You-Genics

This week, Congress fought a battle over eugenics. Make no mistake. That’s what it was about.

You might not know it because you see, the stupid Nazis almost ruined all the eugenics fun for everyone. But it turned out that they only just tarnished the name “eugenics.” Its advocacy and practice continues. With government funding.

This week the great SBA List put out an ad showing the history of eugenics behind Planned Parenthood with all those sweet quotes from Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger including the oldie but a goody, “The most merciful thing a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

But eugenics ain’t just history. Richard Dawkins spelled it out clearly, bemoaning that stupid Hitler for giving a bad name to eugenics.

“In the 1920s and 1930s, scientists from both the political left and right would not have found the idea of designer babies particularly dangerous –- though of course they would not have used that phrase. Today, I suspect that the idea is too dangerous for comfortable discussion, and my conjecture is that Adolf Hitler is responsible for the change.

Nobody wants to be caught agreeing with that monster, even in a single particular. The spectre of Hitler has led some scientists to stray from “ought” to “is” and deny that breeding for human qualities is even possible. But if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability?

You see, while advocating eugenics, its supporters seem to feel icky about it. Washington Post’s Ezra Klein would seem to agree that perhaps culling the poor might be a swell idea but he caveats it a bit. He wrote just this week, concerning the fight to defund Planned Parenthood:

The fight also isn’t about cutting spending. The services Planned Parenthood provides save the federal government a lot of money. It’s somewhat cold to put it in these terms, but taxpayers end up bearing a lot of the expense for unintended pregnancies among people without the means to care for their children.

Somewhat cold? Yeah. Somewhat.

What Ezra Klein is saying is that we shouldn’t worry about killing the unborn because they’re just the POOR unborn, right? And since we know that abortion effects a high percentage of African Americans, isn’t Ezra Klein really saying that abortion doesn’t matter because it just kills poor black babies?

These kind of quotes are not an anomaly. Remember Supreme Court Justice Ruth Vader Ginsburg’s comment from just two years ago.

“Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

Nobody in the media ever pressed her for elaboration as to who those folks are that we don’t want to have too many of. Why? Because they know who she meant.

Nancy Pelosi equated family planning services with an economic stimulus. She said, “Contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”

Pro-aborts are constantly attempting to spotlight the happy side of abortion. Remember the theory floated that legalized abortion contributed significantly to recent crime reductions. That turned out to be a complete lie but it’s still brought up as a fact.

And then you get the backslapping of how abortion has cut down on the suffering of imperfect babies because it doesn’t allow those imperfect babies to suffer through their imperfect lives. Sweet of them, isn’t it?

Bishop Peter Elliot said earlier this year that the “warped practice of eugenics is rising from its Nazi tomb.” I’m thinking it was never there. It just changed its name. It now goes by family planning, overpopulation, and environmentalism. It’s got other names too, but that’s what the fight over defunding Planned Parenthood was about. It still is. Once you say that life isn’t priceless, it’s all just haggling over the price.