Talk:Abortion for boutique eugenics

Midian said

Margaret Sanger was a known proponent of negative eugenics. Negative eugenics is aimed at lowering fertility among the genetically disadvantaged. This includes abortions, sterilization, and other methods of family planning.

By promoting abortion as the best alternative to the poor, uneducated, masses, Margaret Sanger, through her organization Planned Parenthood, hoped to prevent the breeding of "morons" by killing as many as she could in the womb. "The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind." As long as the state sponsors abortion by funding such organizations, it promotes such behavior.

I'm all for freedom of abortion, I'm not in favor of the government promoting and paying for it with my tax dollars.

Woozle said

First, negative eugenics:

I don't see anything inherently wrong with negative eugenics; the only kind of eugenics that seems wrong to me is when it's coercive, whether the eugenics approach is positive or negative.

If you were poor and knew you couldn't afford to raise a lot of kids, wouldn't you want to have access to the resources to make sure you didn't end up with a lot of kids to raise? Or, in other words, wouldn't you at least want to be able to make that choice? Non-coercive negative eugenics basically equates, as I understand it, to providing those resources; non-coercive negative eugenics for the genetically disadvantaged, then, equates to a focus on making those resources available to poor people and people with known genetically-transmitted weaknesses.

People who are better off financially either have access to those resources via other means or else can afford to have those kids, so this policy seems like exactly the right thing. Any expenditure of government funds towards this end is further offset by the reduction of the social burden of all those unwanted kids and their unwanted (as determined by the potential parents, mind you) genes.

So... remind me again, how is non-coercive "negative eugenics for the genetically disadvantaged" a bad thing, either for society or for the genetically disadvantaged? How is it not a good use of taxpayer money? What alternative solutions would you prefer to see taxpayer money spent on? (I can guess, but I don't want to put words in your mouth.)

Now, on Margaret Sanger...

It's not clear to me to what degree she advocated coercion, although she may well have done so. To the extent that she did, I agree that this is not morally defensible, however logical or rational a solution it might seem. Forcing poor people to have sterilizations or abortions or even to take contraceptives, as a precondition (say) for receiving government aid, strikes me as being on a par morally with the Bush administration's revocation of habeas corpus, i.e. morally reprehensible: both actions take away important, life-and-death decisions from the individual and place them in the hands of the government, which has a historically terrible record at making such decisions.

Do you have evidence that Planned Parenthood is supportive of coercive measures? If so, I would think that this would be a serious indictment of their efforts. Please feel free to post (preferably with links to original sources) any such information you may have about them.

Midian said

How is promoting abortion as a "choice" instead of the truth not coercive in an underhanded way? Truthfully, an abortion is the ending of the development of a human being. If we were to do it to animals, it would be brandished as genocide. Most people who undergo abortion suffer long-term depression and regret, which is never discussed with them when they go to abortion clinics.

How is subsidizing abortions with government funding (taxpayer dollars) not coercive? How is lack of proper education about birth control not coercive? How is allowing people to be free from the responsibilities of their choices not coercive? Positive incentives are just as coercive as negative ones.

Woozle replies

Your comments are prefixed with "[M]" and italicized:

• [M] "How is promoting abortion as a "choice" instead of the truth not coercive in an underhanded way?"
  • What do you mean by "instead of the truth"?
• [M] "Truthfully, an abortion is the ending of the development of a human being."
  • I don't think anyone is denying this.
• [M] "If we were to do it to animals, it would be brandished as genocide."
  • Uh, no, it wouldn't. Genocide is the attempted destruction of an entire subspecies. Voluntary abortion in no way threatens humans or any group of humans, and nobody is promoting involuntary abortion.
• [M] "Most people who undergo abortion suffer long-term depression and regret..."
  • People who want abortions and are denied them, or cannot get access to one, probably suffer long-term depression and regret as well. (For that matter, I'm sure many parents regret deciding to become parents, though I don't know if there is any reliable data on this.) There is pretty clear data that the unwanted offspring also suffers when compared to offspring who were wanted.
• [M] "How is subsidizing abortions with government funding (taxpayer dollars) not coercive?"
  • Because nobody is being coerced into having an abortion. Are you suggesting that government-funded tonsillectomies would be coercing people to have their tonsils removed?
• [M] "How is lack of proper education about birth control not coercive?"
  • I don't know that it's coercive, but it's certainly a major problem. We are on the same side, here -- unless you mean something different by "proper education about birth control" than I do. Advocates of reproductive choice are very much in favor of full education about contraceptive methods -- how to use them, the risks involved, and the benefits of each.
• [M] "How is allowing people to be free from the responsibilities of their choices not coercive?"
  • Because "allowing people to be free [of anything, whether or not this is good]" is pretty much the opposite of coercion. (You're getting lost in your rhetoric here, I think.)
• [M] "Positive incentives are just as coercive as negative ones."
  • I think perhaps "coercive" isn't the word you want to be using. "Persuasive" might be applicable here. By funding a service (e.g. abortion), the government encourages it more than if they were refusing to fund it.

This last point (if I've interpreted it correctly) is a valid one to raise, and it's one of the central disagreements between the pro- and anti- choice movements.

If you deny abortion on demand (I assume you accept the need for abortion when the mother's health is at risk), the alternative is an involuntary parent raising an unwanted child. I keep emphasizing that if you want to reduce the abortion rate, the recipe is not to fight it head-on by making it illegal or even restricting access to it, but:

1. Education, education, education: if people know how to use contraceptives (and how reproduction works), they are less likely to reproduce accidentally
2. Make adoption more appealing: offer incentives for having the child and giving it up for adoption, rather than aborting; fund programs to ensure that all adopted children are well cared-for. (You complain about the government offering incentives to do what you see as the wrong thing; why not advocate incentives to do what you see as the right thing?)