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The eugenics temptation
Good breedinbtj Amy Laura Hall
IN THE EARLY 1920S progressive high schools andYMCAs took pait
in the Keeping Fit Campaign. Thecaption on one Keeping Fit poster
jiskccl: "What Kindol Cliildren?" and went on to explain: "Children
get
their basic qualities by inheritance. If tliey are to be
strong,keen, efficient and great, tliere must be gcxxl blood back
ofthem." Youth were to c-on.sider not only the "good blood" of
afntiire mate but also that of his or her extended family.
Thispi'opaganda was meant to cf)rrect what Mai'garet Sanger in1922
termed "unthinking and intliscrimintite fecnndit\."
How many children people should have, and how par-ents {and
society) can ensure that only genetically fit chil-dren are Ijorn,
have I)een endnring questions in Ameri-can culture. Both
quantityand quality count when at-tempting to form the kindof
children who will eon-tribnte to a more perfectuinon. The quest
for"strong, keen, efficient andgreat" offspring came tothe fore
during the pastcentury, when the domi-nant classes became
con-cerned with making fecundit)' discriminating.
Christine Rosen examines the role of religion in the piu-suit of
efficient reproduction. Her books cover features aphotograph of the
winner ol the Fitter Family C
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hat Kind of Children?
Children get their basic qualities by inheritance. Ifthey arc to
be strong, keen, efficient, and great theremust be good blood back
of them
If you want your children to be well-born, chooseyour husband
because of fine qualities in his familyas well as in himself. Then
add the best training
These make a square deal for the children
WELL BORN: This poster from the 1920s articulated a"progresHive"
social vauae: optimum reproduction as op-posed to "indiscriminate"
breeding.
and then leave the ancestry of our children to chance, or
to•blind' sentiment?" This propaganda collapsed physicul,nientnl
and sociiil signs of "deviance." Illiteracy, extrane-ous toes,
childbirth out of wedlock and a record of theft allwent into the
mix to determine whether an individual,couple or family gronp were
genetically Pit.
WHY DID MAINLINE Protestants find this niove-iiicnt so
compelling? A charitable inteqoretationis that they simply wanted
to reduce hnman suf-fering. Fercei\ing a stark and growing contrast
be-
tween respectable middle-class families and the "teemingbnH)ds"
of new immigrants in the urlnui centers, progressiveleadei's turned
to eugenic science to control what seemed tlieothen\isc
uncontrollable plight ot the poor
But another reading seems equally plausible—thatmany sought to
shore up their status as part of the "re-sponsible middle-class" by
underscoring the discrepancybetween their o\\ii '"fit" families and
those of the under-class. Whatever the motives, niainhne
Protestants lenttlieir influence to an arsenal of coercion
described inpainstaking detail in Edwin Black's War Against ihe
Weak.
After he finished his controversial IBM and the Holo-caust: The
Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and
America's Most Powerftd Corporation (now the sub-ject of
international litigation). Black put his researchteam to work
tracing the web of eugenics in the U.S.and abroad. War Af^ainsf the
Weak relates how manygroups with prominent board members from
thefields of religion, business and government pushed forstate laws
to sterilize botli people on public assistanceand those thought
likely to breed children who wouldbecome wards ol the state.
Their efforts were effective. North Carolina steril-ized
thousands of people before the program ended in1974; historian Paul
Lombardo estimates that Virginiasterilized at least 8,000. By 1940
more than 3o;000people from across the country had been sterilized
orcastrated, the majority in the preceding two decades.(Black's
first chapter features a brief but powerful in-terview with one
Virginia victim.)
According to Black, two women played crucial rolesin the "war
against the weak." The grand dame of eu-genics was
millionaire-widow Mrs. E. H. Harriman.Her aim was clear: to stem
the tide of the "defectiveand delinquent classes." Her motive was
fairly trans-parent: to secure the superiority' of wealth.
A different motive fueled the efforts of MargaretSanger, founder
of Planned Parenthood. Slie wasdrawn to eugenics through her
nursing work in theslums of lower Manhattan and BrookKTi, where
"theoppressive reality of overpopulation and povert\' cried(jut for
relief." She viewed the suffering of the urbanpoor in apocalvptic
terms and vowed to usher in a dif-ferent realm.
