more than three-quarters of a century after the family planning movement began.

What does "fitness" mean if not racial/genetic purity.  Margret Sanger also despised ALL Catholics especially the Irish.

[migrendel]

Now some quotations from the family planning movement and their true meaning:
Published Statements That Distort or Misquote Margaret Sanger
Through the years, a number of alleged Sanger quotations, or allegations about her, have surfaced with regularity in anti-family planning publications. The following are samples of especially pernicious distortions, misattributions, or outright lies that Margaret Sanger's enemies continue to circulate.

"More children from the fit, less from the unfit &#8212; that is the chief issue in birth control."
A quotation falsely attributed to Margaret Sanger, this statement was made by the editors of American Medicine in a review of an article by Sanger. The editorial from which this appeared, as well as Sanger's article, "Why Not Birth Control Clinics in America?" (1919b), were reprinted side-by-side in the May 1919 Birth Control Review.

"The mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, so that the increase among Negroes, even more than the increase among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear their children properly."
Another quotation falsely attributed to Margaret Sanger, this was actually written for the June 1932 issue of The Birth Control Review by W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Taken out of the context of his discussion about the effects of birth control on the balance between quality-of-life considerations and race-survival issues for African-Americans, Dubois' language seems insensitive by today's standards.

"Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a menace to the race."
This fabricated quotation, falsely attributed to Sanger, was concocted in the late 1980s. The alleged source is the April 1933 Birth Control Review (Sanger ceased editing the Review in 1929). That issue contains no article or letter by Sanger.

"To create a race of thoroughbreds. . ."
This remark, again attributed originally to Sanger, was made by Dr. Edward A. Kempf and has been cited out of context and with distorted meaning. Dr. Kempf, a progressive physician, was actually arguing for state endowment of maternal and infant care clinics. In her book The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger quoted Dr. Kempf's argument about how environment may improve human excellence:

Society must make life worth the living and the refining for the individual by conditioning him to love and to seek the love-object in a manner that reflects a constructive effect upon his fellow-men and by giving him suitable opportunities. The virility of the automatic apparatus is destroyed by excessive gormandizing or hunger, by excessive wealth or poverty, by excessive work or idleness, by sexual abuse or intolerant prudishness. The noblest and most difficult art of all is the raising of human thoroughbreds (1969).

It was in this spirit that Sanger used the phrase, "Birth Control: To Create a Race of Thoroughbreds," as a banner on the November 1921 issue of the Birth Control Review. (Differing slogans on the theme of voluntary family planning sometimes appeared under the title of The Review, e.g., "Dedicated to the Cause of Voluntary Motherhood," January 1928.)

"The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."
This statement is taken out of context from Margaret Sanger's Woman and the New Race (1920). Sanger was making an ironic comment &#8212; not a prescriptive one &#8212; about the horrifying rate of infant mortality among large families of early 20th-century urban America. The statement, as grim as the conditions that prompted Sanger to make it, accompanied this chart, illustrating the infant death rate in 1920:

Deaths During First Year

1st born children 23%
2nd born children 20%
3rd born children 21%
4th born children 23%
5th born children 26%
6th born children 29% 7th born children 31%
8th born children 33%
9th born children 35%
10th born children 41%
11th born children 51%
12th born children 60%

"We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population."
Sanger was aware of African-American concerns, passionately argued by Marcus Garvey in the 1920s, that birth control was a threat to the survival of the black race. This statement, which acknowledges those fears, is taken from a letter to Clarence J. Gamble, M.D., a champion of the birth control movement. In that letter, Sanger describes her strategy to allay such apprehensions. A larger portion of the letter makes Sanger's meaning clear:

It seems to me from my experience . . . in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas, 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. . . . They do not do this with the white people, and if we can train the Negro doctor at the clinic, he can go among them with enthusiasm and with knowledge, which, I believe, will have far-reaching results. . . . His work, in my opinion, should be entirely with the Negro profession and the nurses, hospital, social workers, as well as the County's white doctors. His success will depend upon his personality and his training by us. The minister's work is also important, and also 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 (1939).

