An argument broke out on Friday’s The View, between co-hosts Meghan McCain and Whoopi Goldberg, over whether Bernie Sanders and other 2020 Democrats were pushing eugenics as a way to combat climate change. Whoopi fiercely defended Sanders’ promoting abortion as a way to slow population growth, even claiming that the eugenics movement had nothing to do with minorities or birth control. “I’m not sure why people are upset with him,” Whoopi admitted, after playing a clip from CNN’s town hall on climate change where Sanders touted abortion as a worldwide means to cut down the human population. They highlighted a tweet from CNN’s S.E. Cupp calling Sanders’ idea, “eugenics.” “I think people are distorting what he said!” co-host Sunny Hostin gushed. Joy Behar agreed, asking, “Isn’t the population one of the biggest issues in the world right now?”https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kristine-marsh/2019/09/06/whoopi-defends-sanders-population-control-eugenics-doesnt-have
The U.S. Government's Role in Sterilizing Women of Color
Black, Puerto Rican, and Native American women have been victimized
Black Women Sterilized in North Carolina
Countless numbers of Americans who were poor, mentally ill, from minority backgrounds or otherwise regarded as “undesirable” were sterilized as the eugenics movement gained momentum in the United States. Eugenicists believed that measures should be taken to prevent "undesirables" from reproducing so that problems such as poverty and substance abuse would be eliminated in future generations. By the 1960s, tens of thousands of Americans were sterilized in state run eugenics programs, according to NBC News. North Carolina was one of 31 states to adopt such a program.
Between 1929 and 1974 in North Carolina, 7,600 people were sterilized. Eighty-five percent of those sterilized were women and girls, while 40 percent were minorities (most of whom were black). The eugenics program was eliminated in 1977 but legislation permitting involuntary sterilization of residents remained on the books until 2003.
Puerto Rican Women Robbed of Reproductive Rights
More than a third of women in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico were sterilized from the 1930s to the 1970s as a result of a partnership between the U.S. government, Puerto Rican lawmakers and medical officials. The United States has ruled the island since 1898. In the decades following, Puerto Rico experienced a number of economic problems, including a high unemployment rate. Government officials decided that the island’s economy would experience a boost if the population were reduced.
The Sterilization of Native American Women
Native American women also report enduring government-ordered sterilizations. Jane Lawrence details their experiences in her Summer 2000 piece for American Indian Quarterly—“The Indian Health Service and the Sterilization of Native American Women.” Lawrence reports how two teenage girls had their tubes tied without their consent after undergoing appendectomies at an Indian Health Service (IHS) hospital in Montana. Also, a young American Indian woman visited a doctor asking for a “womb transplant,” apparently unaware that no such procedure exists and that the hysterectomy she’d had earlier meant that she and her husband would never have biological children.
“What happened to these three females was a common occurrence during the 1960s and 1970s,” Lawrence states. “Native Americans accused the Indian Health Service of sterilizing at least 25 percent of Native American women who were between the ages of 15 and 44 during the 1970s.” https://www.thoughtco.com/u-s-governments-role-sterilizing-women-of-color-2834600
Genetics, Eugenics, and Ethics
People looking at who was getting sterilized realized that it was mostly minorities who were getting sterilized, mostly poor people who were getting sterilized. It was, only certain kinds of people who were at risk of getting sterilized, who were really bearing the brunt of these policies. And so more and more, critics in the 1930s https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/video/genetics-eugenics-and-ethics
Introduction to Eugenics
Eugenics is a movement that is aimed at improving the genetic composition of the human race. Historically, eugenicists advocated selective breeding to achieve these goals. Today we have technologies that make it possible to more directly alter the genetic composition of an individual. However, people differ in their views on how to best (and ethically) use this technology.http://knowgenetics.org/history-of-eugenics/
In the 1920s, many states authorized forced sterilization of thousands of “undesirable citizens” – people with disabilities, prisoners, and racial minorities – on the theory that, as the U.S. Supreme Court put it in upholding Virginia’s forced sterilization law in 1927, “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” American proponents of Eugenics, a scientific movement to “improve” the genetic composition of the human population, soon accelerated sterilization programs, which served as a model for Nazi programs implemented during the Holocaust.
American sterilization laws were also used as a tool of racialized population control. From the 1920s to 1970s, thousands of poor, Southern black women were sterilized without their knowledge or consent. Most states abandoned eugenics programs after World War II, but sterilization increased in Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, coinciding with growing black political power, mandatory integration, and the civil rights movement. Some states continued to sterilize into the 1970s. https://eji.org/history-racial-injustice-racial-eugenics
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