“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Winston Churchill
Churchill’s words have been repeated many times. We have learned about history so we can avoid those same mistakes. We have progressed from the mistakes of the past. We don’t have to be concerned about society accepting eugenics today, right?
Joseph Goebbels once said, “This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.”
What if I told you that society has already embraced eugenics, and we don’t even know it? Our view of the past is narrow, and we can’t fight what we don’t recognize. We watched for cold-hearted, stone-faced figures, stereotypical villains from history. While we watched, evil slipped past us with smiles and reassuring words.
The word eugenics conjures up images of the Nazi party. They embraced the so-called science, and it ended in the genocide of millions of Jews, Poles, Roma, and disabled people – the ‘undesirable’. Or perhaps we think of controversial figures like the somber Margaret Sanger, or Sir Francis Galton. Rightly so, as these were all proponents of the theory. Nazism portrayed the rotten core of eugenics to the entire world, horrifying everyone with its ugliness. But nothing so evil gains power by showing its true colours from the start. It begins with charm and lies that sell the idea.
When you think of the heroes of the past, Helen Keller might come to mind. Many of us read the influential play, ‘The Miracle Worker’ in school. Helen Keller persevered when many would have given up. Both deaf and blind, she learned to write, read braille and speak. She was at the forefront of the movement fighting for the rights of disabled people.
No one could have the good of others in mind more than an advocate like Keller, right? Perhaps when she wrote - “If many of those that object to... (infanticide) would take the trouble to analyze their idea of ‘life,’ I think they would find that it means just to breathe. Surely they must admit that such an existence is not worthwhile. It is the possibilities of happiness, intelligence and power that give life its sanctity, and they are absent in the case of a poor, misshapen, paralyzed, unthinking creature.” - she was saying it from a place of compassion. Perhaps her support of eugenics was to avoid suffering.
Alexander Graham Bell was someone who had compassion for the hearing-impaired. His mother was deaf, as was his wife. He knew and used sign language, and advocated for the education of deaf children. He clearly cared for the community, right? Bell was a eugenicist, who believed that sign language should be avoided, and that the deaf should not marry each other or socialize together – so that they could better thrive and function in a hearing world.
The list is endless. The suffragette, Nellie McClung supported eugenics, as did President Theodore Roosevelt. The beloved Winston Churchill was an honorary vice president of the British Eugenics Society. Human, compassionate, progressive figures, even those who cared for people with disabilities – even disabled people themselves supported the theory.
Eugenics says that ‘the fit’ deserve a higher place in society than ‘the unfit’. This could be through rationed care and encouraged or limited breeding. Those with disabilities or mental illnesses were some of the main targeted groups. Those who were poor or weak were considered carriers of disease and cut off from the rest of society. This idea was falsely called compassion, science, logic and rational thought. It was not unpopular, or the radical belief of a minority. It was accepted science, agreed and taken up by politicians, doctors, activists and churches.
Yes, Churches even sponsored a competition for Pastors, on who could preach the best eugenic sermon. Leaders of the American Eugenics Society included Priests, Bishops and Ministers.
One of the leaders of the movement wrote, “Had Jesus been among us, he would have been president of the First Eugenics Congress … He would have cried: “A new commandment I give unto you -the biological Golden Rule, the completed Golden Rule of Science. “Do unto both the born and the unborn as you would have both the born and unborn do unto you”… And eugenics, which is simply conscious, intelligent organic evolution, furnishes the final program for the completed Christianization of mankind.”
Why shouldn’t the people have trusted all these scientists, religious figures, politicians and social reformers when it came to Eugenics? Eugenics was not a belief held only by dictatorships like Nazi Germany. In 1937, 66% of Americans supported sterilizing mental defectives and 63% supported sterilizing criminals. The fringe minority, 15% opposed both. What demographic would you have fit into?
What happened to the Eugenics movement? The American Eugenics Society changed its name after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. It became The Society for the Study of Social Biology, then later The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology, disbanding in 2019.
Let’s compare some definitions.
Eugenics:
- the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of inheritable characteristics regarded as desirable.
In other words, eugenics never ended. Such is admitted by bioethicists and researchers. Yes, they say, modern genetics share aspects of eugenics, but that doesn’t necessarily make them immoral. According to Nathaniel C. Comfort, a medical History professor, the difference is that rather than the state making decisions, patients and their families now make the choice.
We are in a new age of eugenics. The idea of wanting a ‘perfect’ society is accepted in different ways, by the same people – scientists, doctors, social reformers – for the same reasons. Ask yourself, why are 90% of babies prenatally diagnosed with Down Syndrome aborted? Doctors pressure parents, and society wants “perfect” babies. Why were 26 late-term abortions performed over 8 years in England and Wales because of cleft lip? Why are scientists striving to broaden prenatal testing, to pick up autism and other traits? Not to mention the eugenic screening that happens during the IVF process. Unborn children with deformities or genetic differences are found not worthy of life. Human beings are dehumanized under the banner of “choice” and “compassion”.
The word eugenics means ‘good birth’. Similarly, the word euthanasia means ‘good death’.
In today’s society, the elderly, terminally and mentally ill, and the poor are also deemed less worthy. They are a burden upon the medical and financial system. That’s not how euthanasia advocates would word it – unless we count the many research papers about it.
According to a CBC article published an article in 2017, “Doctor-assisted death could reduce annual health-care spending across the country by between $34.7 million and $136.8 million... Savings exceedingly outweigh the estimated $1.5 to $14.8 million in direct costs associated with implementing medically assisted dying.”
This could almost be a direct quote from Nazi propaganda for the T4 program – which began with a deformed, terminally ill baby whose parents begged for euthanasia.
Today, we hear how it’s compassionate to kill certain people. First, it’s covertly suggested that they are a burden. Next, that euthanasia is the most painless way to go. Veterans and suicidal people seeking help are offered an 'out'. They call it “dying with dignity”, as though other deaths are not dignified. It is the way to regain self-possession in a situation that is out of your own hands, whether illness or age, lack of housing, depression, autism, etc. Then they say it is “choice.”
The difference between eugenics then and now is that little word. In the past, coercion and manipulative phrases were used, and when that didn’t work, force came into play.
Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will – Joseph Goebbels
Perhaps if we’d learned the reality of eugenics, we could’ve avoided this. Instead of looking only at the worst and ugliest facets, instead of seeing only the cruellest faces, we should have learned why people accepted it. We should’ve seen the ‘intelligent’ lies that the world swallowed, and why they were wrong. We should have learned the truth that must come first – no matter what scientists or activists say – all life is valuable.
While we spoke about preventing the atrocities of the past, we accepted the very ideologies that led to them. While we celebrate the lone heroes who stood up against evil, we sit in comfortable front-row seats while modern injustices play before our eyes. It is not too late to speak up.
Stand up for what you believe in even if you are standing alone. - Sophie Scholl
