Claude Wilson | Published 13 hours ago

Alongside the benefits of our growing understandingof genetics, theres been the dark shadow of its pseudoscience.

More than just an unfortunate chapter of history confined to Nazi Germany, eugenics the practice of selective breeding has long had a foot in American politics. North Carolina provides a perfect example of the wretched history of eugenics in the United States.

The focal point of the Old North States relationship with eugenics over the years was the Eugenics Board of North Carolina, a state board formed in 1933. It forcibly sterilized citizens, many of whom were black and impoverished.

The stated targets of sterilization of the Eugenics Board were the so-called feeble-minded, which was bad enough, but they also sterilized the blind and deaf, expanding to the sterilization of any welfare recipients social workers chose to single out. Over the course of more than 40 years, about 7,600 people were sterilized by the state until 1977, when the Eugenics Board was formally abolished. However, laws allowing involuntary sterilization remained in place until as late as 2003.

The driving force behind the forced sterilizations authorized by the Eugenics Board after World War II was the so-called Human Betterment League, an organization made up of Winston-Salems wealthy elite for the purpose of furthering the cause of eugenics in North Carolina. Founded in 1947, the efforts of the League led to an 80 percent increase in forced sterilizations in the state and continued to promote forced sterilizations until the early 1970s, eventually disbanding in 1988.

Beyond thousands of forced sterilizations administered under the authority of the Eugenics Board, countless more were carried out by local clinics in the state. While a bill passed in 2013 provided compensation to victims of involuntary sterilization by the Eugenics Board, no compensation has been instituted for victims of these clinics.

North Carolina is only one of many states that have sanctioned forced sterilization. Beyond the already horrible history of American eugenics, the American model of eugenics and forced sterilization would provide a direct model for similar programs implemented in Nazi Germany.

Harry Laughlin, one of the leading American eugenicists of the 1930s, would brag to colleagues about how Nazi Germany was adapting his compulsory sterilization law models, and in 1936 was awarded an honorary degree by the University ofHeidelberg for his contributions to the science of racial cleansing.

Despite the repeated debunking of eugenics by respectable academics and researchers, Social Darwinist thinking and support for eugenicist thought remainfar more prevalent than they should. The most prominent example is Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murrays1994 "The Bell Curve," a perniciously ignorant, poorly researched and deliberately misleading book which claims human intelligence is linked to race. The book was published without any peer review, based itself on flawed statistical methods and faulty assumptions and has been torn to shreds by a number of prominent scholars.

But Charles Murrays pseudo-research is still taken seriously in certain circles. The majority of Murrays research came from the Pioneer Fund, a non-profit foundation that has funded prominent white supremacists, such as Roger Pearson and Jared Taylor. Among the founding members of the fund was Harry Laughlin.

The original eugenicists saw themselves as philanthropists who were helping the world, and future neo-eugenicists will probably view themselves that way as well. This is why it is important we dispel the pseudoscientific, white supremacist myths that are perpetuated by people like Charles Murray and organizations like the Pioneer Fund.

opinion@dailytarheel.com

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Know the dark side of North Carolina eugenics - The Daily Tar Heel

Famed Vermont author Dorothy Canfield Fisher's name will stay on a children's book award at least for now.

The Vermont Library Board met Tuesday and heard two and a half hours of debate about a request to rename the award. Critics behind the effort say Fisher was associated with the Vermont Eugenics Survey, and that she stereotyped its targets including French Canadians and French Indians in her writing.

But after several speakers at the meeting mounted a fierce defense of Fisher, the board delayed making a recommendation on whether to rename the award until its next meeting on October 10. State Librarian Scott Murphy will have the final say.

"I'm not trying to kick the can down the road, I'm trying to figure out a way to deal with this," board chair Bruce Post told Seven Days after the meeting in Berlin.*

Afterwards, he said he needed more time to consider the issue. "It's too early to comment. I have to internalize all that information," he said of the "really good commentary" he heard at the meeting.

Writer, artist and plumber Tom Mulholland of Montpelier attended to defend Fisher. He sat at the same table as Essex Junction resident Judy Dow, a French-Indian educator who is leading the push to remove Fisher's name from the award.

Mulholland accused Dow of historical "vandalism" and said her characterization of Fisher as a eugenicist was based on innuendo and insinuation. "Unless there's absolute fact, she's innocent," Mulholland said.

Retired University of Vermont professor Helene Lang also defended Fisher in a lengthy presentation to the board, calling criticism of the author "very unfair and inadequately substantiated."

She added: "I've lost sleep over this."

Both Lang and Mulholland noted that several prominent Vermonters served with Fisher on the Vermont Commission on Country Life, which grew out of the Vermont Eugenics Survey directed by UVM professor Henry Perkins.

Fisher's participation on the commission does not mean she supported the eugenics survey work, her defenders said.

Dow, though, said that the time has come to listen to those who have been oppressed and to consider changing the name on the award.

As Lang and Dow repeatedly engaged in sharp exchanges, Post eventually stepped in. "OK hold it," he said at one point. "Please stop."

Although none of the board members took a public stance at the meeting, several thanked Dow for bringing up the issue, saying it was a worthy debate.

*Clarification, 9:12 p.m.: A previous version of this story misstated when Post spoke to Seven Days.

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Library Board Delays Decision on Renaming Fisher Award - Seven Days

STEVENS POINT If youre looking for some light summer reading, dont pick up Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck.

Author Adam Cohen treats the humorless subject with appropriate seriousness in his 2016 book as he explores the American eugenics movement and bogus science that supported it in the early 20th century. Eugenics supporters preached that the improvement of the human species was best achieved by encouraging or permitting reproduction of only those people with genetic characteristics judged desirable.

We took it much further in the first four decades of the last century, using eugenic science to seek to eliminate through sterilization undesirables like epileptics and those labeled through bogus testing morons, idiots and imbeciles. These included poor people, those labeled sexual perverts, alcoholics, criminals and just about anyone else deemed to be capable of passing on undesirable traits. Eugenics supporters took it a step further, too, successfully limiting the immigration of undesirables such as Jews and Italians.

If it all sounds a bit like Nazi Germany, it should. The U.S. eugenics movement inspired the Nazis on their brutal racial purification journey, as author Cohen points out. And if it sounds a bit like some of the nationalistic fervor racing across the U.S. today, there are some unfortunate parallels, he notes.

A major difference between then and now is that progressives and conservatives alike embraced eugenics the last time around, if for different reasons. Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt believed sterilization and other eugenic activities would prevent unfit people from breeding and saw it as part of efforts to improve the lot of the majority of Americans. Conservatives were drawn to it in the belief that there was a natural elite, and that differences among people couldnt be eradicated by improving their environment.

The story of Carrie Buck is one of a young Virginia woman institutionalized in one of the states institutions for the feeble-minded. Using bogus science to establish she was a low-grade moron, eugenicists used her case to test the legality of their sterilization law. Her mother was labeled similarly with the same test, as was her infant daughter, born after Buck was raped. The case ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927, where justices ruled 8-1 that the law was legal. None other than the revered Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the opinion, proclaiming among other things: Three generations of imbeciles are enough. It apparently didnt matter to Holmes that Buck was labeled a moron, a less feeble-minded category than imbecile.

His ruling set the stage for tens of thousands of state-sponsored sterilizations across the country, most of them women.

Wisconsin has its own eugenic history. Lutz Kaelber, a historical sociologist at the University of Vermont and on the faculty committee of the Miller Center for Holocaust Studies, writes that of more than 1,800 recorded sterilizations in Wisconsin, almost 80 percent were women. This started in 1913, when the state passed its first sterilization law, and continued until 1963. Sterilizations increased dramatically after the Supreme Court ruling. Criminals, insane, feeble-minded, and epileptics were the chosen, he reports. All of this was facilitated by state law, with many of the procedures carried out at the Wisconsin Home for the Feeble-Minded in Chippewa Falls, now known as the Northern Wisconsin Center for the Developmentally Disabled.

It was progressives, dominant in Wisconsin politics at the time, who pushed the concept in the Legislature and Wisconsin's public arena, notes Kaelber.

All of this was a long time ago, so there is no need to be concerned today, right? Maybe we should be. For one thing, the Supreme Court ruling was never overturned. Public sentiment, led by the Catholic Church, turned states away from sterilization, but it is still technically legal in some cases.

Sterilization wasn't the only method used by proponents of eugenics. The desire to "improve" humankind fueled anti-immigration sentiment, and since Jews were among those considered undesirable, many thousands were turned away during the Nazi years. Todays anti-immigrant sentiment carries some of the same prejudices and dangers.

And while mass sterilization doesnt seem likely again soon, does denying medical care to the least among us amount to a 21st-century version of eugenics?

Bill Berry of Stevens Point writes a semimonthly column for The Capital Times. billnick@charter.net

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Bill Berry: Eugenics not a proud aspect of American history | Column ... - Madison.com

Author Dorothy Canfield Fisher.

(Jon Margolis writes political columns for VTDigger.)

Some of her novels and stories were about children, and she was obviously writing those for young people. No wonder, then, that Vermont librarians call their best-kids-book-of-the-year prize the Dorothy Canfield Fisher (or just the DCF) award.

Fisher was also politically active, and her politics were decidedly left of center. Eleanor Roosevelt admired her. The daughter and granddaughter of fierce abolitionists, Fisher devoted much of her professional life to combating intolerance, bigotry and authoritarianism, in the words of a 1997 article in the Journal of the Vermont Historical Society by historian Hal Goldman. In 1943 she urged Gov. William Wills to try to persuade Vermont resorts to drop their policy of being restricted, the euphemism for no Jews allowed.

Now comes a request to the state librarian that he drop Fishers name from the annual award because she was a racist.

Specifically, in the view of Abenaki educator Judy Dow, of Essex Junction, Fisher stereotyped Abenaki and French Canadians in her fiction and was part of the eugenics movement of the 1920s and 1930s that sought to sterilize those considered degenerate or feeble-minded.

The second of these allegations is complicated, not because there is anything complicated about Vermonts eugenics initiative it was a truly shameful episode but because it is not clear that Fisher played any part in it, or even that she thought it was a good idea. Goldman, who is an adjunct professor of history and a provosts teaching fellow at Minnesotas Carleton College, said he found the evidence of the ties between Fisher and the eugenics movement very attenuated.

