Carl M. Cannon writes in PoliticsDaily.com that a recent remark by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reminds us that the movement to legalize abortion is rooted in eugenic desires to eliminate people viewed as undesirable.

Justice Ginsburg’s comment came in a New York Times Magazine Q&A with journalist/lawyer Emily Bazelon. Talking about the 1972 Roe v. Wade decision, Ginsburg said in part, “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.”

Subsequently, Bazelon told Politics Daily editor Melinda Henneberger that she felt Ginsburg used the word “we” to refer to other people rather than herself. Cannon, by contrast, says Ginsburg “committed a gaffe by speaking the truth”, and revealed her own views and those of other abortion supporters. An excerpt:

… this is hardly the first time prominent pro-choicers have had to engage in semantic gymnastics to obscure a longtime underlying rationale for their position that is neither politically nor morally correct.

In the early part of the 20th century, pioneers in the birth control movement routinely cited poverty, disease, physical disability, mental acuity, and even racial heritage as reasons to support their cause. In her 1922 book, “The Pivot of Civilization,” Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League, an organization that would become Planned Parenthood, opens Chapter 4 with this salvo: “There is but one practical and feasible program in handling the great problem of the feeble-minded. That is, as the best authorities are agreed, to prevent the birth of those who would transmit imbecility to their descendants.”

Cannon says early eugenic motivations still flourish just below the surface of political discourse, and cites a 1991 Maryland abortion law that prohibits the state from interfering in an abortion at any stage “if the fetus is affected by genetic defect or serious deformity or abnormality.”

This is a pretty good working definition of eugenics. So, too, was the ugly talk directed in the last presidential campaign against the mother of a baby boy with Down syndrome, as are the statistics showing that blacks have hugely disproportionate numbers of abortions in this country year after year.

… Could it be that Margaret Sanger’s vision – the part we don’t really want to think about – has come to pass?

See also: Abortion debate enters health care battle — Washington Post

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 6:08 pm and is filed under abortion, commentary, Down syndrome, genetics, prenatal diagnosis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.