The Vassal Lane Upper School, temporarily in East Cambridge, should have a new name by the time it reopens in West Cambridge. (Photo: Marc Levy)

A second Cambridge public school is on track for a name change to avoid honoring a racist.

The School Committee agreed unanimously Tuesday to find a new name for the Vassal Lane Upper School before the end of this academic year, asking the district to propose how by Dec. 31.

The citys four upper schools are all identified by the names of their street addresses, but that means the Vassal Lane Upper School by extension honors John Vassal, whose family enslaved hundreds in the Jamaican sugar industry. The family were Loyalists during the American Revolution who fled Cambridge for Boston in 1774, then moved to Canada.

Theres an early front-runner for replacing the name of John Vassal, and one in which some committee members found some satisfaction: Darby Vassal.

Darby Vassal was once enslaved by John Vassal but by the time of his death in 1782, had become an activist with religious, political and economic societies of the time, according to the History Cambridge organization. An art installation up through Nov. 6 at Christ Church, Cambridge, in Harvard Square, tells his story and reveals his tomb under the church, with the Vassal family.

We very easily could name the school tonight. We have lots of ideas of who we want to honor, said vice chair Rachel Weinstein, who wrote the motion for the renaming. But we want this to be an inclusive process.

Precedent from 2002

This will not be the first time a Cambridge school is renamed to avoid the stain of racism. The Maria L. Baldwin School was known as the Agassiz School from 1874 until 2002, but that name was associated with Louis Agassiz, a Harvard scholar who promoted eugenics. (The school is in the Baldwin neighborhood, which was renamed from the Agassiz neighborhood in August 2021.)

The call to change the name of the Vassal Lane Upper School came from students and it was students who led the work for the Baldwin name changes, noted Carolyn Turk, the districts deputy superintendent. In each process, there were students who did a tremendous amount of research, yet in each case they knew this was something the community needed to be a part of, Turk said.

Still, superintendent Victoria Greer said those who attend the school or did attend it which includes children of Weinstein and fellow committee member David Weinstein (no relation) should have a strong voice in deciding the change. Greer said her process would turn first to Vassall students, staff and faculty; principal Daniel Coplon-Newfield has begun work, she said.

Black, indigenous and other

Rachel Weinsteins motion asks that the name change honors a Black Cantabrigian or multiple local Black leaders who contributed to the advancement of equitable education, civil rights and the community, leading member JosLuis Rojas Villarreal to ask if the order couldnt be broadened to include consideration of indigenous peoples such as those of local interest highlighted by the work of History Cambridge.

There was resistance from Weinstein and others. For this particular school, it seems most appropriate to face the history of enslavement right here in Cambridge and speak to it and do some healing. It would feel like a slight not not to acknowledge the black history tied to the Vassal name, she said. You make a good point about in general about recognizing the diversity of our student population and ensuring that all students see themselves reflected we have three other upper schools that are also named after the streets theyre located on.

There should at least be a stated intent to consider indigenous peoples and other minorities in the renamings, Rojas said drawing a suggestion from Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui to submit a motion calling for that instead of amending the Tuesday order.

Siddiqui agreed it made sense to overwrite the Vassal Lane name with a name that honored black residents, and student committee member Adelina Escamilla-Salomon agreed there was extreme value in renaming the school to honor a black person where young people would be going and learning its history. I do see the value in what member Rojas was saying.

A change for the street named after John Vassal is likely to be proposed as well. A City Council policy order adopted in June 2019 called for review of monuments, memorials and markers throughout the city to see which honored people linked to the slave trade or engaged in other similarly shameful acts and due for a rethinking.

There are a lot of things that need be renamed, Siddiqui said, promising recommendations in the next one to three years.

Long overdue

The Vassal Lane Upper Schools in fact, all of the upper schools are long overdue for it. They were created as part of an Innovation Agenda approved by the committee in March 2011, and then-superintendent Jeff Young told city councillors at a June 2012 budget hearing that the renaming process for each would begin that fall, possibly through contests.