Thats academic for weak.

But there is nothing complicated about the charge that Fishers novels and short stories display negative views of racial or ethnic minorities. That charge is nonsense.

Fiction is fiction. Characters in fiction speak as those characters, not as their author. If a character in Fishers novel Bonfire describes another as half-hound, half-hunter, all Injun, thats how that character at that time and in that place would talk. If in Seasoned Timber a bigoted headmaster scorns a students awful Jewish mother, well, thats how bigoted Vermont headmasters talked back then.

Considering that starting in 1939 a steady stream of Jewish refugees from Hitlers Germany found refuge with Fisher and her husband in Arlington (this from Ida H. Washingtons biography of Fisher, published by New England Press in 1982), the headmaster clearly was not reflecting the views of his creator.

The task of a fiction writer is to portray the world as it is, not as the writer would like it to be. Any effort to discern a writers opinions through the words of his or her fictional characters is worse than foolish; it misconstrues the purpose of literature. It is barbaric.

So was the Vermont eugenics movement, which ended up sterilizing an unknown number of people, disproportionately Abenaki or French Canadian. Patients consented to the operations, but often that consent was the only way they could be released from prison.

Fisher was not part of the eugenics operation. It is not certain that she supported it. The worst that can be said about her with any confidence is that it is not certain she did not support it.

Perhaps she was a bit of a snob. She wanted Vermont to attract those who earn a living preferably by the trained use of their brains, rather than those who buy or sell material objects or handle money.

Well, la di da, and no wonder some suspect she might have harbored bigoted thoughts. But there is no reason that an Abenaki, a French Canadian, a Hutu or an Eskimo cant earn a living with the trained use of his or her brain, and no grounds for concluding that Fisher thought otherwise.

Removing Fishers name from the award would do little harm. She was hardly a giant of 20th century American literature a la Hemingway, Faulkner or her friend Willa Cather (and lets not inquire too deeply about some of their ethnic prejudices). Though someone checked her most famous book, Understood Betsy out of Burlingtons Fletcher Free Library just two months ago, most of todays teens and preteens dont read her and know her name only because of the award.

But that doesnt answer the question of whether changing the name of the award would do any good, beyond easing the sensitivities of those who care about it.

Needless to say, this anti-Dorothy flap has to be viewed in the context of other efforts to remove the names and symbols of people and causes once admired, now scorned.

Some of this has been beneficial. The Confederate States of America and its leaders and symbols should not be honored. Their secession was the greatest act of treason ever committed against the United States, and it was motivated (this is beyond debate because the traitors said so at the time) by a belief in slavery and white supremacy.

But not much about the past including its flaws is that clear-cut, and it might be wise to guard against the temptation to go out in search of new dragons to slay.

Especially dragons as unthreatening as Dorothy Canfield Fisher appears to be.

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Margolis: Fact and Dorothy Canfield Fisher's fiction - vtdigger.org

Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Photo courtesy of Manchester Historical Society

(This story is by Cherise Madigan, of the Bennington Banner, in which it first appeared.)

Dorothy Canfield Fisher was a prolific local writer, and her namesake rests at various institutions in Arlington today including Fisher Elementary School. In 1957 a Vermont childrens literacy program was established in the authors honor, and the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award has recognized outstanding childrens writers over the last 60 years.

Fishers reputation has been questioned in recent weeks, as Essex educator and artist Judy Dow has led the fight for the removal of Fishers name from the award. Dow, who has both French Canadian and Abenaki roots, claims that Fisher not only stereotyped French Canadians and Native Americans in her extensive works, but played an active role in the eugenics movement.

In an address to the Vermont Department of Libraries in April, Dow presented evidence of Fishers ties to Vermonts eugenics movement and argued for the removal of Fishers name from the award.

The reason I started this was because our children are our most precious gift, said Dow. To name an award for a childrens book after someone who was a eugenicist is so wrong.

Now, the decision rests with State Librarian Scott Murphy, who will hear a recommendation from the Board of Libraries on July 11 and make a final decision thereafter.

Its a touchy situation and its really hard to look at these issues with our current morals and values and to judge history based on that, said Murphy. Im trying to get as much input as I possibly can from citizens before I make any decision. I have to be very careful to make sure we are taking the proper steps for Vermont.

The allegations of Fishers eugenicist entanglements stand in stark contrast to the authors identity as an accomplished writer and social activist, promoting adult education programs and prison reform alongside her organization of World War I relief efforts. Fisher was honored as one of the 10 most influential women in the United States by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a trailblazer in her own right.

Though Fisher made valuable contributions to society and literature, her ties to Vermonts eugenics movement raise questions. While some argue that her involvement was tangential, others claim Fisher was more deeply involved.

The Vermont eugenics movement, led by University of Vermont professor Henry F. Perkins, insisted upon the reality of a racial hierarchy in which degenerate classes of people including Vermonts French Canadian population, native peoples including the Abenaki, and African-Americans were doomed by heredity. These degenerates, Perkins insisted, posed a threat to Vermonts way of life and cultural identity in an era when a declining population and economic stagnation topped the list of challenges faced by the state.

She was a progressive, but it was the progressive party that was running the eugenics program, said Dow. She was a product of the time, and the product of the time was eugenics.

The eugenics movement resulted in the creation of the Vermont Eugenics Survey, running from 1925 to 1936, as well as the formation of the affiliated Vermont Commission on Country Life.

The VCCL was created by Perkins in 1928 to provide a comprehensive survey of the rural regions of the state, with the Eugenics Survey at its center and core. Fisher was among the more than 70 individuals recruited to contribute to chapters of the organizations 1931 publication, Rural Vermont: A Program for the Future. In this survey, contributors were charged with answering the question, What is happening to the old Vermont Stock?

Fisher was most heavily involved in VCCLs Committee on Tradition and Ideals, focusing heavily on increasing the number of tourists and second home owners in Vermont. In 1932, just one year after a sterilization law sponsored by Perkins and the Eugenics Survey was passed by Vermonts Legislature (through which at least 250 feeble minded Vermonters were sterilized between 1933 and 1960, according to the Department of Health), Fisher accepted a position on the commissions executive committee.

It is not surprising that a writer from an earlier time might have beliefs and opinions that we now condemn, said state Rep. Cynthia Browning, D-Arlington. This is not just evidence of prejudice: The possible connection to the eugenics movement that had unjust and tragic consequences is of concern.

Many of Fishers writings contain problematic racial stereotypes that may have been a byproduct of her era, though many of Dows critics argue that authors should not be judged by their fictitious works. It is not certain that all of Fishers representations are pure works of fiction, however.

Dorothy Canfield Fishers book Bonfire was based on a study the Eugenics Survey of Vermont did on Sandgate, said Dow. You can go through the report and pull out the names, and match the names used in Bonfire to the names in the report.

A 1928 study by the Vermont Eugenics Survey titled Key Families in Rural Vermont Towns, featured Sandgate as an example of rural degeneracy. Indeed, many of the names mentioned in the Town Gossip section of the report can be found in Fishers novel Bonfire, which is set in a fictionalized Vermont town entrenched in poverty and populated primarily by French Canadians and French Indians. In Bonfire, residents of this community are depicted as primitive, and irresponsible sub-normals. At one point, a character is described as half-hound, half-hunter, all Injun.

Outside of her fictional works, Fisher was the author of a state tourism pamphlet produced by the VCCL which aimed to recruit superior, interesting families of cultivation and good breeding. Additionally, in a 1941 commencement address, Fisher praised the residents of Manchester for taking in the nomadic Icy Palmer, a Tuscarora Indian abandoned at a local sugarhouse in 1924. Though her intentions seem valiant, Fisher denies in the address that Vermont was home to any measure of ugly racial hatred and oppression, while insisting that no Native American populations ever found a true home in the state.

I am, of course, deeply disturbed by the allegations concerning Dorothy Canfield Fisher. We always hope that those we honor have an honorable past, but almost always they do not, said Melissa Klick, a native Vermonter with both French Canadian and Abenaki heritage, and the owner of the Icy Palmer Candle Co. Icy Palmers funeral was not allowed to be held in a church, and she bowed to white people as they passed; she was assisted but not socially accepted by the Manchester community.

While a heated debate rages on whether Fishers name should remain on the book award, Murphy will ultimately rely on the feedback of Vermonts residents and libraries to decide the issue.

The whole point of this award is childrens literacy, and if this name is going to deny a certain group of people that involvement, then thats significant. Theres somebody thats feeling pain, and Im cognizant of that, said Murphy. On the opposite side is the idea that judging history by todays point of view can be dangerous, and can sometimes do more harm than good.

Regardless, Fishers complex history has opened the door for a meaningful dialogue on Vermonts troubling history with eugenics.

I feel we must use historiography to keep examining our past to improve our understanding of the future, said Klik. Lets move forward to make sure that the ignorance that shaped Canfields prejudices no longer has a place in Vermont, nor any other corner of America.

We change everything thats outdated as time goes on, so why wouldnt we change this if its offensive? said Dow. Its time that the oppressor listens to the stories of those that were oppressed, and thats a good start.

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Author under scrutiny for long-ago ties to eugenics - vtdigger.org

The Conservatives have dismantled the welfare system and introduced a system of eugenicsin an effort to make disabled people suffer and die, according to a newly-elected LabourMP.

Jared OMara, who has cerebral palsy, said the Government hascompletely torn up the welfare system by shutting down the Independent Living Fund and making cuts to disability and social care benefits.

Mr OMara, who ousted former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Cleggfrom his Sheffield Hallamseat,also declared his support for efforts to bring a criminal prosecution against Toryministers over claims that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) fitness to worktests have led to the deaths of benefit claimants.

The former school governorinsisted the policies were making disabled people have suicidal thoughts.

He told Disability News Service(DNS): A lot of people say you cant use that word, but I will do: its eugenics.They want disabled people to suffer and die. Thats literally whats happening.

Disabled people are out there suffering and dying because they have not got the financial means and financial support and nor have they got the legal means to lead an equal life, or even to lead a satisfactory life.

Conservative MP accuses mother of disabled child of lying

He added thatreports that mentally ill people have been asked why they havent committed suicide by independence payment assessors support his claims.