As Black relates, Sanger subsequently "embracedthe Malthusian
notion that a world nnining out of foodsupplies should halt
charitable works and allow theweak to die oft." In her book Fivot
of Civilization
(1922), Sanger addresses "the cruelty of charity,"
arguingagainst the "sinisterly fertile soil" that perpetuates
"defec-tives, deliu(jnents and dependents." C'harit\'
"encouragesthe healthier and more normal sections of the world
toshoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate
te-cundit>'of others; which brings with i t . . . a dead weight
ofhuman waste."
Even after World War II, Sanger continued to argue forthe
sterilization of those on pulilic assistance. "Let us notforget
that these billions, millions, thousands of people areincreasing,
expanding, exploding at a terrific rate everyyear. Africa, Asia,
South America are made up of morethan a billion human beings," she
admonishes.
Black's book displays the vast scope of the eugenic proj-ect in
America. From "child wellare. prison reform, bettereducation, hnman
hygiene, clinical psychology, medicaltreatment, world peace and
inunigrant rights, as well ascharities and progressive undertakings
of all kinds," eu-genics became as American as apple pie. Much as
the dou-ble helLx now shapes our imagiuations, the idea that
thereare good genes that should be promoted and bad genes tobe
jettisoned made its way into everything from NancyDrew mysteries to
the Ladies' Home Journal to the Inter-collegian, the YMCAs
magazine.
25 CHhlSTIAN CENTURY November 2. 2004
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SHAMING: A current campaign to prevent teenpregnancy invokea
social stigmas in an effort toinfluence young women.
In an issue of the intercoUegian as late as 1948, PaulPopenoe,
author of the widely used textbook Applied Eu-genics, warns readers
tliat "too large a proportion" of cliil-dren are "bom in homes
which can give them the worst startin every way." He explmns that
"the family which sends achild to the University of Cidifoniia
averages two living chil-dren," whereas "the family which sends a
child to the Sono-ma State home for the feebleminded averages five
li\ingchildren." The foilow-up article by psychologist Helen F.
Brother MarsHubble pockets light years, eons, sees eye
to eye with dust, a small drop of water.NASA's robot stalks
tiptoe, a cat's paw
on the prowl to report if there is Ufe,beeps back a monument of
stone and ice,
an unresponsive moimtain in orbit.Delicate antennae translate
the laws
of physics into a mourner's sigh.
But the frozen droplet, like the seato a drowning man, whirls
its rueful hoard
of thanks deferred, of love unvoiced, the pleasof miracles
before the eyes, the mystery
of the heart, the mind's Post-it notes: Praise the Lord,Carpe
Diem and Memento Mori.
Gerson Silverstein
Southard, "Plaiming Parenthood on Campus," concludesthat Uie
Chiistian iisks: how many; how healthy?"
The overt racism of these campaigns is no longer accept-able in
today's civic square or in mtiinlinc Protestant pnl-pits, bnt the
impetus toward eugenics remains. Controllingthe reproduction of the
social body and individual bodies,controlling the quahtv- and
quantit\' of the next generationin order to form a more perfect
union—these impulses re-main part of American culture.
Consider the "Genomic Revolution" exhibit sponsoredby
pharmaceutical companies and the American Museumof Natural History,
an exiiibit based on an infinitely moreexact science than the
half-lies, untniths and sheer conjec-tures of old-fangled
eugenicists. Addressing the fear thatgenetic science will lead to
racial and ethnic discrimina-tion, the exhibit tells us that "we
share 99.9 percent of ourgenes with each other" and that "we are
all the same in away, for we all have DNA."
But who, one wonders, are the we to whom the "all thesame"
refers? Are we still ";ill the same" if one in onr midsthas a
genetic disease? Midway through the exiiibit is a sec-tion on
"Getting the Right Tests," featuring a mother hold-ing her smiling,
blond boy on her lap. She warns viewers todemand every prenatal
test available. The message isclear: she would have terminated her
pregnancy had testsshown her son to have a debilitating genetic
condition.
