Monday, June 07, 2010

‘Sophisticated marketing’ hides eugenics background of the Pill, writer says

Present opinion of the birth control pill has been formed by a “sophisticated marketing campaign” which hides the Pill’s dependency on abortion and its connections with the eugenics movement, one pro-life writer says.

Denver attorney Rebecca R. Messall offered her view in an editorial published on the website of the Denver Post.

She wrote in response to a Post story which linked the Pill to Mother’s Day.

The Post discussed birth control advocate and Planned Parenthood foundress Margaret Sanger, saying she went to the American West where “independent thinkers” were willing to take up her issues.

The story quoted both proponents of the Pill, who thought the contraceptive was an “historic boon to mothers,” and opponents, who said the drug is harmful to women and can cause abortions.

Messall, who has written for the pro-life journal The Human Life Review, claimed that the Post “chose to celebrate everything glaringly responsible for preventing or terminating motherhood” for a day dedicated to honoring motherhood.

She claimed that legal abortion covers up the failure rate of the Pill, noting former abortionist Carol Everett’s confession that her abortion facility intentionally passed out low dose birth control pills. This increased the likelihood of pregnancy and thus the potential for money-making abortions.

Seeing a “subtext” in efforts to encourage women to have fewer children, she said disabled and minority children have been portrayed as particularly “unwanted” and have been “specially targeted for elimination” via abortion assisted by genetic tests.

“Now, nearly all Downs Syndrome babies are terminated before they are born,” she added, quoting pro-life leader Alveda King’s claim that both abortion and racism have “the same poisonous root, selfishness.”

Messall also discussed Margaret Sanger’s membership in the American Eugenics Society (AES), noting that Sanger and Planned Parenthood’s first three presidents were officers or members in the AES.

According to Messall’s essay, eugenics was a supposedly scientific endeavor rooted in evolutionary biology. The efforts of the AES resulted in many state laws which sterilized more than 63,000 Americans.

“The eugenics movement, particularly Margaret Sanger, ranted against the Catholic Church for opposing eugenic legislation and ideology,” she wrote.

Charging that leaders of the American eugenics movement “simply chose new words to describe eugenics,” she noted that some of these leaders focused on genetics and population control in pursuit of their primary goal, the control of reproduction “in order to improve the human gene pool.”

“Throughout its existence Planned Parenthood has been a key tool to reduce or eliminate births among blacks, other minorities and the disabled,” Russell wrote in the Post.

She attributed the eugenics and population control movement’s power to “huge trusts with billions of dollars in global assets” that are themselves likely funded by corporations which distribute birth control pills and other contraceptive drugs and devices.

She suggested that U.S. taxpayer funding also supports this system because of politicians who receive campaign donations from these corporations and like-minded individuals.

SIC: CNA