How is that not eugenics? Putting thoughts of suicide into a disabled persons head. Its literally eugenics,he said.

Im not going to shy away from it, people might say I am taking it too far, but as far as I am concerned, what I have seen and what has happened across the board, its been eugenics.

There are people just like me and people who have got conditions that make things even worse for them than mine does, and they are dying and they are suffering.

A DWP spokesperson said: We have a proud record in supporting disabled people, including through the landmark Disability Discrimination Act.

In the last three years, over 500,000 have moved into work and we continue to spend around 50bna year on benefits to support disabled people and those with health conditions more than ever before.

In the wide-ranging interview with DNS, Mr OMaraalso said he absolutelysupported efforts by anti-austerity groups to bring criminal proceedings against former DWP ministers Chris Grayling and Iain Duncan Smith relating to the fitness to work tests.

A disabled activist from the Black Triangle campaign lodged a complaint with Scottish police claiming the pair might be guilty of willful neglect of duty by a public official, but Scottish criminal justice agencies refused to investigate the matter in December.

A DWP spokesperson said at the time: It is important we make sure that people are receiving the right support, and they are not simply written off to a life on benefits.

The Work Capability Assessment has been improved dramatically since 2008 following a number of reviews, including five independent ones.

After a month in his role as Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam, Mr OMara said he has not been able to attend debates in the Commons chamber as he cannot stand for longer than 10minutes.

The 35-year-old MP was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at six months old. The condition leaves him with severe fatigue and the right-hand side of his body is semi-paralysed. Mobility and standing for too long are issues and he needs bannisters on both sides of stairs.

The disability rights campaigner, who compares himself to Forrest Gump, previously said: Im this slightly eccentric, little bit weird disabled guy who keeps stumbling into large achievements.

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New disabled MP accuses Conservatives of 'eugenics' policies to ... - The Independent

Counter-protesters swarmed downtownNew Haven to shout down a rally featuringlibertarian speaker Augustus Invictus on Saturday morning.One has been hospitalized after getting pepper sprayed by authorities; at least threehave been arrested.

I saw three arrested. I heard there was a fourth, said a protester requesting only to be identified as IV. There are only twoother people in the U.S. with my last name and theyre in their seventies. My pronouns are they and this.

The rally was organized by local white nationalist groups with ties to Proud Boys, a new political movement helmedin the U.S. by the Canadian Vice Media-cofounder Gavin McInnes. The group has attracted thousands of members and promotes minimal government, maximum freedom, anti-political correctness, anti-racial guilt, pro-gun rights, anti-Drug War, closed borders, anti-masturbation, venerating entrepreneurs, venerating housewives, and reinstating a spirit of Western chauvinism during an age of globalism and multiculturalism, according to their Facebook page.

Augustus Invictus (an alias which translates into majestic unconquered sun in Latin)isbest known for controversial antics like sacrificing a goat and drinking its blood, along withrunning a failedcampaign for Marco Rubios Senate seat in Florida as a Libertarian (which promptedthe resignation of Floridas Libertarian Party chairman AdrianWyllie). He has openly advocated for eugenics and a civil warwhileattractinga following of mostly neo-Nazis and white nationalists.

Ninety-nine percent of the things that seem weird in my life can be answered with my religion,he told a reporter for Vicein 2015. Paganism, he added, is mostly about nature-worship. Its about being in harmony with your environment and bringing the world of spirit and world of man together. Its about balance.

Counter-protesters numbered about 150 and came from different groups such as Black Lives Matter, SURGE, and New Haven Uprising.

All of you are going to go back to Clinton [Connecticut] and were going to be the ones cleaning up after you! shouted a New Haven resident to the protesters. I got paint on my brand new iPhone.

The groups were last seenmarchingtowardsthe New Haven police station on 1 Union Ave to demand the release of the arrested counter protesters.

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Neo Nazis, Black Lives Matter, And Progressive Groups Clash In New Haven - The Daily Caller

What is the "demographic winter"? It represents the future drastic decline of human population based on a eugenics-based culture causing a decline of the human family as the basic structure of society and civilization. The Washington Post story in the Sentinel & Enterprise "Birth data -- Baby Crisis" highlights a small aspect of this problem, which is already occurring worldwide but is basically ignored by the myth of overpopulation.

There are demographically fewer people being born worldwide than are necessary to maintain the engines of economic and environmental growth at sufficient levels. The demographic research is incontestable: Despite current predictions to the contrary of overpopulation, we are in fact "not breeding like rabbits, but are not dying like flies anymore."

The anticipated worldwide population decline occurring around 2050 to 2065 will accompany critical damage to economies in stagnation, depression and possible free-fall decline of human population, cultures and civilization.

At least five eugenically fostered ideas are at the heart of the worldwide epidemic of fertility decline below replacement levels and have led to the destruction of the family structure necessary for sustained survival as a species: (1) extensive numbers of working females, (2) the sexual revolution, (3) affluence that leads to having fewer children, (4) the divorce revolution, (5) and inaccurate assumptions about over-population and limited resources.

Immigration has provided the needed workers in richer countries, stripping poorer nations of members of families contributing to their indigent family growth and weakened economies. All "growth" is an illusion.

However, social scientists, economists, demographers and like academicians concluded clearly: The only true survivors in this future will be those people who have families of faith.

PAUL LAMBERT

Leominster

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: 'Demographic winter' Decline of the family - Sentinel & Enterprise

Better Baby contests were popular at county and state fairs in early 20th century Oregon, reflecting an emerging interest in eugenics, the science of genetics and how it affects social problems.

In response to the idea that good citizenship came from good breeding, Better Baby competitions replaced baby beauty contests at the fairs.

In 1913, infant Margaret Hooper won a medal and a ribbon with a score of 98.7 out of 100 at the Josephine County Fair. Kenneth Campbell gained a score of 99.3. The 2-year-old children qualified to participate in the Better Baby contest at the Oregon State Fair in Salem.

These contests, billed as promoting healthy children, were based on how close a child came to a set of standards including height, weight, and attitude. Judges considered family background in addition to physical measurements.

At the state fair, Margaret won first prize in the class of 2-year-old country girls. Kenneth won distinction, but no prize in the state contest. The grand champion was a 3-year-old from McMinnville, the son of a professor. Margarets father was a bank clerk. Kenneths father farmed south of Grants Pass.

Sources: "Josephine County Boy and Girl Score High."Rogue River Courier, 10 Oct. 1913[Grants Pass OR], p. 1.Historical Oregon Newspapers, oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn96088281/1913-10-10/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1846&index=8&date2=2017&words=eugenics&searchType=advanced&sequence=0&lccn=sn96088281&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=eugenics&. Accessed 22 June 2017; Lawrence, Cera R. "Oregon State Board of Eugenics."The Embryo Project Encyclopedia, National Science Foundation, Arizona State University, 22 Apr. 2013, https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/oregon-state-board-eugenics. Accessed 22 June 2017.

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As It Was: Baby Contests Seek to Improve Society in 1920s - Jefferson Public Radio

Relatives of victims of North Carolina's sterilization program that operated until the 1970s have decided not to appeal a ruling that prohibits them from inheriting compensation payments. (Photo credit: MGN)

Relatives of victims of North Carolina's sterilization program that operated until the 1970s have decided not to appeal a ruling that prohibits them from inheriting compensation payments.

Attorney Elizabeth Haddix of the UNC Center for Civil Rights told the Winston-Salem Journal that the relatives have decided not to appeal a decision last month by the state Court of Appeals.

The court ruled eugenics victims seeking compensation from the state had to be alive on June 30, 2013, for their heirs to qualify for payment. That date was set in the compensation law.

About 7,600 people were sterilized under the program, which ended in 1974. At least 213 victims are considered to have qualified for compensation. They received two checks.

A final payment is to be made after all appeals have been decided.

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Heirs of eugenics victims won't appeal compensation ruling - WLOS

ARLINGTON The eugenics movement is a dark chapter of Vermont's history, and now one local author's alleged role in that movement is under intense scrutiny.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher was a prolific local writer, and her namesake rests at various institutions in Arlington today including Fisher Elementary School. In 1957 a Vermont children's literacy program was established in the author's honor, and the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award has recognized outstanding children's writers over the last 60 years.

Fisher's reputation has been questioned in recent weeks, as Essex educator and artist Judy Dow has led the fight for the removal of Fisher's name from the award. Dow, who has both French Canadian and Abenaki roots, claims that Fisher not only stereotyped French Canadians and Native Americans in her extensive works, but played an active role in the eugenics movement as well.

At a presentation to the Vermont Department of Libraries in April, Dow presented evidence of Fisher's ties to Vermont's eugenics movement and argued for the removal of Fisher's name from the award.

"The reason I started this was because our children are our most precious gift," said Dow. "To name an award for a children's book after someone who was a eugenicist is so wrong."

Now, the decision rests with State Librarian Scott Murphy, who will hear a recommendation from the Board of Libraries on July 11 and make a final decision thereafter.

"It's a touchy situation and it's really hard to look at these issues with our current morals and values and to judge history based on that," said Murphy. "I'm trying to get as much input as I possibly can from citizens before I make any decision; I have to be very careful to make sure we are taking the proper steps for Vermont."

A Multifaceted Identity

The allegations of Fisher's eugenicist entanglements stand in stark contrast to the author's identity as an accomplished female writer and social activist, promoting adult education programs and prison reform alongside her organization of World War I relief efforts. Fisher was honored as one of the 10 most influential women in the United States by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a trailblazer in her own right.

Though Fisher made valuable contributions to society and literature, her ties to Vermont's eugenics movement raise questions. While some argue that her involvement was tangential, others claim that Fisher was more deeply involved.

The Vermont eugenics movement, led by University of Vermont Professor Henry F. Perkins, insisted upon the reality of a racial hierarchy in which "degenerate" classes of people including Vermont's French Canadian population, native peoples including the Abenaki, and African-Americans were doomed by heredity. These "degenerates," Perkins insisted, posed a threat to Vermont's way of life and cultural identity in an era when a declining population and economic stagnation topped the list of challenges faced by the state.