A similarly mixed message about human unity and dif-ference
recently appeared on the Web site of the eugenicsarchive at Cold
Spring Harbor Laboratory- (home of theleading geneticist James
Watson). Marking the 75th an-niversary of the infamous Buck v. Bell
case endorsingforced sterilization, in which Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jr.declared "three generations of imbeciles is enough,"
thelaboratory assures us that the new, more precise science
ofgenetics means that "no human lineage is without hope."The
featurt! allows one to \iew the grade "A" report card ofthe little
girl Holmes had declared an imbecile, and opti-mistically eondndes
that 'one can never predict where ge-nius will arise."
THIS RENDITION of the new genetics begs thebasic question of
eugenics: What if baby Buckhad flunked out of kindergarten and
every subse-quent grade? What if she had eventually given
birth out of wedlock? Would that have proven Holmescorrect? Was
it wrong to sterilize Carrie Buck only be-cause, as it turned out,
her child was not an "imbecile"?Was the old eugenics wrong simply
because it was scientif-ically iTiatcurate? Was it wrong because it
was state-coerced rather than freely chosen? Or was it wrong for
amore fniidamental reason, one that also implicates thenew
eugenics: because eugenics seeks fundamentally tolocate a human
being on a grid of calculable worth?
Similar assumptions lie behind the now ubiquitousquestion "How
many?" Sanger's powerfully charged dis-tinction between prudent and
imprudent fecundity hasgrown to inflnence policies on ever)1:hing
from immigra-tion to public schools. Technologictil birth control
neednot have emerged in the way it did in the U.S. History
C H R I S T I A N C E N T U R Y Navenil)t'r2,2(H)4 26
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might hiivc told a different ston; wherein families and
cul-tures were able to choose life in multiple, even
seeminglyprofligate, ways and find support for their choices in
tliecivic and international sphere. But the science of
repro-ductive control grew in the soil of eitgenics, and
niain-streatn assumptions ahout birth control still reflect
strongjtulgetnctits abotit the number of children
rcspon.sibleparents should have.
The New Yorker Book of Kids' Cartoons (2001) featuresoulv three
cartoons with families of more than two chil-dren—one a fatnily of
fish, another of cats, atid a third iiiiobviously poor, white,
worldng-class family. (The motheraimoimces to the hmch box-toting
fatlier, "Boy, did I ha\'ean atternoon. The census man was here.")
The same atti-tude is apparent in Monty Python s classic "every
sperm issacred" segment in The Meaning of Life. As John Cleesesings
to a house full ot children about Catholicism s uncon-tlitional
acceptance, modern viewers are encouraged toguffaw. "And the one
thing they say abotit Catholics is:Tliey'll take you as soon as
you're warm. You don t have tobe a six-footer. You don't have to
have a great brain."
The specter of the unplanned child, bom to be a bur-den on the
social body, is still a powerful tool in the propa-ganda of
cultural assimilation. A current effort to preventteen pregnancy
makes the "Keeping Fit" eampiugn seemsubtle. Pictures posted iti
high schools and featured inteen tnagazities show a Latina girl
with "CHEAP" em-
blazoned across her hody. The African-American girl is la-beled
"REJECT," the A'sian girl "DIRTY" and the work-ing-class white girl
"NOBODY." The posters use bruteshame to bring females from four
subcultures into confor-mity on the question of teen pregnancy. The
small printadvocates condom use, but the advertisements all too
ef-fectively present the judgment that some mothers arecheap, dirty
nobodies, social rejects with no future, andthat there is little
hope for their illegitimate children.\Miat has made our culture set
the stakes of teen pregnan-cy so high as to warrant this kind of
ideologiciil firepower?
TO RAISE QUESTIONS abotit the control of repro-duction is to
threaten the longstanding concernsof feminists and
environmentalists who worry, inthe first case, ahout who shotild
control procre-
ation and, in the second, about how nnich procreation cre-ation
can sustain. But even feminists and environmental-ists (and I
consider myself to be in both camps) must facethe ways that
reprodtictiv e technologies have assutned andcontribute to a
contingent life ethic. Control over whatkind of children should be
bom when has fostered the ideathat citizens can and should judge
between auspicious andburdensome life and auspicious and burdensome
families.With new biotechnological tools emerging daily, manypeople
deem parents personally and socially responsiblefor the results of
their choosing to bear children. Parents
Toward a JewishTheology ol'Liberation
Man- H. Ellis
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Toward a JewishTheology of Liberation
Foreword by Desmond Tutu and Gustavo Gutierrez
MARC H . ELLISEllis' use of liberation theology to make
connections betweenthe Holocaust and contemporary communities from
the ThirdWorld reminds both lews and oppressed Christians that
theyshare common ground in the experiences of
abandonment,suffering, and death. According to Ellis, Jews and
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anexcuse for evading solidarity with the oppressed peoples—be they
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27 CHRISTIAN CENTURY November2,2004
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may soon lie left to their own de\icf s if they have childrenwho
require extra time und social spending.