The street names were meant to be placeholders, Young said. We looked at it as the one element of the Innovation Agenda that would not be controversial.

Two of the four schools have even been through elaborate and expensive campus reconstructions without getting new names. Vassal Lanes campus in West Cambridge, shared with the Tobin Montessori School, is undergoing a $299 million renovation now, during which the upper school has relocated to 158 Spring St., East Cambridge. The schools expected reopening is in the fall of 2025.

More here:

An overdue renaming of the Vassal Lane school wins approval, with process to end by summer - Cambridge Day

Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminatedmillions in his quest for a co-called "Master Race."

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the racist pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in twenty-seven states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the Twentieth Century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate and Polytechnic benefactor Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles M. Goethe, as well as members of the California State Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Stamford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.

Stanford president David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.

In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.

The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization.

The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the American eugenics movement came from California's quasi-autonomous eugenic societies, such as the Pasadena-based Human Betterment Foundation and the California branch of the American Eugenics Society, which coordinated much of their activity with the Eugenics Research Society in Long Island. These organizations--which functioned as part of a closely-knit network--published racist eugenic newsletters and pseudoscientific journals, such as Eugenical News and Eugenics, and propagandized for the Nazis.

Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the Victorian age. In 1863, Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, theorized that if talented people only married other talented people, the result would be measurably better offspring. At the turn of the last century, Galton's ideas were imported into the United States just as Gregor Mendel's principles of heredity were rediscovered. American eugenic advocates believed with religious fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and intellectual character of man.

In an America demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early twentieth century. Elitists, utopians and so-called "progressives" fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: populate the earth with vastly more of their own socio-economic and biological kind--and less or none of everyone else.

The superior species the eugenics movement sought was populated not merely by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved blond, blue-eyed Nordic types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to inherit the earth. In the process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark-haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.

How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. The grand plan was to literally wipe away the reproductive capability of those deemed weak and inferior--the so-called "unfit." The eugenicists hoped to neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the population at a sweep, until none were left except themselves.

Eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population." Point eight was euthanasia.

The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in America was a "lethal chamber" or public locally operated gas chambers. In 1918, Popenoe, the Army venereal disease specialist during World War I, co-wrote the widely used textbook, Applied Eugenics, which argued, "From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated." Applied Eugenics also devoted a chapter to "Lethal Selection," which operated "through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency."

Eugenic breeders believed American society was not ready to implement an organized lethal solution. But many mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own. One institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to forty percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln. Some doctors practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.

Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main solution for eugenicists was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as more marriage restrictions. California led the nation, performing nearly all sterilization procedures with little or no due process. In its first twenty-five years of eugenic legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls," diagnosed as "passionate," "oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At Sonoma, some women were sterilized because of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia.

In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations were performed, 700 of which were on women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in 1933 were Sonoma State Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital with 363 operations. Other sterilization centers included Agnews, Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk, Stockton and Pacific Colony state hospitals.

Even the United States Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infamous 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes's words in their own defense.

Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them to German officials and scientists.

Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti-Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. While Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.

During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany's fascist eugenicists. In Mein Kampf, published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."

Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."

Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant calling his race-based eugenics book, The Passing of the Great Race his "bible."

Hitler's struggle for a superior race would be a mad crusade for a Master Race. Now, the American term "Nordic" was freely exchanged with "Germanic" or "Aryan." Race science, racial purity and racial dominance became the driving force behind Hitler's Nazism. Nazi eugenics would ultimately dictate who would be persecuted in a Reich-dominated Europe, how people would live, and how they would die. Nazi doctors would become the unseen generals in Hitler's war against the Jews and other Europeans deemed inferior. Doctors would create the science, devise the eugenic formulas, and even hand-select the victims for sterilization, euthanasia and mass extermination.