"She was a progressive, but it was the progressive party that was running the eugenics program," said Dow. "She was a product of the time, and the product of the time was eugenics."

The eugenics movement resulted in the creation of the Vermont Eugenics Survey, running from 1925 to 1936, as well as the formation of the affiliated Vermont Commission on Country Life (VCCL).

The VCCL was created by Perkins in 1928 to provide a comprehensive survey of the rural regions of the state, with the Eugenics Survey at "its center and core." Fisher was among the more than 70 individuals recruited to contribute to chapters of the organization's 1931 publication, "Rural Vermont: A Program for the Future." In this survey, contributors were charged with answering the question, "What is happening to the old Vermont Stock?"

Fisher was most heavily involved in VCCL's Committee on Tradition and Ideals, focusing heavily on increasing the number of tourists and second home owners in Vermont. In 1932, just one year after a sterilization law sponsored by Perkins and the Eugenics Survey was passed by Vermont's legislature (through which at least 250 "feeble minded" Vermonters were sterilized between 1933 and 1960, according to the Department of Health), Fisher accepted a position on VCCL's executive committee.

"It is not surprising that a writer from an earlier time might have beliefs and opinions that we now condemn," said State Rep. Cynthia Browning, D-Arlington. "This is not just evidence of prejudice: the possible connection to the eugenics movement that had unjust and tragic consequences is of concern."

Local Linkages

Many of Fisher's writings contain problematic racial stereotypes that may have been a byproduct of her era, though many of Dow's critics argue that authors should not be judged by their fictitious works. It is not certain that all of Fisher's representations are pure works of fiction, however.

"Dorothy Canfield Fisher's book "Bonfire" was based on a study the Eugenics Survey of Vermont did on Sandgate," said Dow. "You can go through the report and pull out the names, and match the names used in "Bonfire" to the names in the report."

A 1928 study by the Vermont Eugenics Survey titled "Key Families in Rural Vermont Towns," featured Sandgate as an example of "rural degeneracy." Indeed, many of the names mentioned in the "Town Gossip" section of the report can be found in Fisher's novel "Bonfire," which is set in a fictionalized Vermont town entrenched in poverty and populated primarily by French Canadians and "French Indians." In "Bonfire," residents of this community are depicted as "primitive," and "irresponsible sub-normals." At one point, a character is described as, "half-hound, half-hunter, all Injun."

Outside of her fictional works, Fisher was the author of a state tourism pamphlet produced by the VCCL which aimed to recruit "superior, interesting families of cultivation and good breeding." Additionally, in a 1941 commencement address, Fisher praised the residents of Manchester for taking in the nomadic Icy Palmer, a Tuscarora Indian abandoned at a local sugar house in 1924. Though her intentions seem valiant, Fisher denies in the address that Vermont was home to any measure of "ugly racial hatred and oppression," whilst insisting that no Native American populations ever found a true home in the state.

"I am, of course, deeply disturbed by the allegations concerning Dorothy Canfield Fisher. We always hope that those we honor have an honorable past, but almost always they do not," said Melissa Klick, a native Vermonter with both French Canadian and Abenaki heritage, and the owner of the Icy Palmer Candle Company. "Icy Palmer's funeral was not allowed to be held in a church, and she bowed to white people as they passed; she was assisted but not socially accepted by the Manchester community."

Starting point for dialogue

While a heated debate rages on whether Fisher's name should remain on the book award, Murphy will ultimately rely on the feedback of Vermont's citizens and libraries to decide the issue.

"The whole point of this award is children's literacy, and if this name is going to deny a certain group of people that involvement then that's significant. There's somebody that's feeling pain, and I'm cognizant of that," said Murphy. "On the opposite side is the idea that judging history by today's point of view can be dangerous, and can sometimes do more harm than good."

Regardless, Fisher's complex history has opened the door for a meaningful dialogue on Vermont's troubling history with eugenics.

"I feel we must use historiography to keep examining our past to improve our understanding of the future," said Klik. "Let's move forward to make sure that the ignorance that shaped Canfield's prejudices no longer has a place in Vermont, nor any other corner of America."

"We change everything that's outdated as time goes on, so why wouldn't we change this if it's offensive?" said Dow. "It's time that the oppressor listens to the stories of those that were oppressed, and that's a good start."

More information on Vermont's Eugenics program can be found at http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/. The full report on Sandgate can be found at http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/primarydocs/ofkfssg090028.xml.

Reach Cherise Madigan at 802-490-6471.

If you'd like to leave a comment (or a tip or a question) about this story with the editors, please email us. We also welcome letters to the editor for publication; you can do that by filling out our letters form and submitting it to the newsroom.

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Questions raised on Fisher's eugenics ties, award name - The Manchester Journal

When one thinks about eugenics, they usually associate the term with the horrible crimes of Nazi Germany and their unfounded and terrible ideas of race and purity. But the practice and advocacy of eugenics have a long history. Decades before the rise of Hitler, The Eugenics Society was advocating the forced sterilization of undesirable people in the US, Britain and Western Europe.

In 1907, India passed a sterilization law barring certain categories of disabled people from having children (a similar law was passed in Germany in 1933). By 1938, if you had been classified as insane, idiotic, imbecile, feebleminded or epileptic you couldbe forciblysterilized in 38 states in the USA. A mental institution in Lincoln, Illinois euthanized its patients by giving them milk from a herd suffering from tuberculosis. Similar laws were passed during the 20s and 30s in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.

Great Britain never had such laws, but the Eugenic Societywas very active since its inception in 1907 and tried passing several pieces of legislation. In 1908 Sir James Crichton-Brownrecommended the compulsory sterilization of those with learning disabilities and mental illness to the Royal Commisionon the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded.This was supported by Winston Churchill. In 1931, Labour MP Archibald Church put forward a bill very much in line with the eugenics legislation being approved around the world.

Eugenic Society meeting.Public Library/News Dog Media

These laws were repealed after the second world war but these images stand as a reminder of the barbaric treatmentof the many people experienced by our "civilized" society.

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Grim Photos Show The US & British Eugenics Movement During Its Heyday - IFLScience (blog)

For almost two years now, victims of North Carolinas forced sterilization program who qualified for compensation have been waiting for their third and final payment. With almost all appeals exhausted, that time may rightly be here.

From the Great Depression through the fall of Nixon, the Eugenics Board of North Carolina, in one of the most aggressive programs in the country, rendered barren more than 7,600 men, women and children. The board, often acting on flimsy evidence, determined these people were mentally or physically deficient.

The 2002 Journal investigative series Against Their Will lifted the curtain on the brutal inner workings of the program. Former state Rep. Larry Womble of Winston-Salem long fought for compensation, as did the Journal editorial board. Victims who have suffered from mental and physical pain from their sterilizations told their stories on our opinion pages.

The state legislative approved compensation in 2013, the first in the nation to do so. Virginia followed suit, and other states are likely to compensate as well.

The North Carolina delay has been caused by appeals from heirs of victims who did not qualify for compensation. But Thursday, a key lawyer for those survivors, Elizabeth Haddix, told the Journal in an email that Our clients have decided not to seek further review by the N.C. Supreme Court. Although the forced sterilization of their loved ones hurt them personally and impacted their lives forever, their goal has always been to honor their loved ones, whose most fundamental rights were violated by the states eugenics program. They have honored them with these appeals.

The legislature should consider whether these heirs should be compensated. Heirs whose cases met a legal timeframe set up by the legislature are being compensated, as are living victims.

Now, the most important thing is for the state to get the qualified victims their final payment, which should bring their total compensation to more than $40,000 each. No amount of money can ever replace what the state, playing God, took. But money is one big way we admit wrongdoing and settle scores in this country. The final payment should go out soon.

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Our view: Compensation time - Winston-Salem Journal

Editor, Register-Mail: Many conservative Republicans believe that the lives of viable babies in the womb are precious and have a right to life. Planned Parenthood, as some may not know, was founded by Margaret Sanger, an advocate of the eugenics movement. The eugenics movement promoted the reduction of sexual reproduction and sterilization of people with undesireable traits such as the very poor and non-whites. Sanger was deemed a white supremacist by many. She opened the first birth control clinic in New York in 1916, which eventually became Planned Parenthood. Margaret Sanger began the Negro Project, allegedly to reduce that population in the guise of a concern for womens health issues. This was reportedly her cover and solution to reduce the unfit in society.

Her legacy continues through Planned Parenthood resulting in large numbers of black abortions disproportionate to their population. About 40 percent of all Planned Parenthood abortions are performed on black women. Planned Parenthood is an ally of a culture of death in America. Those who claim that the effort to defund Planned Parenthood is a part of the war on women disregard that the original intent was to decimate poor communities. The horrors of abortion are apparent to those who care to understand how the procedures are performed. The goal of abortion is not womens health, but the snuffing out of the lives of the innocent unwanted unborn.

All life is the handiwork of our creator and should fill us with awe. Preserving innocent life should be a major concern of those who participated in The March for Truth. Under recent pro-abortion amendments to the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, pro-life medical personnel who exercise their conscience and refuse to participate in abortions must refer patients seeking abortions to doctors who will perform them. What is next on the liberals agenda? Will medical personnel who refuse be charged with discrimination for impeding a womans right to choose? Conservative Republicans are facing a growing criticism from leftist ideologues who are openly hostile to sensible Christian moral values. Deuteronomy 30:19 (Choose life!) Thomas E. Mosher, Victoria

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LETTER: Consider Planned Parenthood's origin - Galesburg Register-Mail

The 'science' is now associated with the horrors of Nazi Germany but was once popular throughout the world

EUGENICS is a movement now associated with the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis during Hitlers rule over Germany.

Heres what you need to know about the now-discredited science which actually began in Britain and was once popular throughout the world.

Public Library/News Dog Media

The Oxford English Dictionary describes Eugenics as: The science of improving a population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics.

The term was first coined by British explorer and natural scientist Sir Francis Galton in 1883.

The debunked science was once practiced the world over before it was widely discredited, following its use by the Nazis to justify their atrocities in trying to create a master race.

Public Library/News Dog Media

Proponents of eugenics claimed undesirable genetic traits like dwarfism, deafness and even minor defects like a cleft palate could and should be eliminated from the gene pool through selective breeding.