"As early as 1914 Margaret Sanger was promoting abortion, not for white middle-class women, but against 'inferior races' &#8212; black people, poor people, Slavs, Latins, and Hebrews were 'human weeds'."
This allegation about Margaret Sanger appears in an anonymous flyer, "Facts About Planned Parenthood," that is circulated by anti-family planning activists. Margaret Sanger, who passionately believed in a woman's right to control her body, never "promoted" abortion because it was illegal and dangerous throughout her lifetime. She urged women to use contraceptives so that they would not be at risk for the dangers of illegal, back-alley abortion. Sanger never described any ethnic community as an 'inferior race' or as 'human weeds.' In her lifetime, Sanger won the respect of international figures of all races, including the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Mahatma Gandhi; Shidzue Kato, the foremost family planning advocate in Japan; and Lady Dhanvanthi Rama Rau of India &#8212; all of whom were sensitive to issues of race.

"The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy"
This is the title of a book falsely attributed to Sanger. It was written by Lothrop Stoddard and reviewed by Havelock Ellis in the October 1920 issue of The Birth Control Review. Its general topic, the international politics of race relations in the first decades of the century, is one in which Sanger was not involved. Her interest, insofar as she allowed a review of Stoddard's book to be published in The Birth Control Review, was in the overall health and quality of life of all races and not in tensions between them. Ellis's review was critical of the Stoddard book and of distinctions based on race or ethnicity alone.

[migrendel]

Ms. Sanger did not hate Catholics. I don't know who told you that, but it's just not true. Her opposition was to Catholic dogma. She was born in 1879, in a world vastly different from our own. She was raised a Catholic in a strict Irish family, and she saw the consequences Catholic ideology had on women. Her mother bore 11 children, and died a slow and miserable death because of it. Do you know why Mrs. Sanger's husband didn't use the then available prophylactic devices, and she didn't use the antiseptic douches and pharmaceuticals by then available? Their church stood foursquare against it. A thoroughly silly canon based upon intellectual rubbish cost that woman her life.

[migrendel]

So, supersoulty, your statement that a woman of Irish ethnicity hated Irish people sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

[12th Doctor]

Ms. Sanger did not hate Catholics. I don't know who told you that, but it's just not true. Her opposition was to Catholic dogma. She was born in 1879, in a world vastly different from our own. She was raised a Catholic in a strict Irish family, and she saw the consequences Catholic ideology had on women. Her mother bore 11 children, and died a slow and miserable death because of it. Do you know why Mrs. Sanger's husband didn't use the then available prophylactic devices, and she didn't use the antiseptic douches and pharmaceuticals by then available? Their church stood foursquare against it. A thoroughly silly canon based upon intellectual rubbish cost that woman her life.

I sorry, I meant to say Jewish, not Irish.  More over, I object to you calling it a "silly" doctrine.  11 lives, that's how many Mrs. Sanger brought into the world.  11!  Is that "silly"?  Apparently it is to you, but not to me.  Some how i doubt that Mrs. Sanger died regreting that she had those children.  And I object to you calling it "intelletual rubbish".  It is a doctrine based on faith.

[12th Doctor]

So, supersoulty, your statement that a woman of Irish ethnicity hated Irish people sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

In principle, it is not impossible to hate your own kind.  Hitler thought the master race should be blonde-haired, blue-eyed tall and muscular.  Funny, that doesn't match Hitler's discription to well.

[12th Doctor]

In the mean time, it is a known fact that many of Sanger's followers believed that birth control was an effective way to get rid of the "surplus population".

[migrendel]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

What does "fitness" mean if not racial/genetic purity.  Margret Sanger also despised ALL Catholics especially the Irish.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'd like to note this is the first time I've used a quote mechanism in all my time here. I did this to preserve the initial statement of supersoulty in case he edits it. So he apparently meant to say "Margaret Sanger despised ALL Catholics, especially the Jewish"? I think not. I think he made an extrapolation with no factual support, and now is trying to run away from that with his tail between his legs. I cannot speak for Mrs. Sanger's train of thought. That was more than a century ago, but I think Margaret Sanger might be the most reliable source. I also think I went overboard when I called it intellectual rubbish. If something is based in faith (a word often paired with the word blind), it has no intellectual basis.