During the Reich's early years, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler's plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades of research and effort. California eugenicists republished Nazi propaganda for American consumption. They also arranged for Nazi scientific exhibits, such as an August 1934 display at the L.A. County Museum, for the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.

In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe upon returning from Germany ebulliently bragged to a key colleague, "You will be interested to know, that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought.I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."

That same year, ten years after Virginia passed its sterilization act, Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, observed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "The Germans are beating us at our own game."

More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany's eugenic institutions. By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 -- almost $4 million in 21st-Century money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded $250,000 to the German Psychiatric Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, later to become the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry. Among the leading psychiatrists at the German Psychiatric Institute was Ernst Rdin, who became director and eventually an architect of Hitler's systematic medical repression.

Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's eugenic complex of institutions was the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it had operated out of a single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the Institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German race biology. The Institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the Institute, once again, was Hitler's medical henchman Ernst Rdin. Rdin's organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.

Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans taken from old age homes, mental institutions and other custodial facilities were systematically gassed. Between 50,000 and 100,000 were eventually killed.

Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society declared of Nazism, "While we were pussy-footing aroundthe Germans were calling a spade a spade."

A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. For decades, American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their research into heredity. The Institute was now prepared to undertake such research on an unprecedented level. On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York dispatched a radiogram to its Paris office: JUNE MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS OVER THREE YEAR PERIOD TO KWG INSTITUTE ANTHROPOLOGY FOR RESEARCH ON TWINS AND EFFECTS ON LATER GENERATIONS OF SUBSTANCES TOXIC FOR GERM PLASM.

At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a hero in American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller funding of that Institute continued both directly and through other research conduits during Verschuer's early tenure. In 1935, Verschuer left the Institute to form a rival eugenics facility in Frankfurt that was much heralded in the American eugenic press. Research on twins in the Third Reich exploded, backed up by government decrees. Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt, a eugenic doctor's journal he edited, that Germany's war would yield a "total solution to the Jewish problem."

Verschuer had a long-time assistant. His name was Josef Mengele. On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. Verschuer notified the German Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmfhrer [captain] and camp physician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial groups in this concentration camp is being carried out with permission of the SS Reichsfhrer [Himmler]."

Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins. When he found them, he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote up the reports and sent the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for evaluation. Often, cadavers, eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to Berlin's eugenic institutes.

Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few exceptions, the foundation had ceased all eugenic studies in Nazi-occupied Europe before the war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had been cast. The talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the institutions they helped found, and the science it helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.

After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity--an act of genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the California statutes in their defense. To no avail. They were found guilty.

However, Mengele's boss Verschuer escaped prosecution. Verschuer re-established his connections with California eugenicists who had gone underground and renamed their crusade "human genetics." Typical was an exchange July 25, 1946 when Popenoe wrote Verschuer, "It was indeed a pleasure to hear from you again. I have been very anxious about my colleagues in Germany. I suppose sterilization has been discontinued in Germany?" Popenoe offered tidbits about various American eugenic luminaries and then sent various eugenic publications. In a separate package, Popenoe sent some cocoa, coffee and other goodies.

Verschuer wrote back, "Your very friendly letter of 7/25 gave me a great deal of pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for it. The letter builds another bridge between your and my scientific work; I hope that this bridge will never again collapse but rather make possible valuable mutual enrichment and stimulation."

Soon, Verschuer once again became a respected scientist in Germany and around the world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of the newly formed American Society of Human Genetics, organized by American eugenicists and geneticists.

In the fall of 1950, the University of Mnster offered Verschuer a position at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later became a dean. In the early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary member of numerous prestigious societies, including the Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics.

Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were ignored by a victorious generation that refused to link itself to the crimes of Nazism and by succeeding generations that never knew the truth of the years leading up to war. Now governors of five states, including California have issued public apologies to their citizens, past and present, for sterilization and other abuses spawned by the eugenics movement.

