Post by mikegarrison on Aug 1, 2020 18:02:43 GMT -5
OK, so trying to figure out where TF Holiday is getting this idea, I checked Goggle and did find that Sanger has been in the news recently. Planned Parenthood has announced that they are removing her name from their flagship New York clinic.
As I mentioned before, Sanger was involved in the eugenics movement. Many racist people were involved in the eugenics movement. But that is not proof she was racist, and the evidence strongly suggests she was not. It's like saying "George Washington was a man, many Greek people are men, so therefore George Washington must have been Greek".
As Planned Parenthood openly discussed in that link that Holiday posted, Sanger did support the goals of "ableist" eugenics. This was extremely orthodox in her day. The thought was that people should breed people for beneficial traits just like they have long bred other animals and plants. The three big problems with this, however, were 1) agency, 2) a very imperfect understanding of what traits were actually genetic, and 3) bad ideas about what changes would be "improvements".
On these questions, the evidence provided for Sanger is that she welcomed agency. In fact, that was her whole deal. She thought women should have agency over their own reproduction. She did not apparently support coerced eugenics, and thus is not tarred by the first major "sin" of the eugenics movement.
She probably had the same imperfect understanding of how genetics actually worked as everyone else did. But this is only a technical "sin", not a moral/ethical one.
On the third question, she fell down in certain ways. The record shows that she did support "ableism" -- targeting eugenics against those who were mentally ill or "feebleminded". Many *other* people targeted eugenics against various races, national origins, religions, etc. But it seemed Sanger argued against this. Many people also supported forced sterilization of criminals, the mentally ill, the poor, etc. -- but again, the evidence suggests that Sanger did not ever support forced sterilizations. That's the "agency" issue.
Catholics and other anti-abortion groups have long tried to tar Sanger with her association with eugenics. That would be fair if they only blamed her for her own faults, but instead they have continually tried to blame her for racist eugenics and forced eugenics -- things she actively worked to prevent.
Is Planned Parenthood over-reacting by taking her name off the clinic? Quite possibly, but it's not my decision to make. And if her name is a distraction, then it's understandable they might not want it distracting them anymore.
So Holiday, if they do take her name off their clinic, then you'll stop opposing them, right? Because they will have cut their ties with her name? (Ha! I joke. Of course you will still oppose them, because you don't actually care the least bit about whether or not she was actually racist or ableist. You just think you have found a hammer to hit Planned Parenthood with.)
As I mentioned before, Sanger was involved in the eugenics movement. Many racist people were involved in the eugenics movement. But that is not proof she was racist, and the evidence strongly suggests she was not. It's like saying "George Washington was a man, many Greek people are men, so therefore George Washington must have been Greek".
As Planned Parenthood openly discussed in that link that Holiday posted, Sanger did support the goals of "ableist" eugenics. This was extremely orthodox in her day. The thought was that people should breed people for beneficial traits just like they have long bred other animals and plants. The three big problems with this, however, were 1) agency, 2) a very imperfect understanding of what traits were actually genetic, and 3) bad ideas about what changes would be "improvements".
On these questions, the evidence provided for Sanger is that she welcomed agency. In fact, that was her whole deal. She thought women should have agency over their own reproduction. She did not apparently support coerced eugenics, and thus is not tarred by the first major "sin" of the eugenics movement.
She probably had the same imperfect understanding of how genetics actually worked as everyone else did. But this is only a technical "sin", not a moral/ethical one.
On the third question, she fell down in certain ways. The record shows that she did support "ableism" -- targeting eugenics against those who were mentally ill or "feebleminded". Many *other* people targeted eugenics against various races, national origins, religions, etc. But it seemed Sanger argued against this. Many people also supported forced sterilization of criminals, the mentally ill, the poor, etc. -- but again, the evidence suggests that Sanger did not ever support forced sterilizations. That's the "agency" issue.
Catholics and other anti-abortion groups have long tried to tar Sanger with her association with eugenics. That would be fair if they only blamed her for her own faults, but instead they have continually tried to blame her for racist eugenics and forced eugenics -- things she actively worked to prevent.
Is Planned Parenthood over-reacting by taking her name off the clinic? Quite possibly, but it's not my decision to make. And if her name is a distraction, then it's understandable they might not want it distracting them anymore.
So Holiday, if they do take her name off their clinic, then you'll stop opposing them, right? Because they will have cut their ties with her name? (Ha! I joke. Of course you will still oppose them, because you don't actually care the least bit about whether or not she was actually racist or ableist. You just think you have found a hammer to hit Planned Parenthood with.)