By Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson.

Refuting an op-ed in support of the use of the word “retard,” Gerson says what is worst about the current public conversation is “a dismissive attitude toward the struggles of the disabled.”

People who wish to understand the context of the current debate, Gerson says, would do well to study a prominent 20th century American movement that sought to direct human evolution by eliminating the supply of people with developmental and physical disabilities in the population. Called the eugenics movement, it targeted for elimination a number of groups identified as “socially unfit,” including the “feebleminded,” “epileptics,” the “insane,” the “deformed,” and the “deaf.” Forced sterilization of the “unfit” was endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court and did not end in the United States until the 1970s.

An excerpt:

Given this history, the r-word does not seem so innocuous. And defending it does not seem so heroic. [Christopher M.] Fairman can have his cherished f-word, which merely soils and trivializes the sex act. But defending the r-word is not the protection of free expression; it is the defense of bullies.

… There is not an exact correlation between vileness of speech and vileness of character, but there is a rough correlation. Words such as the r-word and the n-word often reveal aggression, contempt and hatred. They are a form of verbal violence. In these cases, what Fairman calls “self-censorship” is really kindness and moral judgment. And what he regards as free expression is just rude, abusive and cruel.

… Yes, government involvement in the censorship of words is dangerous. But what the Special Olympics is proposing –- encouraging people to take a personal pledge against the derogatory use of the r-word –- is not government censorship, it is social stigma. In this case, such stigma is a sign of moral maturity.

I have signed the pledge at www.r-word.org. I hope you do as well.

Related columns by Michael Gerson.

From Jake Tapper on ABC’s ‘Political Punch’ blog, AP:

A statement posted on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page today labeled the administration’s health care plan as “evil,” and said it is designed to save money by withholding care from people with chronic illnesses and disabilities. An excerpt from the post, titled “Statement on the Current Health Care Debate”:

… who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Tapper calls the claim “pants-on-fire untrue,” and offers refutations from Factcheck.org and Politifact.com.

Palin’s spokeswoman did not immediately confirm her authorship of the statement.

Earlier posts start here.

See also:

• Shameless scaremongering on euthanasia issue — By Jay Bookman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
• Time to go, grampa — By Pat Buchanan, Townhall.com

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby writes says Justice Ginsberg’s recent comments about Roe v. Wade “are a reminder of the ease with which educated elites can decide that some people’s lives have no value.” Who might she be talking about, he asks: “Minorities? The poor? The handicapped?”

Jacoby says Ginsburg’s words “recall the now-rarely-mentioned obsession with eugenics and the elimination of ‘undesirables’ that animated so many supporters of legal abortion and the birth-control movement.”

Among their ranks, Jacoby counts:

– Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose majority opinion in the 1927 Buck v. Bell case upheld the right of state governments to forcibly sterilize “feebleminded” citizens; and

– Birth control activist Margaret Sanger, who advocated for “immediate, stern, and definite’’ action to solve the “problem of the feeble-minded and the menace of the moron’’– those she regarded as the “dead weight of human waste.’’

Earlier post here.

An editorial in the Asheville [NC] Citizen-Times says it’s time for North Carolina to compensate victims of a historic state-sponsored eugenics programs. The program sterilized some 7,600 people with disabilities and others who were deemed “unfit” to reproduce.

A push to compensate eugenics victims began earlier this decade, and a bill in the N.C. House calls for giving them $20,000 each. The bill total is $18.6 million, and it’s considered dead on arrival this session, given the state’s financial woes.

… The state can’t excuse away compensation for those it deemed unfit to have a chance to reproduce.

Before all the victims pass away, such compensation needs to be put on a fast track.

Earlier posts here.

Paul Lombardo, author of “Three Generations, No Imbeciles,” has spent almost three decades uncovering the full story of the 1927 Buck v. Bell Supreme Court decision, writes USA Today.

In 20th-century America, more than 30 states passed legislation supporting forced sterilization as part of a program of eugenics, the “science” of human improvement through controlled breeding. Official tallies say more than 65,000 Americans were sterilized against their will.

Buck. v. Bell upheld the right of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-minded to sterilize a “defective” woman named Carrie Buck. The decision has never been overturned.

Lombardo has no plans to abandon his fight to publicize the terrible history of eugenics. With genetics playing an increasingly important role in science, Lombardo and other bioethicists fear the lessons of the eugenics debacle matter more than ever.

University of Maryland historian Steven Selden worries about how we will handle the ethical questions of possible genetic “improvements” to humanity. “We’re going to revisit all the ethical conundrums that were inherent in the eugenics movement as we move forward.”

Related posts here, here and here.

(USA Today photo)

From the Winston-Salem Journal:

North Carolina will unveil a historical marker on Monday to remember one of the state’s darkest chapters during the 20th century: the forced sterilization of more than 7,600 people under a state-sponsored eugenics program.

Justified by junk science and enshrined in state law, the program mainly targeted poor people and residents of public institutions. The victims were usually accused of being mentally ill, mentally disabled or a danger to society, and they were medically sterilized after approval from a panel known as the Eugenics Board.

The ceremony will be attended by state leaders and several living sterilization victims. A measure in the North Carolina legislature that would grant reparations to eugenics victims is believed to be dead because of lack of funding.

Earlier posts here.

See also: Against Their Will: A five-part series in the Winston-Salem Journal

From the Winston-Salem Journal and the Associated Press/WRAL:

A North Carolina legislator says he will continue to fight for reparations for people who were sterilized by the state, even though his proposal has almost no chance of getting funded.

A legislative committee has approved a measure that would pay $20,000 to each living victim of the state’s eugenics program, which lasted from 1929 to 1974 and sterilized more than 7,600 people who were considered mentally unfit. But the NC House budget chairman said there’s no money for reparations in a state budget that is facing a $4 billion shortfall.

Bill sponsor Rep. Larry Womble said he realizes funding is scarce, but “that doesn’t mean we should stop and wait for the economy to turn around to do something about this … these people are dying.”

Earlier posts start here.