Scientists would measure the skulls of criminals as they sought to identify a genetic trait that caused people to offend so they would wipe that group out.

Others suggested simply eradicating entire groups of people because of the colour of their skin.

The first sterilisation law which stopped certain categories of disabled people from having children was passed in Indiana, USA, in 1907.

This was 26 years before a similar law was introduced by the Nazis in Germany in 1933.

In fact, Nazi propaganda pointed to the precedent set by America as Hitler sought to justify his own sterilisation programme.

Public Library/News Dog Media

In the decades following Charles Darwins 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species, the craze like wildfire spread through Britain, the United States and Europe.

Galton Darwins cousin who coined the name eugenics became obsessed with his relatives theory of evolution.

He believed breeding humans with superior mental and physical traits could help the human race evolve in a better way and was essential to the well-being of society.

He wrote: Eugenics is the science which deals with all influences which improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those which develop them to the utmost advantage.

Galton was knighted for his scientific contributions and his writings played a key role in launching the eugenics movement in the UK and US.

Public Library/News Dog Media

Shocking photos from the time show the harrowing lengths scientists went to in the heyday of the eugenics movement to selectively breed humans.

In 1907, the Eugenics Education Society was founded in Britain to campaign for sterilisation and marriage restrictions for the weak to prevent the degeneration of Britains population.

A year later, Sir James Crichton-Brown, giving evidence before the 1908 Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, recommended the compulsory sterilisation of those with learning disabilities and mental illness.

And in 1931, Labour MP Archibald Church proposed a bill for the compulsory sterilisation of certain categories of mental patient in Parliament.

Although such a law was never actually passed in Britain, this did not prevent many sterilisations being carried out under various forms of coercion.

Meanwhile from 1907 in the US, men, women and children who were deemed insane, idiotic, imbecile, feebleminded or epileptic were forcibly sterilised often without being informed of what was being done to them.

By 1938, 33 American states permitted the forced sterilisation of women with learning disabilities.

And 29 American states had passed compulsory sterilisation laws covering people who were thought to have genetic conditions.

Laws in America also restricted the right of certain disabled people to marry.

But sometimes it went even further, with one mental institution in Illinois, USA, euthanising patients by deliberately infecting them with tuberculosis an act they justified as a mercy killing that cut the weak link in the human race.

Other countries which passed similar sterilisation laws in the 1920s and 1930s included Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland.

After these kinds of ideas took root in Nazi Germany and sparked the horrors of the Holocaust, eugenics became a dirty word.

With the dark conclusion of its philosophy exposed before the world, it became difficult to justify forced sterilisation as a tool for the greater good.

All eugenics-based laws were eventually repealed in the 1940s.

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What is the meaning of eugenics? Definition and history of the ... - The Sun

Relatives of eugenics victims have opted not to appeal to the N.C. Supreme Court a ruling that denies some of them the ability to inherit payment as heirs.

An N.C. Court of Appeals panel ruled June 6 that eugenics victims seeking compensation from the state had to be alive on June 30, 2013, for their heirs to qualify for payment following a relative's death.

The Winston-Salem Journal series on eugenics in 2002, "Against Their Will," brought awareness to the state's program, which sterilized about 7,600 people before it ended in 1974.

The three-judge panel unanimously upheld the denials by the N.C. Industrial Commission related to compensation established by the Republican-controlled General Assembly in 2013.

The June 30, 2013, date was set in the law, which created a $10 million pool for compensation payments.

"Our clients have decided not to seek further review by the N.C. Supreme Court," Elizabeth Haddix, senior staff attorney for UNC Center for Civil Rights, said Thursday.

"Although the forced sterilization of their loved ones hurt them personally and impacted their lives forever, their goal has always been to honor their loved ones, whose most fundamental rights were violated by the states 40-year eugenics program.

"They have honored them with these appeals," Haddix said.

At least 213 victims are considered by the commission to have qualified for compensation, and they received two partial checks$20,000 in October 2014 and $15,000 in November 2015.

A third and final payment is to be made after all appeals have been decided. It is not clear whether that stage has been reached.

Lawsuits were filed by the estates of three eugenics victims Hughes, Redmond and Smith, whose first names were not listed in the filings. The plaintiffs claimed the deadline for qualification "was unconstitutional on its face because it arbitrarily denied compensation to the heirs of some victims while allowing compensation to others."

The appellate judges said in their ruling that state law does not treat heirs of living victims differently than it treats heirs of deceased victims. Instead, it said, heirs of victims are treated differently than the victims themselves.

The commission denied the claims in April and May 2015. The Appeals Court ruled in February 2016 that it lacked the jurisdiction to address the constitutional challenge.

In March, the state Supreme Court sent the case back to the Appeals Court to consider the constitutional challenge.

The panel ruled June 6 "we cannot agree" that the state law violated the plaintiffs' rights to equal protection under the law.

Victims who, before June 30, 2013, were determined to be qualified and have a vested interest in compensation would have their compensation rights passed onto heirs as part of their estate.

Qualified victims were required to submit compensation forms to the commission by June 30, 2014, and 780 of a potential 2,000 living victims did.

The panel lists 250 claims as having been approved by the commission, with a "handful" awaiting final resolution on appeal.

At that rate, the compensation per approved claim would be in the $40,000 range, about $10,000 short of the recommended goal in the initial eugenics compensation legislation.

"There is nothing in the preamble indicating that the General Assembly intended to compensate the heirs of individuals who had been sterilized under the authority of the eugenics board," according to the panel ruling.

In 2002, Gov. Mike Easley apologized for the sterilizations, but it took another decade for lawmakers to set up the compensation program.

In October 2016, President Barack Obama signed a law preventing any such compensation from being used to deny need-based assistance to the victims. The bipartisan legislation was introduced by U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who led the N.C. compensation program while state House speaker.

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Relatives of eugenics victims opt not to appeal to NC Supreme Court - Winston-Salem Journal

Many people shun GMOs food that has been genetically modified but what about GMO babies?

A recent survey asked 500 American and 500 European parents or those who planned to be parents some day if they would genetically alter their offspring and how much money they would pay for the perfect child.

The idea might seem unsavory to some eugenics will forever be linked to Hitler and his crazed mission to create a master race but this sort of technology isnt too far off, considering that science has mastered cloning animals.

Cloning humans successfully became less of a dream (nightmare, to some) after science figured out how to clone a human embryo to make stem cells.

If given the chance, would you alter your babys DNA to make him or her smarter, stronger or blue-eyed? Of those who believe genetically designing a child would be unethical, one out of five admitted they would still modify the baby for intelligence while a third would give their childs DNA a boost to ensure good health.

Those who believe genetic alterations are morally acceptable also called intelligence and health priorities, with 28 percent voting for an active mind, and 27 percent voting for an active immune system.

Both groups would also modify creativity and weight; 7 percent of participants with ethical concerns voted for kindness while 8 percent of those without qualms voted to make their child more attractive.

Half of the men and half of the women agreed that intelligence is a trait they would alter, and they also agreed on the importance of creativity and kindness.

Moms and dads differed when it came to other traits: One in 10 men ranked courage in their top five preferred traits while women voted for independence and charisma.

Maybe moms are hoping for their child to become POTUS. If Kanye wins 2020, lets all just agree anything is possible.

Around one in four potential moms and dads were willing to alter things like attractiveness and weight (because pizza is amazing and counting calories is the worst, right?).

Men wanted their kids to be like Mike and know like Bo knows with increased strength and athleticism, while moms preferred to dictate eye color.

Americans and their friends across the pond agreed bigly on the importance of intelligence, followed by creativity, but when given a list of changeable traits, Americans placed more importance on independence while Europeans opted for courage. Considering both cultures, those choices make sense; Americans value independence while Europeans are in closer proximity to other cultures and might need to call upon courage to learn and engage.

Regardless of continent, a quarter of those surveyed said they would opt to alter attractiveness and weight. Americans were more concerned about athletic ability than their European counterparts.

Men, and Americans in general, were willing to shell out quite a few clams for a smarter baby; one in four were willing to drop around $10,000 for a kid who does better in school.

Women and Europeans went Jimmy McMillian (the rent is too damn high) and were only willing to fork over between $1,000 and $2,000.

More than a third of all men and women surveyed agreed a health upgrade would be worth $10,000 or more.

Europeans prefer blond-haired, blue-eyed girls over boys; Americans choose dark-haired, blue-eyed boys. Women, regardless of country of origin, in general favored girls with blue eyes and black hair while men favored blond hair and blue eyes for their above-average-height son.

What is it worth to you?

See the rest here:

Building the 'perfect' GMO baby - Metro US

The late author and social activist Dorothy Canfield Fisher was no slouch. The Arlington resident wrote 40 books, spoke five languages and received at least eight honorary degrees. When she wasn't writing, the best-selling novelist was leading World War I relief efforts, managing the first U.S. adult education program and promoting prison reform. Eleanor Roosevelt named her one of the 10 most influential women in the United States.

Now one Vermonter wants to add "eugenicist" to Fisher's rsum because of the writer's connection to a dark chapter in state history. With support from a number of librarians, teachers and historians, Abenaki educator Judy Dow is lobbying the Vermont Department of Libraries to strip Fisher's name from the popular children's literature award created 60 years ago to honor her.

Dow points out that Fisher stereotyped French Canadians and Native Americans in her writings, and she claims that the writer was part of the eugenics movement that called for cleansing Vermont of "bad seeds" and "feeble-minded" people in the 1920s and '30s. The state should not enshrine the name of such a woman, especially in a literary program focused on children, Fisher's critics say.

Thecontroversy facing the Vermont state librarian has a familiar ring it echoes the recent fight over replacing the Rebels mascot at South Burlington High School, as well as the removal of Confederate statues throughout the American South.

It's appropriate to revisit history and reexamine the lessons it might teach through a contemporary lens, said State Librarian Scott Murphy, who has the final say on whether to remove Fisher's name. But he said it's also important to view things in context and take a measured approach when it comes to removing honors in response to changing attitudes and understanding.

"I'm not saying this is an instance where we don't do it," Murphy said about the Fisher awards. "We want to make sure that we make the right decision."

