Timothy Birdnow

An argument with a liberal apologist on Facebook.

This starts with Stuart Liss making the observation:

Katharine Houghton Hepburn; mother of actress Katharine Hepburn:
She was a suffragette, Birth control advocate , proud Marxist and close friend and associate of Eugenicist abortionist, Margaret Sanger.
It was she and Sanger who started Planned Parenthood
C. 1901

A liberal named
Tom Gelsthorpe snarks:

Margaret Sanger started the American Birth Control League in the early 20th century. Sanger did NOT promote abortion. Her principal concern was helping women avoid bearing more children than they could afford to raise. The suffering of poor people attempting to raise large families in crowded cities bothered her. I'd be hard-pressed to find someone who ISN'T bothered by that now or then.

Eugenics was a fad that passed quickly. It was never the focus of Sanger's efforts. Nor was she racist. Sanger was ahead of her time in many ways, and became a lightning rod for more criticism than she deserved, as leaders often do. Her successors at the American Birth Control League renamed it Planned Parenthood, in part to separate the purpose from Sanger's reputation.

Birth rates have been falling all over the world, for various reasons, for more than 200 years. The earliest, measurable, sharp decline in birthrates began in France in the 18th century, a devoutly Catholic country at the time. As countries urbanize, the cost of large families rises, and the utility of large families declines, compared to rural folkways. People adapt to these realities regardless of purported religious strictures.

I believe it helps to separate historical facts from emotions. Maybe I'm funny that way.

After Liss gave some direct quotes from Sanger he responded:

Sanger was edged out of leadership because of abrasive positions like that.

You can always quote the most obnoxious things someone said, to make her sound like a monster. Then leave out the good she accomplished, for good measure.

But when you compare someone you dislike to Hitler, the conversation's over.

Bye, bye.

Tim responds: You either are woefully ignorant of the history of this or you are lying. Not sure which.

From Planned Parenthood itself:

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/8013/9611/6937/Opposition_Claims_About_Margaret_Sanger.pdf

""As early as 1914 Margaret Sanger was promoting abortion, not for white middle-class women, but against 'inferior races' — black people, poor people, Slavs"

She often said that seeing women die because of unsafe abortion was a catalyst for her work promoting birth control. In fact she said:

The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."
— Woman and the New Race, Chapter 5, "The Wickedness of Creating Large Families." (1920).

PBS, no right wing outlet, agrees that one of Sanger's prime motivations was making abortion legal and ubiquitous. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pill-margaret-sanger-1879-1966/

You say "Eugenics was a fad that passed quickly"

So Naziism was a "fad that passed quickly"? Eugenics started in the 19th century and at first caught on in America. Google the Cold Harbor experiments. Eugenics was a huge fad that went on and on. The Germans were ashamed the Americans were beating them in it and so made it a major course of research in the teens and '20's, culminating in the Holocaust.

Eugenics was created by Francis Galton in 1883 (Galton was Darwin's cousin). 62 years is a long time for a "fad that passed quicly". In fact it's still not dead; it's just flipped from claiming minorities were inferior to saying the white majority is inferior and needs to be reduced or eliminated.

BTW all sorts of people were into eugenics, including Lindbergh, Winston Churchill, etc. And none more than Margaret Sanger.

She said:

"Apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring."
— "My Way to Peace,” Jan. 17, 1932. Margaret Sanger Papers, Library of Congress 130:198.

"The most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”
— Ibid.

"We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population."
— Letter to Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, December 10, 1939, p. 2.

You get the point.

"Her successors at the American Birth Control League renamed it Planned Parenthood, in part to separate the purpose from Sanger's reputation."

Classic Leftists; hide the truth of who they are and what they believe.

"Birth rates have been falling all over the world, for various reasons, for more than 200 years"

Not sure what you have been smoking. Birth rates may have fallen in a few nations but they remained very high; it's exactly why there is a big push for depopulation now. Why do you think Paul Ehrlicht wrote The Population Bomb?

"The earliest, measurable, sharp decline in birthrates began in France in the 18th century, a devoutly Catholic country at the time."

France would end the century with the Revolution, the Reign of Terror, and a complete rejection of Christianity. Remember the Cult of Reason?

The fertility decline had a number of causes, including declinging food availability.

"
I believe it helps to separate historical facts from emotions.Maybe I'm funny that way."

In the words of George Thoroughgood "everybody funny, now you funny too". Your whole argument was a rejection of facts in favor of a leftist narrative, one monstrously untrue. It was a nice try though.

"You can always quote the most obnoxious things someone said, to make her sound like a monster. Then leave out the good she accomplished, for good measure.

But when you compare someone you dislike to Hitler, the conversation's over."

You cannot divorce Sanger and eugenics from Hitler. It was at the core of the genocide. So you are going to take your ball and go home because you don't like the fact that she was one of the forerunners of the Third Reich. But history is against you sir.

Sanger was always about racist population control. It was her raison detre. Those quotes were about what was in her heart and what she truly wanted. You deny reality sir.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-1171/116542/20190920143641893_18-1171%20Amicus%20Brief%20of%20ISSUES4LIFE%20Foundation.pdf

" Eugenics based on race is inexorably linked to the founding of Planned. Parenthood."

You are wrong; suck it up. Taking your ball and going home is an easy, nay cowardly solution to your plight.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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