Human genetics became an enlightened endeavor in the late twentieth century. Hard-working, devoted scientists finally cracked the human code through the Human Genome Project. Now, every individual can be biologically identified and classified by trait and ancestry. Yet even now, some leading voices in the genetic world are calling for a cleansing of the unwanted among us, and even a master human species.

There is understandable wariness about more ordinary forms of abuse, for example, in denying insurance or employment based on genetic tests. On October 14, America's first genetic anti-discrimination legislation passed the Senate by unanimous vote. Yet because genetics research is global, no single nation's law can stop the threats.

This article was first published in the San Francisco Chronicle and is reprinted with permission of the author.

Excerpt from:

The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics

Multiple realities(covers information from several alternate timelines)

Eugenics Wars

"Superior ability breeds superior ambition."

The Eugenics Wars (or the Great Wars) were a series of conflicts fought on Earth between 1992 and 1996, and during the 21st century (aka as the Eugenic War, Second Civil War and World War III). (SNW: "Strange New Worlds") The result of a scientific attempt to improve the Human race through selective breeding and genetic engineering, the wars devastated parts of Earth, by some estimates officially causing some thirty million deaths, and nearly plunging the planet into a new Dark Age. (TOS: "Space Seed"; ENT: "Borderland")

The script of "Borderland" stated forthrightly, "The Eugenics Wars are a dark subject."

Records from this period are fragmented, but what is known is that the wars' roots lie in a group of Human scientists' ambitious attempt to improve the race through selective breeding and genetic engineering. They created a race of "supermen," popularly known as the Augments, who were mentally and physically superior to ordinary men and women. They were five times stronger than the average person, their lung efficiency was fifty percent better than normal, and their intelligence was double that of normal Humans. They also had enhanced senses, including an ability to hear beyond that of Human capabilities. (TOS: "Space Seed"; ENT: "Borderland", "Cold Station 12")

The Augments were created by the scientists in the 1950s Cold War era in the hopes that they would lead Humanity into an era of peace in a world that had only known war. (Star Trek Into Darkness) One aspect these scientists overlooked was the personality of the Augments. Along with their superior abilities, the Augments were aggressive and arrogant, flaws which the scientists were unable to correct at the time due to the infancy of the science. One of the Augments' creators realized the error, writing that "superior ability breeds superior ambition." That same scientist was ultimately killed by one of his own creations. (TOS: "Space Seed"; ENT: "Cold Station 12", "The Augments")

Khan Noonien Singh in the 1990s

The Augments rose to power and held dominance over a large portion of Humanity, beginning in the early 1990s. Among the most notorious of these superhuman conquerors was Khan Noonien Singh, who in 1992 became the "absolute ruler" of more than a quarter of the planet, from Asia through the Middle East. (TOS: "Space Seed")

The following year, a group of fellow "supermen" followed in Khan's footsteps, and simultaneously seized power in over forty nations. The people of these conquered nations, in most cases, were treated as little more than slaves by the Augments. Khan considered himself "a prince, with power over millions". It was unknown how he viewed or treated those under his rule, although they had very little freedom. Unlike the other Augment despots, however, Khan's reign had enjoyed peace. The people were not massacred, and Khan avoided war until his region was attacked. Khan considered himself a benign dictator or one who led by a form of "gentle authoritarianism", as such he was thus among the most admired of the so-called "tyrants" into the 23rd century, being called the "best of the tyrants" by James T. Kirk. (TOS: "Space Seed"; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; ENT: "Borderland")

Reports as to exactly how the wars began vary; some claim that Humanity rose up against Khan and his fellow "supermen," while others believe the Augments began to fight among themselves. Regardless of their origin, two factors were certain: the Eugenics Wars had a devastating impact on Earth, as entire populations were bombed out of existence, and that humanity had ultimately deposed the Augments. (ENT: "Cold Station 12"; TOS: "Space Seed")

