Eugenics and euthanasia
Sanger was a proponent of negative
eugenics, a social philosophy which claims that human hereditary traits can be improved through social intervention.In 1939 Margaret Sanger started “The Negro Project”. She enlisted black preachers to support sterilization. The plan was shown in a letter to Clarence Gamble of the Procter and Gamble Empire,
We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.
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Methods of social intervention (targeted at those seen as "genetically unfit") advocated by some negative eugenicists have included
selective breeding,
sterilization and
euthanasia. In
A Plan for Peace (1932), for example, Sanger proposed a
congressional department to:
And, following:
Apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.
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Her first pamphlet read:
It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. Herein lies the key of civilization. For upon the foundation of an enlightened and voluntary motherhood shall a future civilization emerge.
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Sanger saw birth control as a means to prevent "
dysgenic" children from being born into a disadvantaged life, and dismissed "positive eugenics" (which promoted greater fertility for the "fitter" upper classes) as impractical. Though many leaders in the negative eugenics movement were calling for active euthanasia of the "unfit," Sanger spoke out against such methods. She believed that women with the power and knowledge of birth control were in the best position to produce "fit" children. She rejected any type of eugenics that would take control out of the hands of those actually giving birth. Edwin Black writes:
In [William] Robinson's book,
Eugenics, Marriage and Birth Control (Practical Eugenics), he advocated gassing the children of the unfit. In plain words, Robinson insisted: 'The best thing would be to gently chloroform these children or give them a dose of potassium cyanide.' Margaret Sanger was well aware that her fellow birth control advocates were promoting lethal chambers, but she herself rejected the idea completely. 'Nor do we believe,' wrote Sanger in
Pivot of Civilization, 'that the community could or should send to the lethal chamber the defective progeny resulting from irresponsible and unintelligent breeding.'
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While comparisons are made, Sanger's views diverged from
Nazi eugenics—an aggressive, and lethal, program. In April,
1933, the Planned Parenthood publication
Birth Control Review printed an article by
Ernst Rüdin (who became a member of the
Nazi's
Expert Committee on Questions of Population and Racial Policy in June).
About placing the responsibility for eugenic control in the hands of individual parents rather than the state, she wrote:
"The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics.... We are convinced that racial regeneration, like individual regeneration, must come 'from within.' That is, it must be autonomous, self-directive, and not imposed from without."
We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother... Only upon a free, self-determining motherhood can rest any unshakable structure of racial betterment.
She nevertheless advocated certain instances of coercion, in cases where she considered the parents unfit to decide whether they should bear children:
"The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind."