"Some people will be upset," predicted Julie Pickett in an email to Murphy; as the children's librarian at Stowe Free Library, she supports Dow's effort. "Some will say political correctness is taking over. It's all in the eye of the beholder and is a very complicated issue, for sure."

Murphy said he is skeptical about the most serious claim against Fisher. "I haven't seen a smoking gun that says she was a eugenicist," he said during an interview at his Montpelier office last week. Fisher was not among the prominent Vermonters who sat on the advisory board of the Vermont Eugenics Survey, a chilling social-science experiment that ran from 1925 to 1936. But she did serve on a related organization, the Vermont Commission on Country Life, which was charged with revitalizing the state's Yankee roots.

Murphy called that association "problematic." And he said Dow's April presentation to the state library board, in which she cited examples of Fisher's insulting characterizations, was an "eye-opener."

In Fisher's novel Bonfire, one character describes another as "half-hound, half-hunter, all Injun." In her play Tourists Accommodated, a Yankee Vermont farm woman who is renting rooms responds to a potential French Canadian guest "speaking as to a dog she rather fears." In a state tourism pamphlet, Fisher invited families of "good breeding" to consider buying second homes in Vermont.

Murphy characterized Dow's presentation as "very powerful." The board is expected to make its recommendation to him at its next meeting, on July 11. Murphy plans to make a decision soon after that.

Fisher fans argue that the author, like Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad, was a product of her times. To get hung up on her perceived failings is to ignore countless other things that set this crusading humanitarian apart.

"There were wonderful parts of her," said children's author Katherine Paterson of Montpelier, winner of the National Book Award, the Newbery Medal and other honors though not Vermont's Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award. "But there were also parts of her, as there are parts of all of us, that were not praiseworthy and perhaps were offensive to other people."

Judging Fisher by contemporary standards brings up a difficult question, continued Paterson, adding that history serves up plenty such questions.

"Our founding fathers were slave owners. And the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence was definitely a slave owner, who said that all men are created equal," Paterson said, referring to Thomas Jefferson.

"I don't think we can throw out the Declaration of Independence because it was created by a man who didn't live it," she said.

Vermont created a reading program to honor Fisher and promote excellence in children's literature in 1957. She died the following year, at the age of 79, in her beloved Arlington. In that small southern Vermont town, she corresponded with American writer Willa Cather, helped Robert Frost find a home nearby and posed with her husband for neighbor Norman Rockwell of Saturday Evening Post fame.

Although she was born in Kansas, Fisher and her family had deep roots in Vermont. After her marriage to fellow writer John Fisher, Dorothy made her home at the old Canfield family farm in Arlington. From the lovely white house with sweeping views of the Battenkill Valley, Fisher wrote prolifically. She popularized Vermont as a rural kingdom of rugged hill farms tilled by self-reliant, sturdy people.

But she also wrote articles and columns about politics, prison reform, domestic life and the need for better education funding that ran in popular periodicals and newspapers of the day. The versatile writer could opine in a scholarly way as well as churn out engaging fiction, from children's stories such as Understood Betsy to the sexually charged novel Bonfire.

State senator and University of Vermont English professor Philip Baruth (D/P-Chittenden) teaches Fisher's The Home-Maker, a fictional story about a father who takes on the primary child-raising role and which incorporates Montessori education principles. A trip to Italy sold Fisher on the preschool method that emphasizes self-direction and empathy, and she became its most enthusiastic proponent in the U.S.

Baruth also praised Fisher's 1912 nonfiction book, A Montessori Mother. "That's a fantastic addition to the literature on child-rearing," Baruth said. "And, again, it was pathbreaking. So, to have her name on the Dorothy Canfield Fisher award makes real sense to me."

But Bonfire and several of her works were set in Clifford, a fictional Vermont town with pockets of entrenched poverty, including "Searles Shelf." The book portrays this hilly section of town as an enclave of French Canadian and French Indian sloths. Residents from another poor section of town are "irresponsible sub-normals." The central character, the alluring temptress Lixlee, is a "primitive" who comes from mysterious parentage that townspeople speculate might be "southern" or "foreign" or just plain "French canuck."

More unflattering references to French Canadians come in Tourists Accommodated, the play Fisher wrote in 1932 to help popularize tourism in Vermont. When a French-speaking man and woman in "countrified" costumes knock at the door of a Vermont farm that has just started taking in lodgers, Aunt Nancy, the lady of the house, urges them to "go home."

Once she learns that they are merely asking, in French, to rent two rooms, Aunt Nancy agrees in an apparent show of tolerance. The French-speaking characters are nevertheless portrayed as aliens in the Yankee community, even though there was widespread emigration from Qubec in that era.

Recruiting the right people to Vermont was a strong theme in a state tourism pamphlet Fisher wrote the same year. With pictures of handsome historic Colonials and unspoiled mountain views, the "Vermont Summer Homes" brochure reached out to "superior, interesting families of cultivation and good breeding" who might not be rich in dollars but were rich in intellect professors, doctors, lawyers and musicians who used their brains to make a living. "We feel that you and Vermont have much in common," Fisher wrote in her genteel pitch to attract refined second-home owners.

Similar themes and stereotypes are found in other Fisher writings. In a commencement presentation she wrote in 1941 called "Man and the Wilderness," Fisher explains how the residents of Manchester eventually bought a house for an itinerant Native American woman known as "Old Icy" when her "intoe-ing feet" could no longer carry her from local town to town.

While on the one hand the essay attempts to show the community's tolerance, it also downplays the prejudice of the day with the declaration that Vermont was never a real home to Indians and the state did not harbor "ugly racial hatred and oppression."

In her lifelong fight for social justice, Fisher stood up for vulnerable minorities: illiterate adults, female prisoners, disabled children, conscientious objectors. So it's puzzling that she seemed to have had a blind spot for the Vermont Eugenics Survey, which, in the language of its founder, Henry Perkins, was designed to provide information about "human heredity and about defective and degenerate families in the state."

Perkins pushed for sterilization programs and believed his Vermont research proved that bad genes were destined to repeat themselves in families. "Blood has told," he wrote in his first survey report about the families he studied, in 1927, "and there is every reason to believe it will keep on telling in future generations."

After growing up on South Prospect Street in Burlington, Perkins became a zoology professor at the University of Vermont, where he had big shoes to fill his father, George Perkins, was a dean on the hilltop campus and a well-known entomologist.

The younger Perkins began teaching a UVM course in heredity and evolution in 1922, and, as the eugenics movement picked up steam around the country and globe, he made the quest for better human breeding his main academic focus.His targets of study were "degenerate'' Vermont families who were often French Indian and, in some cases, black.

Perkins published five reports between 1925 and 1931 and continued a few more years before the project ran out of steam. The first survey involved long "pedigree" studies, conducted by social workers who interviewed and studied members of three extended families in and around Burlington. They supplemented their research with records from police, various state institutions and old poor-farm reports going back more than a century.

The roots of one family, identified as "gypsies," were traced to an Indian reservation near Montral, according to the survey. It also references numerous children in the family who had "negro blood" and whose descendants were identified as "colored," "copper toned" and "swarthy." The family was labeled as "gypsies" because in its early history in Vermont, members traveled from town to town by wagon, selling baskets and other goods.

A lengthy chart lists the "defects" of the various members of the extended "gypsy" clan over several generations and uses labels such as "illiterate," "town pauper" and "sex offender." Although the labels were often based on unsubstantiated gossip or personal bias, the identification likely increased the risk that such people would face involuntary confinement in institutions for those with perceived mental illness or cognitive delays.

In the Second Annual Report of the Eugenics Survey, published in 1928, Perkins announced the creation of a comprehensive survey of rural Vermont that would examine racial, "eugenical," hygienic, agricultural, social and mental aspects, among other things. The governor would appoint members, he explained, and the Eugenics Survey would be at "its center and core," Perkins wrote.

He hired Henry Taylor to oversee the new organization, which was called the Vermont Commission on Country Life. More than 70 people, including Fisher, were recruited to take part and to produce chapters for a 1931 book titled Rural Vermont: A Program for the Future. Taylor explained in the introduction that Perkins and his eugenics questions were the motivation.

"For more than a century, Vermont has been one of the most reliable seedbeds of our national life," Taylor wrote, adding that conserving the quality of the human stock was a key issue for the state and the Vermont Commission on Country Life.

But the commission also studied ways to revitalize agriculture, education and the arts. Fisher served on the "traditions and ideals" subcommittee, which suggested strategies to improve the state's image through drama and tourism promotion, as well as ways to preserve its culture and historic architecture. Helen HartnessFlanders, who spent her life collecting and archiving Vermont folk songs, served with Fisher on the subcommittee. Their chapter closes with this encouragement: "The old stock is here still, in greater proportion to the total population than in any other commonwealth of the north."

Historian Nancy Gallagher documented Vermont's eugenics movement in her book Breeding Better Vermonters. In it, she noted an implicit racism in the commission's overarching ideals. She won't call Fisher a "eugenicist" but concludes from her participation that the author was someone who clearly accepted the eugenic attitudes of the era and "shared the values."

In 1932, Fisher agreed to serve on the commission's executive committee one year after Perkins successfully pushed a sterilization law through the Vermont legislature and called for more widespread institutionalization of "feeble-minded" people, in part so they would be unable to reproduce and create more "bad seeds."

Although the Vermont sterilization law was voluntary, Gallagher said many people in institutions agreed to undergo the procedure without understanding what it was or as a condition of release coercion, essentially. About 250 people were sterilized in Vermont institutions between 1933 and 1960, according to Department of Health records, although the statistics might be incomplete.

Meanwhile, some of the language used in the eugenics movement, including the importance of good bloodlines, crops up in Fisher's writings. In some cases, her books stand up against prejudice, yet they also seem to promote softer versions of ugly stereotypes. In Seasoned Timber, a young Vermont headmaster refuses to accept a gift from a donor who sets a condition: that the school must deny entrance to Jews. But later in the book, the same headmaster refers to a prospective student's "awful Jewish mother" and her "New-York-Mediterranean haggling code."

Eugenics movements in Vermont and elsewhere set the stage for the pseudoscience and racist philosophies that gave rise to Adolf Hitler and World War II.

