Margaret Sanger's Eugenics

To the Editor:

It was interesting to read the letter from seven English department lecturers who criticized an advertising flyer posted by UNH Students for Life. The seven apparently agree in condemning the flyer for failing to be a soundly argued essay.

There are literally hundreds of flyers posted on bulletin boards around campus announcing academic lectures, volunteer opportunities, spring break deals, community meetings and apartment rentals. I'm not sure why the seven critics believe advertising flyers need to be crafted like class essays, but, sadly, none of the flyers seem to meet the criteria applied by our seven English department instructors.

But the seven critics are mainly concerned with what they consider to be a "smear" on Margaret Sanger, whom they collectively characterize in quite heroic terms. It is worthwhile, then, to hold our seven critics to the same standards they applied to a promotional flyer, and explore whether there might be some "dissonance in their own thinking." In other words, let's take a few minutes to "wrestle with the complex and essential moral and ethical issues" involved in Margaret Sanger's eugenics work.

Yes, the founder of Planned Parenthood was an open advocate of eugenics, the selective breeding of certain populations of favored races and classes, as well as the sterilization of other less-favored races or classes. Readers will recognize eugenics in its most malignant form in the attempt to engineer a "master race" in Nazi Germany.

In a 1921 speech, Sanger spoke about different classes of people in American society. On the one hand, there were the "intelligent and wealthy members of the upper classes." On the other hand, there were "those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequence of their actions, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent entirely upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped." Sanger's proposal was to "stop at its source the disease, poverty and feeble-mindedness and insanity which exist today, for these lower the standards of civilization and make for race deterioration."

In 1932, again Sanger proposed what she called a "Population Congress," among the goals of which were "to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring" and "to give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization."

It must be that our seven English Department critics were unaware of this element of Sanger's program, for they could not possibly have "calculatingly" violated their own rule about avoiding and distorting valid points that contradict their argument. But, whether they were aware of Sanger's eugenics work or not, the question now is whether they have themselves adequately wrestled with the "essential moral and ethical issues" related to the kind of selective breeding and sterilization championed by Margaret Sanger? Or, are they content to airbrush away Sanger's efforts to extirpate what she called the "biological corruption," and the "human weeds" of society?

It seems to me that if there were "negative publicity" about Margaret Sanger's "Negro Project" in 1939, that perhaps those who generated that publicity knew a good deal more Margaret Sanger's attitudes than those who defend her today.

James Farrell Dept. of Communication