Among the areas affected by the wars was North Africa. One conflict that occurred there involved a battalion of soldiers that included the future great-grandfather of Starfleet Captain Jonathan Archer. In this encounter, Archer's great-grandfather was able to convince the Augment commander of his enemy's forces to hold their fire long enough to evacuate a school that was directly between them. Some or all parts of that account may be non-factual as Archer was evidently in an altered state of mind around the time he disclosed it. (ENT: "Hatchery")

The Augments were eventually defeated by Humans who were not genetically enhanced. Khan was the last of the tyrants to be overthrown, in 1996. Khan and over eighty of the "supermen" were condemned to die as war criminals. They however went unaccounted for, a fact the governments of the time did not disclose to the public in order to prevent panic. Rumors were later confirmed in the 23rd century that Khan and 84 of his followers had managed to flee the planet aboard an early sleeper ship, the SS Botany Bay. (TOS: "Space Seed"; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; Star Trek Into Darkness)

The official number of casualties from the wars was placed at 30 million, although some historians believed it to be closer to 35 million, with another figure established as being 37 million. Although the wars may have ended, Humanity's fear of genetically-engineered beings remained well into the 24th century. (ENT: "Cold Station 12"; TOS: "Bread and Circuses"; DS9: "Doctor Bashir, I Presume")

Following the wars, controversial debates ensued between Earth's governments regarding the fate of thousands of Augment embryos. Uncertain of how to handle the issue, the governments opted to have the embryos placed into cold storage. This fact was also kept from public knowledge. The issue of genetic manipulation and Human genome enhancement continued to plague Earth well into the 21st century. In 2024, Doctor Adam Soong began examining an old file from 1996, which was called "Project Khan." This was no doubt a project masterminded by scientists who had the intention of making augments similar to Khan, who disappeared in 1996. Presumably, Adam Soong went forward with that project sometime after 2024. this would have been around the time of the Second Civil War, which eventually became another Eugenics War that in time escalated into what was known as the Third World War. (ENT: "Borderland", "Cold Station 12", "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II" historical archive; TOS: "Space Seed"; PIC: "Farewell"; SNW: "Strange New Worlds")

As both conflicts were fought over the issue of genetic manipulation, this suggests the Eugenics Wars were regarded as the initial cause and prelude for the Third World War, much like how the Second World War is often seen as a result of the First.

Doctor Keniclius

Soong and the Augment embryos

Genetic engineering of Humans was ultimately banned on Earth, as the concept was considered anti-Humanistic by Earth leaders. As a result of this, Doctor Stavos Keniclius was exiled from his community, which eventually led him to depart Earth permanently. The ban was placed primarily as an attempt to prevent another event like the Eugenics Wars, and to ensure that Humanity did not endure the wrath of another Khan Noonien Singh-type tyrant. (TAS: "The Infinite Vulcan"; DS9: "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", "Statistical Probabilities")

The ban on genetic engineering was challenged by the geneticist Arik Soong in the 2130s, when he stole some of the Augment embryos left over from the wars which were being stored at Cold Station 12. Soong believed that genetic engineering was the key to improving Humankind and preventing illness, and that it should be given another chance. By raising the Augments himself, Soong believed he could prevent them from behaving like their brethren from the Eugenics Wars. His plan failed as the aggressive nature of the Augments dominated, and they threatened to incite war and cause mass murder. Starfleet's mission to hunt down and capture the renegade "supermen" ultimately led to the destruction of the Augments, as well as most of the embryos. (ENT: "Borderland", "Cold Station 12", "The Augments")

Not all of the embryos were destroyed, though. Some found their way into the hands of Klingons who, believing Humans were improving themselves in order to conquer the Klingon Empire, attempted to use the DNA from the embryos to enhance themselves. The end result was a mutation of a highly-contagious virus that caused massive changes in physical appearance, biological structure, and even basic personality traits of large portions of the Klingon race. (ENT: "Affliction", "Divergence")

The continued banning of genetic engineering ultimately became a point of contention between the Federation and the Illyrian race. Since the Illyrians were known for using genetic modification within its members, Illyrians were usually barred from entering service into Starfleet and even use of their medical technology became banned within the Federation. The mixing of Human and Illyrian blood was similarly banned. (SNW: "Ghosts of Illyria")

In the 2260s, after the Enterprise encountered a spaceship from the 1990s, Spock described the mid-1990s as the era of the Human crew's "last so-called world war", which was affirmed by Doctor Leonard McCoy to be the Eugenics Wars. (TOS: "Space Seed")

In "Space Seed" the "supermen" of the Eugenics Wars were said to be the products of selective breeding; this was later retconned into genetic engineering.

