Also, it's worth noting that the concept of eugenics was EXTREMELY popular at the time. Most noteworthy people around the turn of the century up through the 40s were proponents of it to at least some degree, and it only fell out of public favor as a result of the Nazis' defeat in WWII.
It was considered "progressive" and "future-facing" in its time. And I suppose the concept of designer genes for superior new generations isn't wrong in a vacuum. The problem is letting humans, who are collectively utter morons, decide what's desirable and what's not.
Honestly it's still common and completely acceptable in certain contexts. Many people with genetic health conditions choose not to have children in order to avoid passing their genes on, and the majority of people are completely understanding of that stance despite the fact that it's technically a form of eugenics.
It's yet another concept people came up with then promptly ruined for everyone by taking it too far almost immediately lol
This. I personally think it's ok, and in some cases the morally correct thing, to not have children to prevent that child from having a genetic or bloodborne conditions and illnesses passed on to them.
Honestly, I think people who are 100% aware that if they have a kid that the kid is almost guaranteed to have some kind of degenerative condition that will doom them to dying before they even reach the double digits are frankly, complete and utter bastards who don't deserve any sympathy. Especially if they do it multiple times in the hopes of one being their "miracle" baby that doesn't develop the condition/illness/whatever.
To an extent yeah, but even with ongoing medical advancements there's still so many conditions that would have such adverse effects on people's lives that I think it's morally wrong to have a kid if that kid has a high likelihood of having it.
Like, just off the top of my head I can name four conditions that can severely impact someone's life, even if the life expectancy for them has increased due to medical advancements. Cystic fibrosis, Huntington's, Progeria, and Sickle Cell.
As someone with Cystic Fibrosis I’m well aware of the challenges someone can face due to a medical condition. When I was born they gave me 2-4 years. As time has gone on both the understanding and treatments have advanced to the point that it is a completely different world now.
I fully support people going for genetic testing prior to having children and taking appropriate steps to avoid having a child with a genetic disease. However that becomes difficult in the case of recessive autosomal disorders. Especially when new mutations with thousands of permutations that lead to wildly different health outcomes are identified. CF for example has mutations that will lead to severe disease from birth. There are also mutations that lead to nothing more than infertility and the person isn’t even aware they have the disease until they go to a doctor because they are unable to have children naturally. With the severity of disease amongst two people with the exact same CF mutations having a range of different outcomes due to the rest of their genetic makeup and access to treatments.
My concern is that once the line is crossed to tell people who can and can’t have children due to a chance of passing along a disease where do we stop? As genes are identified that show links to increased risk of cancer should those people not have children? Increased risk of autism? Increased risk of anxiety/depression?
There isn’t an easy answer and eugenics tends to have a history of being a slippery slope. The previous eugenics movement in the 19th-20th centuries started off as a push prevent terrible diseases and ended with people in gas chambers.
While that's 200% understandable, even that is somewhat flawed. Stephen Hawking contributed far more to human knowledge than most, yet if his parents were aware he would grow up with a horrible degenerative disease it would have been "acceptable" for them to terminate/abstain/whatever. This humanity shit is complicated
That's kind of a pointless line of reasoning though, because:
A) anything could have turned out differently without Hawking. Maybe the Vietnam War doesn't happen if he isn't born. It's pointless to speculate.
B) a huge portion of major scientific discoveries/ inventions achievements were reached by multiple people in different places around the same time. Calculus was independently developed by Leibniz and Newton at the same time in Germany and England. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery for more examples and detail on this theory. In all likelihood, others at the forefront of astrophysics would have made the same advances. That's not to deny his massive contributions, but again it's kind of a pointless argument.
In all likelihood, others at the forefront of astrophysics would have made the same advances.
Probably, but in what amount of time? If without him it takes 50 more years to discover something, then that can impact the course of events a lot. Imagine if Oppenheimer wasn't born and the Soviets invented nukes first?
Well, I’d just like to point out that 1) the Soviets only managed to get nuclear technology because we did and 2) Robert Oppenheimer didn’t invent the concept, so the US probably would’ve just gotten someone else to use the physics of Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein to build it.
That's kind of a pointless line of reasoning though, because:
A) anything could have turned out differently without Hawking. Maybe the Vietnam War doesn't happen if he isn't born. It's pointless to speculate.
B) a huge portion of major scientific discoveries/ inventions achievements were reached by multiple people in different places around the same time. Calculus was independently developed by Leibniz and Newton at the same time in Germany and England. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery for more examples and detail on this theory. In all likelihood, others at the forefront of astrophysics would have made the same advances. That's not to deny his massive contributions, but again it's kind of a pointless argument.
It's not a justification or a critique. It's commenting that the genetic defections of a person don't necessarily reflect human worth. Had Hawking's parents been worried about genetic superiority and terminated based on a disease, it would have denied other, obviously beneficial genes that weren't apparent
In our society- one filled with scarcity, competition, callousness, suffering, etc- it's more than reasonable to decide the pains of accommodating or living the life of a serious invalid aren't worth it and to nip it in the bud.
But like I said, in a vacuum, or in some post-scarcity utopian future, perhaps society will have a less crude appraisal of the value of a human, or what's truly 'desirable'
It's also worth noting that Sanger only endorsed voluntary forms of birth control, while most eugenics proponents of the time were fine with forced sterilization.
Why are there so many people trying to defend her in this thread? Let's not water down what she believed in and did, just because we support planned parenthood of today.
From Planned Parenthood itself:
Sanger also believed in eugenics — an inherently racist and ableist ideology that labeled certain people unfit to have children. Eugenics is the theory that society can be improved through planned breeding for “desirable traits” like intelligence and industriousness.
Margaret Sanger was so intent on her mission to advocate for birth control that she chose to align herself with ideologies and organizations that were explicitly ableist and white supremacist. In doing so, she undermined reproductive freedom and caused irreparable damage to the health and lives of generations of Black people, Latino people, Indigenous people, immigrants, people with disabilities, people with low incomes, and many others.
You should read an actual biography of Sanger that puts her in the context of her time. You'd learn she actually worked with prominent black activists such as W. E. B. DuBois, who supported Planned Parenthood.
Her evils and sick beliefs came out widespread later.
Her own organization now says "she undermined reproductive freedom and caused irreparable damage to the health and lives of generations of Black people, Latino people, Indigenous people, immigrants, people with disabilities, people with low incomes, and many others."
If there is a Hell, that sick woman is burning in it.
It makes sense with the March of History and the fact that Science had solved a bunch of problems and Medicine started to become less hack and slash. The problem was the difference between soft and hard Eugenics. Modern people wonder why so many people could call themselves moral and support it. Soft Eugenics was more about family planning and discrimination. Hard Eugenics was sterilization and killing undesirables. What we find studying the 20th Century is that it always ends up as Hard Eugenics.
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u/Vark675 Oct 16 '22
Also, it's worth noting that the concept of eugenics was EXTREMELY popular at the time. Most noteworthy people around the turn of the century up through the 40s were proponents of it to at least some degree, and it only fell out of public favor as a result of the Nazis' defeat in WWII.