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Politics : For the Sake of Clarity and Meaning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (218)	3/7/2005 9:04:52 AM
From: goldworldnet	Respond to of 777

Sanger herself is indefensible. She was simply too prolific in her writing to make a case for her. I'm sure your friend is a good person. btw, although we haven't conversed much, I have a great deal of respect for you. Josh * * *

To: Lane3 who wrote (218)	3/7/2005 10:12:11 AM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 777

kholt, in spite of widespread anti-abortion propaganda trying to associate Sanger, and by association Planned Parenthood and the broader pro-choice political sector, to racism, the KKK, and Hilter/Nazism, I don't think your friend need worry about it. Sanger was clearly a radical and has come to be associated with the eugenics movement of the early 20th century, but my take on it is that she took advantage of that movement in order to gain support for availability of, and education in, birth control. She is widely quoted as seeking to prevent the "unfit" from giving birth, even to the point of forced sterilization, but she was not talking about any racial or ethnic group. She was referring to those in society who, by giving birth, would be passing along either genetic defects in the form of serious inherited conditions, or other conditions that result in serious birth defects or transmission of permanently debilitating disease. For example, she would, it seems likely, find today's scientific capacity for early testing of unborn babies to screen for such conditions to be a good thing and probably would advocate terminating pregnancies where the problems found were serious enough. However one might view such things, that's a far cry from KKK/Nazi racist motivation. I seems clear to me that she was motivated by her belief that the poorer classes in society were kept that way in part because of their high birth rates. She believed, rightly or wrongly, that by making birth control available to the poor, and them educating its use, we could improve their lives. In other words, her motivation was economic reform. This fits, BTW, with her earlier flirtations with radical socialist movements like the IWW. Though she seemingly did ally herself with some aspects of the eugenics movement, it seems to me a case of politics making strange (and unfortunate) bedfellows. But attempts to associate her, and thus smear the organization she founded, with racism and Nazism are base propaganda. JMO.