The Roman Catholie case against the technological tim-ing and
nieehaiiization of reproduction draws on a certainunderstanding ot
the nature of marital intimacy. Protes-tants may make this case
against eugenics by emphasizingunmerited grace. A wonderful example
is Karen Lebacqz'spithy article "Alien Dignit): The Legacy of
HelunitThielieke for Bioetliics." Drawing on the Gemian Luther-an
thcologiati, L('bac(jz, a United Church of Christ ethieist,suggests
that "our worth is imparted by the love bestowedon us by God. Human
worth is thus an 'alien dignity,' givenin the relationship l)etween
humans
and God. [It is] not some (|nalit) suchas rationality that
'imitates' the ehar-aeter ol the divine, but rather a state-ment of
our relationship to God." Be-fore Thielicke's time,
S0reiiKierkegaard sought to draw nut thepotentially radie;d,
life-affirming im-plications of Lutheran soteriology. Ifgrace is
truly gratuitous, broughtthrough Christ while we are yet sin-uers,
any buman life is incalculablygratuitous, a gift beyond
reekoniugthat we never fully eontrol.
The conviction that eaeb life is in-triiisieally, incalculably
valuable issubtly but siguifieantly differentIVom the conviction
that we cannotjudge a child's worth by the color ofher skin or b\-
her gender. The latteruotiou implies that we sbould sus-pend
judgment about her worth untilwe liave uiore information, a
morereliable calculation of her potentialcontribution to societ)'.
To aifirm in-stead that no buman life may ever })erightK' measured
lor estimable worthis to elialleuge both the old and thenew
eugenics. Such an afliruiationleads some parents to refuse to
askwhat kind of children?" Such an al-
iirniation prompts some to be opento the frequent interruption
of pro-creation, others to adopt snpposedly"at risk" children, ft
leads some towork with students who are consid-ered extraneous and
others to fightfor economic policie.s that will really"leave no
child behind."
Jonathan Kozol gives a glimpse oftliis approach in an article
for the Na-fioit called "The Details of Life,"which describes the
chaotic buthopeful work of St. Ann's EpiscopalC'hnrcb in the Bronx.
"Cbildhoodonght to have at least a few entitle-ments that aren't
entangled with util-
itarian considerations," he notes. "One of them slionid bethe
right to a degree of unencumbered satisfaction in thesheer delight
and goodness of existence in itself. Anotherought to be the
confidence of knowing that one's presenceon tbis earth is taken as
an unconditional blessing tliat isnot contaminated by the economic
uses that a nation doesor does not have for you."
I suspect that Christians innst disentangle the funda-mentally
"utilitarian considerations" that have eome to de-fine procreation
in the United States. To view each child'spresence on this earth as
an nnconditional, it also compli-cated, blessing seems an apt way
to begin. •
THE
MEANINGIN THE
MIRACLES
JEFFREYJOHN
Archbishop Rowan Williams
"Over tbe years of writing A AlarffuialJeu', I bave had to
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mir-acles I have ever read that actually invites readers to
movefrom exegesis through meditation to prayer. A welcome
change
~ J O H N P. MEIER
'UeiTrey John is clearly an articu-late preacher and teacher. In
thisbook he combines these abilitiesin offering a provocative view
ofthe miracles, not as literalistic orreductionistic accounts of
whatdid or did not happen, but astheological and spiritual
storiesdesigned for our edification."
- STANLEY E. PORTER
ISBN 0-8028-2794-2256 pagespaperback
$18.00At your bookstore,or call 800-253-7521www.eerdmans.com ,
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29 CHRISTIAN CENTURY November 2, 2004