[migrendel]

Yes, they did. But you have to question the values of someone who feels that keeping the population at a sustainable level is somehow objectionable and discrediting.

[12th Doctor]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

What does "fitness" mean if not racial/genetic purity.  Margret Sanger also despised ALL Catholics especially the Irish.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'd like to note this is the first time I've used a quote mechanism in all my time here. I did this to preserve the initial statement of supersoulty in case he edits it. So he apparently meant to say "Margaret Sanger despised ALL Catholics, especially the Jewish"? I think not. I think he made an extrapolation with no factual support, and now is trying to run away from that with his tail between his legs. I cannot speak for Mrs. Sanger's train of thought. That was more than a century ago, but I think Margaret Sanger might be the most reliable source. I also think I went overboard when I called it intellectual rubbish. If something is based in faith (a word often paired with the word blind), it has no intellectual basis.

So I also forgot the word "and" as in "and especailly"  I see that you have sunk down to the level of pointing out my typos and using them against me.  I'm also sorry that the concept of "faith" is something to be looked down upon, in your way of thinking.  What can I say then, you can look down upon me all you want then.  If you think that my faith is blind, what can I say.  I also note that you made no response to my earlier post to you attempting to mend relations between us.  If you didn't see it, then I won't hold it against you, if you just choose to ignore it, I would say that that proves who is really the "rude" one here.

[migrendel]

I haven't pointed out your spelling and punctuation errors. That would petty. But if you allege a typographical error to change the meaning of an easily renouncable statement, then it becomes imperative for me to show a level of scepticism. I didn't see your post, and in theory in think mending fences sounds wonderful, but with the nature of our discussions, I find it highly inviable in real life.

[12th Doctor]

Yes, they did. But you have to question the values of someone who feels that keeping the population at a sustainable level is somehow objectionable and discrediting.

A "sustainable level".  I don't understand how you can justifiy it like that.  I don't understand how you can say that there are millions of people out there who shouldn't get a shot because the population needs to be kept at a sustainable level".  What is "Sustainable" to you?  What is surplus?  I don't know how you can be so cold.  You know who else talked about the "surplus population"?  Ebinezer Scrooge.  If you believe that there is such a thing as the "surplus population" then I strongly encourage you to read Julian Simon.  He proved all those people who worried about "surplus population and "sustainable levels" wrong.  Malthus was wrong in the 18th century and he is wrong now.

[12th Doctor]

I haven't pointed out your spelling and punctuation errors. That would petty. But if you allege a typographical error to change the meaning of an easily renouncable statement, then it becomes imperative for me to show a level of scepticism. I didn't see your post, and in theory in think mending fences sounds wonderful, but with the nature of our discussions, I find it highly inviable in real life.

Look, I respect your opinions on an inteletual level, even though I could never understand them.  I don't want to attack you on a personal level.  And take my word that the orignal meaning I had intended was not what got writen.  I new Sanger was Irish, because I'm Irish and I know that Sanger is an Irish name.

[migrendel]

Malthus was wrong to an extent. He was right in the fact that species, such as Maple trees, mussels, and humans will continue to reproduce. But he is wrong in the fact that war, poverty, disease, and famine are the only things that can mitigate this trend. If people responsibly decide their future, and plan ahead with prudence, that would be unnecessary. Population would exist in a reasonable state of stability, its equilibrium punctuated only by truly revolutionary events in the life of the planet. That would be normal, of course, because the Darwinian paradigm of gradualism is being increasingly replaced by a more realistic view of change in population and the gene pool. If you risk this, you play Russian roulette with the health of everyone who lives. I do not see how you could turn your back on those already born in favor of those yet to come into existence.

[migrendel]

Also, what aspect can't you understand? I think they're fairly understandable.