Dow grew up in Burlington's New North End in a family with Qubec and Abenaki roots, although her parents didn't say much about the Native American part. But her father, a firefighter, was raised on Convent Square overlooking the Intervale. The tight cluster of streets was once known as "Moccasin Village," according to Dow, because so many French Indian families lived there. She views both parts of her heritage as equally important.

As an adult, Dow became interested in Abenaki traditions and studied and began teaching them in Vermont schools through a state-funded artist-in-residency program. She played a pivotal role in the successful effort to move an industrial-scale composting operation out of the Intervale, partly by raising concerns about its impact on a possible Abenaki burial ground in the floodplain along the Winooski River.

Through her activism, Dow met Gallagher, who confirmed that some of Dow's own relatives, including a great-aunt in Colchester, had been identified in one of the Vermont eugenics pedigree surveys. It focused on a family for its supposed high rate of Huntington's disease, a neurological condition.

Today Dow lives in a sunny suburban house in which she recently hosted Gallagher, retired French teacher Kim Chase and a Seven Days reporter. A collection of baskets, some made by Dow, were displayed near the kitchen table.

Dow is determined to get Fisher's name off the award program. She's told the board that "it's a crime that very good authors are receiving this award under the name of an author who's a eugenicist, and they don't even know it."

Gallagher agrees with Dow that the Fisher connection should go. "I think we can find someone else, a better name," she said.

So does Chase, who has Qubcois roots. "Holding this person up as an example of wonderful literacy is really painful," she said.

But Fisher's defenders see injustice in the call to rid the award of her name.

"I don't mean to make light of the eugenics movement; it was a horrible thing," said Baruth. "But I've yet to see evidence that Dorothy Canfield Fisher was an active part of that movement or that she campaigned for its goals.

"Having taught her work, having thought a great deal about her work and also having investigated this controversy," he continued, "I just don't see there's the kind of evidence you would need to say this person is a eugenicist, this person is generally neo-Nazi in her views."

Many people served on the Vermont Commission on Country Life, Baruth added, and Fisher's attitudes about the demographics of Vermont were shaped by the era.

"That was extremely typical of the day," he said. "It's not as though she was unique in talking about Vermont as a Yankee place. We brand and capitalize on the idea of the Yankee today."

Fisher's name should stay on the award, Baruth said.

"She was a fantastically important figure in Vermont, and she was a best-selling, groundbreaking female author. I don't think we've got enough important female authors that we can afford to throw one overboard, for the evidence I've seen."

Who knows Fisher better than anyone? Vermont librarians. Murphy asked them for feedback, and the emails are filtering in.

Some urged him not to make a rash decision. Cheryl Sloan, youth services librarian at the Charlotte Library, was not fully convinced by Dow's presentation to the state library board in April.

"I would like to see some balanced investigation into the actual history of Dorothy before we take all of Ms. Dow's information at face value," Sloan wrote. "Some of the books she had piled before her in Berlin were works of fiction by Dorothy. Can we condemn an author on their body of fiction?"

But Catherine Davie, a school librarian at Blue Mountain Union School in Wells River, is ready to see Fisher's name go.

Although she has participated in the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award program "in every possible way," including a sleepover at her library this spring, Davie wrote that now is the time to make a change.

"With deep respect for her skill as a writer and as a social activist, I don't think it's right to ask all of Vermont's students to honor her in this way, when some of her beliefs are so repugnant to some of them," she wrote.

Pickett of the Stowe Free Library is of a similar mind. "Even though it may seem like Dorothy is being thrown under the bus, I can't abide the fact that she did indeed support a eugenics movement that had a devastating effect on generations of Native Americans and French Canadians," Pickett wrote.

"Do we penalize every racist? Every person involved in eugenics or slavery? We obviously can't. But this small step, in my mind, is a recognition of wrongdoing and is a step toward healing," Picket added. "Maybe in this divisive world we live in right now, it sends a positive message."

Other librarians have different reasons for considering a name change. Youngsters rarely check out Fisher's work and don't have much of a connection to her as readers, said Hannah Peacock, youth services librarian and assistant director at Burnham Memorial Library in Colchester and chair of the Dorothy Canfield Fisher reading committee.

"I just think it might be time for a change of name because they don't know who she is," Peacock said in a telephone interview.

And then there is the unfortunate coincidence of acronyms the one for Fisher's full name is the same DCF as the state child welfare agency the Department for Children and Families, which investigates child abuse. To avoid confusion, organizers of the book award changed the name of the annual selection of books to Dorothy's List and encouraged librarians not to use the DCF acronym, although many still do.

Paterson, for one, is not convinced by these arguments. If she had to decide, the distinguished children's book author said she'd keep the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award just as it is.

"There are no perfect human beings," she said, "and no perfect heroes."

The state-run effort is both a reading program and an award. Librarians, authors and teachers volunteer to read some 100 books a year that are suitable for children in grades 4 to 8. The readers vote on their preferences, and the top 30 are named to Dorothy's List. Vermont public and school libraries stock copies and encourage children to read at least five books. The young readers cast votes for the best book out of the 30, which is then named as the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award winner the next spring. The program is staffed by the Vermont Department of Libraries and volunteers. It receives minimal funding of a few thousand dollars a year, according to Vermont State Librarian Scott Murphy.

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Photo Members of Argentinias federal police displayed a Nazi statue at the Interpol headquarters in Buenos Aires. Credit Natacha Pisarenko/Associated Press

In a hidden treasure room dedicated to celebrating the Third Reich, Argentine police officers have found a trove of Nazi artifacts, including a bust of Hitler, that they believe were brought to the country by fugitive Germans.

The police said on Tuesday that they had uncovered the collection of more than 75 artifacts outside Buenos Aires, in the suburban home of a collector whom they have not yet named.

After investigating, said Marcelo El Haibe, the federal police commissioner for the protection of cultural heritage, we were able to discover those objects that were hidden behind a bookcase. Behind the bookcase there was a wall, and after that a door.

Inside the secret chamber, the police found what they said were authentic Nazi artifacts that probably belonged to high-ranking party members during World War II.

Among the items, the police said, were a magnifying glass and photo negatives that appeared to show Hitler holding the same lens. We have turned to historians, and theyve told us it is the original magnifying glass used by Hitler in the photograph, said Nestor Roncaglia, the head of Argentinas federal police.

The police also found toys and musical instruments, including a box of harmonicas, emblazoned with swastikas and Nazi symbols, that would have been used to indoctrinate children.

There are Nazi objects used by kids, but with the partys propaganda, Commissioner El Haibe said. He added, There were jigsaw puzzles and little wood pieces to build houses, but they always featured party-related images and symbols.

The authorities said they had uncovered the collection in the course of a wider investigation into artwork of suspicious origin found at a gallery in Buenos Aires.

Agents of Argentinas federal police and Interpol, the international police force, raided the collectors house on June 8. The collector was not at the house at the time, and has not been charged, but is under investigation, the police said.

The authorities also found medical devices associated with the Nazis eugenics programs, including a tool used to measure peoples heads as a way of assessing their supposed racial purity.

We know the history, we know of the horrible experiments conducted by Josef Mengele, said Ariel Cohen Sabban, president of the Delegation of Israelite-Argentines Associations, the countrys largest Jewish organization.

Mengele, a notorious Nazi physician, fled to Argentina to avoid prosecution for war crimes in Europe. He lived in the capital for a decade and eventually died in Brazil in 1979.

When I see these objects, Mr. Sabban said, I see the infamy of that terrible era of humanity that has caused so much damage, so much sadness.

Follow Russell Goldman on Twitter @GoldmanRussell.

Michel Vega contributed reporting.

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Infanticide did not go out of fashion with the advance from savagery to barbarism and civilization. Rather, it became, as in Greece and Rome, a recognized custom with advocates among leaders of thought and action. Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race

Clarence C. Little was a cultivated man. He was a Harvard graduate who served as president of the University of Maine and the University of Michigan. He was one of the nations leading genetics researchers, with a particular interest in cancer. He was managing director of the American Society for the Control of Cancer, later known (in the interest of verbal economy) as the American Cancer Society; the president of the American Eugenics Society, later known (in the interest of not talking about eugenics) as the Society for Biodemography and Social Biology; and a founding board member of the American Birth Control League, today known (in the interest of euphemism) as Planned Parenthood. His record as a scientist is not exactly unblemished he will long be remembered as the man who insisted that there is no demonstrated causal relationship between smoking or [sic] any disease but he was the very picture of the socially conscious man of science, without whom the National Cancer Institute, among other important bodies, probably would not exist.

He was a humane man with horrifying opinions.

Little is one of the early figures in Planned Parenthood whose public pronouncements, along with those of its charismatic foundress, Margaret Sanger, often are pointed to as evidence of the organizations racist origins. (Students at the University of Michigan are, at the time of this writing, petitioning to have his name stripped from a campus building.) Little believed that birth-control policy should be constructed in such a way as to protect Yankee stock referred to in Sangers own work as unmixed native white parentage, if Littles term is not clear enough from being overwhelmed by what was at the time perceived as the dysgenic fecundity of African Americans, Catholic immigrants, and other undesirables. (The feebleminded are notoriously prolific in reproduction, Sanger reported in Woman and the New Race.) The question of racial differences was an obsession of Littles that went well beyond his interest in eugenics and followed him to the end of his life; one of his later scientific works was The Possible Relation of Genetics to Differences in NegroWhite Mortality Rates from Cancer, published in the 1960s.

The birth-control movement of the Progressive era is where crude racism met its genteel intellectual cousin: Birth Control Review, the in-house journal of Planned Parenthoods predecessor organization, published a review, by the socialist intellectual Havelock Ellis, of Lothrop Stoddards The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy. Ellis was an important figure in Sangers intellectual development and wrote the introduction to her Woman and the New Race; Stoddard was a popular birth-control advocate whose intellectual contributions included lending to the Nazi racial theorists the term untermensch as well as developing a great deal of their theoretical framework: He fretted about imperfectly Nordicized Alpines and such. Like the other eugenics-minded progressives of his time, he saw birth control and immigration as inescapably linked issues.

Stoddards views were so ordinary a part of the mainstream of American intellectual discourse at the time that F. Scott Fitzgerald could refer to his work in The Great Gatsby without fearing that general readers would be mystified by the reference. What did Stoddard want? We want above all things, he wrote,

Yesterdays scientific progressives are todays romantic reactionaries.

Sanger, who believed that the potential for high civilization resided within the cell plasms of individual humans, made statements that were substantially similar: If we are to develop in America a new race with a racial soul, we must keep the birth rate within the scope of our ability to understand as well as to educate. We must not encourage reproduction beyond our capacity to assimilate our numbers so as to make the coming generation into such physically fit, mentally capable, socially alert individuals as are the ideal of a democracy.

Such was the intellectual ferment out of which rose the American birth-control movement or, rather, the American birth-control movements, of which there were really two. Sanger, working within the socialistfeminist alliance of her time, was a self-styled radical who published a short-lived journal called The Woman Rebel, the aim of which as described in its inaugural issue was to stimulate working women to think for themselves and to build up a conscious fighting character. To fight what? Slavery through motherhood. The Post Office refused to circulate the periodical, a fact that The Woman Rebel reported with glee: The woman rebel feels proud the post office authorities did not approve of her. She shall blush with shame if ever she be approved of by officialism or comstockism. But Sanger and her clique did not have a monopoly on the birth-control market. Her rival was Mary Ware Dennett, founder of see if this name sounds familiar the Voluntary Parenthood League (VPL).

Where Sanger was a radical, Dennett was a liberal, couching her advocacy in the familiar language of the American civil-libertarian tradition. She was an ally of the American Civil Liberties Union, which had defended her when she was charged with distributing birth-control literature classified (as most of it was at the time) as obscene. While Sangers organization was focused on setting up birth-control clinics (the first was in Brooklyn), Dennetts group was focused on lobbying Congress for the legalization of contraception. Sangers group was characterized by a top-down management structure (the local affiliates had no say in American Birth Control League policymaking) and a cash-on-the-barrelhead approach to social reform: Its membership and coffers were swelled in no small part by the fact that the ABCL would not provide birth-control literature to anyone who was not a dues-paying member.

As Linda Gordon put it in The Moral Property of Woman: A History of Birth-Control Politics:

In the contest between the ABCL and VPL, we see the familiar struggle that has long characterized the broader American Left: On one hand, there are liberals advocating a legislative reform project through ordinary democratic means; on the other hand are progressives, often led by radicals, who are engaged in a social-change project based on coopting institutions and the expertise and prestige associated with them. Gordon concludes: It was Sangers courting of doctors and eugenists that moved the ABCL away from both the Left and liberalism, away from both socialist-feminist impulses and civil liberties arguments toward an integrated population program for the whole society.

Which is to say, the word planned in Planned Parenthood can be understood to function as it does in the other great progressive dream of the time: planned economy.

Who plans for whom?

Sanger herself was generally careful to forswear compulsion in her eugenics program, but in reality the period was characterized by the widespread use of involuntary sterilization. Mandatory-sterilization bills were introduced unsuccessfully in Michigan and Pennsylvania at the end of the 19th century, but in 1907 Indiana became the first of many states to create eugenics-oriented sterilization programs, targeting such unfit populations as criminals and the mentally ill, along with African Americans (60 percent of the black mothers at one Mississippi hospital were involuntarily sterilized) and other minority groups. The Oregon state eugenics board was renamed but was not disbanded until the 1980s. About 65,000 people in the United States were involuntarily sterilized.

European programs went even further, with the Swiss experiment in involuntary sterilization drawing the attention of Havelock Ellis, who wrote up his views in The Sterilization of the Unfit. Ellis, too, objected to compulsory measures up to a point. There will be time to invoke compulsion and the law, he wrote, when sound knowledge has become universal, and when we are quite sure that those who refuse to act in accordance with sound knowledge refuse deliberately. He did not have access to the modern progressive term denialist, but the argument is familiar: Once the science is settled, then the state is empowered to act on it through whatever coercive means are necessary to achieve the end. Two recent press releases from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, both from May, are headlined: State Abortion Restrictions Flying in the Face of Science and Many Abortion Restrictions Have No Rigorous Scientific Basis.

Progressives holding views closer to those of the proto-Nazi Lothrop Stoddard frequently talked about eugenics in zoological terms, but, in the main, eugenics was subordinated to the larger progressive economic agenda: the management of productive activity by enlightened experts. The great economic terrors among progressives of the time were overproduction and destructive competition, both of which were thought to put downward pressure on wages, profits, and, subsequently, standards of living. Contraception was widely understood as a political solution to a supply-and-demand problem, with birth control understood as one element in a broad and unified program of economic control. Ellis sums up this view in his foreword to Sangers Woman and the New Race:

Or, as Sanger insisted: War, famine, poverty, and oppression of the workers will continue while woman makes life cheap.

There is more to this history than exegesis of Progressive-era thinking. It is significant that Sangers birth-control movement, and not Dennetts, came to dominate the field. The financially driven structure of local affiliates working in complete subordination to a tightly controlled national body of course survives in the modern iteration of Planned Parenthood, but, more important, so does the humans-as-widgets conception of sexuality and family life. The eugenic habit of mind very much endures, though it is less frequently spoken of plainly.

In his Buck v. Bell decision confirming that involuntary-sterilization programs pass constitutional muster for the protection and health of the state the great humanist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. declared: Three generations of imbeciles are enough. Never having been overturned, Buck remains, in theory, the law of the land. But that was long ago. And yet: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a reliable supporter of abortion rights, has described Roe v. Wade as being a decision about population control, particularly growth in populations that we dont want to have too many of. Like Ellis and Sanger, Ginsburg worries that, without government intervention, birth control will be disproportionately practiced by the well-off and not by the members of those populations that we dont want to have too many of. In an interview with Elle, Ginsburg said, It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people. That wasnt 1927 it was 2014. A co-counsel for the winning side of Roe v. Wade, Ron Weddington, advised President Bill Clinton that an expanded national birth-control policy incorporating ready access to pharmaceutical abortifacients promised immediate benefits: You can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy, and poor segment of our country. Its what we all know is true, but we only whisper it.

But it is not true that we only whisper it. In Freakonomics, one of the most popular economics books of recent years, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner argued that abortion has measureable eugenic effects through reduction in crime rates. Of course that debate has an inescapable racial aspect: Fertility declines for black women are three times greater than for whites (12 percent compared with 4 percent). Given that homicide rates of black youths are roughly nine times higher than those of white youths, racial differences in the fertility effects of abortion are likely to translate into greater homicide reductions, Levitt and a different co-author had written in a paper that the book drew from. Whatever the merits of this argument, it is very much in line with the classical progressive case for birth control, which was developed as a national breed-improvement project rather than one of individual womens choices. Linda Gordon notes: A content analysis of the Birth Control Review showed that by the late 1920s only 4.9 percent of its articles in that decade had any concern with womens self-determination.

The American Birth Control League was founded by Margaret Sanger in 1921, working out of office space provided by the American Eugenics Society. Sanger would depart seven years later as part of a factional dispute, with various elements of her organization eventually reunited in 1939 as the Birth Control Federation of America. But the words birth control at that time were considered public-relations poison, and so in 1942 the organization was renamed the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Sanger herself often wrote critically about abortion, which, especially early in her career, she classified alongside infanticide, offering contraception as the obvious rational alternative to such savagery. Her arguments will sound at least partly familiar to modern ears: Do we want the millions of abortions performed annually to be multiplied? Do we want the precious, tender qualities of womanhood, so much needed for our racial development, to perish in these sordid, abnormal experiences? But that line of thinking was not destined to endure, and by the 1950s Planned Parenthood was working for the liberalization of abortion laws. Sangers successor, obstetrician Alan Frank Guttmacher, also served as vice president of the American Eugenics Society and was a signer of the second Humanist Manifesto, which called for the worldwide recognition of the right to birth control and abortion and, harkening back to the 1920s progressives, the extension of economic assistance, including birth control techniques, to the developing portions of the globe. The repeated identification of birth control with national economic planning rather than womens individual autonomy is worth noting.

Continuing Sangers strategy of courting elite opinion as a more effective form of lobbying, Planned Parenthoods medical director, Mary Calderone, convened a conference of her fellow physicians in 1955 to begin pressing for the legalization of abortion for medical purposes. By 1969, the demand for therapeutic abortions had grown to a demand for the legalization of abortion in all circumstances, which remains Planned Parenthoods position today and, thanks in no small part to its very effective litigation efforts, is the law of the land.

As in Sangers time, Planned Parenthood keeps an eye on the money and has a corporate gift for insinuation: It lobbied the Nixon administration successfully for an amendment to public-health laws, as a result of which the organization today pulls in more than half a billion dollars in federal-government funds alone, largely through Medicaid. In 1989, it founded an advocacy arm, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, that today encompasses a political-action committee and super PAC that ranks No. 23 out of 206 outside-spending groups followed by OpenSecrets.org, putting a little over $12 million into almost exclusively Democratic pockets during the 2016 election cycle.

Is it working? Lothrop Stoddard, author of The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, might be gratified to note that, in Planned Parenthoods hometown of New York City, a black woman is more likely to have an abortion than to give birth: 29,007 abortions to 24,108 births in 2013. African Americans represent about 12 percent of the population and about 36 percent of the abortions; Catholics, disproportionately Hispanic and immigrant, represent 24 percent. In total, one in five U.S. pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) ends in abortion, and most women who have abortions already have at least one child. The overwhelming majority of them (75 percent, as Guttmacher reckons it) are poor. The public record includes no data about the feebleminded or otherwise unfit, but the racial and income figures suggest that Planned Parenthood is today very much functioning as its Progressive-era founders intended.

If Planned Parenthoods operating model remains familiar after 100 years, so does the rhetoric of the abortion movement. Sanger herself relayed the experience of the Scottish ethnologist John Ferguson McLennan: When a traveller reproached the women of one of the South American Indian tribes for the practice of infanticide, McLennan says he was met by the retort, Men have no business to meddle with womens affairs.

READ MORE: Planned Parenthoods Annual Report: Abortions Are Up, Prenatal Care Is Down No, the Planned Parenthood Videos Are Not a Lie A Century of Slaughter

Kevin D. Williamson is National Reviewsroving correspondent.This article first appeared in the June 12, 2017, print issue of National Review.

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