Both "Space Seed" and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan give the dating of the Eugenics Wars as the 1990s. At one point during that decade in reality, Ronald D. Moore and Ren Echevarria had a discussion in which they observed it as odd that the Eugenics Wars seemed to basically be the only evidence of genetic engineering in Star Trek. "It's virtually never discussed, aside from the fact that there was this thing called the Eugenics Wars at some point, and Khan came out of it," stated Moore. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion(p. 431)) Consequently, while writing DS9 Season 5 installment "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", Moore focused on the idea that the Eugenics Wars had motivated the Federation into deciding not to meddle with genetic engineering. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 29, Nos. 6/7, p. 49)

In contrast to the Eugenics Wars having previously been established as taking place in the 1990s, "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", set in 2373, references the Eugenics Wars as having occurred two centuries prior to the episode, placing the Wars in the late 22nd century. As Ronald D. Moore later admitted, this statement was a production error, a line he had taken from The Wrath of Khan, but he had accidentally forgotten to account for the episode being set a century later than the film. (AOL chat, 1997) Confessed Moore, "It was simply a mistake. The date of the Eugenics Wars is something that we have been studiously trying not to pin ourselves down about, because obviously they aren't happening around as we speak [....] What looked like the distant future in 1967 is not so distant any more. I don't blame them for not having the foresight to see that in 30 years this would become important in the series." A production staffer from Star Trek: Voyager suggested the date had deliberately been changed on DS9 to account for the Eugenics Wars having not been mentioned in the "Future's End" two-parter. Moore flatly rejected that theory and responded, "We never talked to Voyager about it." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 29, Nos. 6/7, p. 50)

The original dating of the Eugenics Wars was reaffirmed by Phlox stating in "Borderland" that Arik Soong's Augments were pretty sophisticated for 20th century genetics. Phlox later mentions to the Klingons that genetic engineering on Earth was "banned decades ago," suggesting that the ban was not necessarily adopted by Humans immediately after the Eugenics Wars.

Manny Coto was a fan of this series of conflicts. "I was always fascinated by this idea of this Eugenics Wars," he commented. "I love the backstory of that story. I just found that just compelling, the idea that it was instigated by these genetically superior individuals." ("Inside the Roddenberry Vault, Part I", Star Trek: The Original Series - The Roddenberry Vault special features)

In "Space Seed", Spock describes the mid-1990s as "the era of your last so-called world war," with Leonard McCoy directly referencing the Eugenics Wars in response, suggesting this conflict could be World War III. In TOS: "Bread and Circuses", Spock states that thirty-seven million people died in World War III consistent with Phlox's assertion that over thirty million died in the Eugenics Wars (again connecting World War III and the Eugenics Wars) but not Riker's claim that six hundred million died in the nuclear conflict in Star Trek: First Contact, and again repeated by Burnham in "New Eden". As Spock was speaking in the context of despotism, and what constitutes despotic "responsibility" is open to interpretation, his statement may not give the total death count.

In TNG: "Up The Long Ladder", Data states that Humans were still recovering from the effects of World War III in the early 22nd century. This statement makes more sense within the context of a mid 21st century war than that of a late 20th century war, suggesting that World War III and the Eugenics Wars are not the same conflict, as confirmed in Star Trek: First Contact.

According to show runners, Spock was wrong and that Eugenics Wars happened much later during 21st century. Terry Matalas: "We discussed endlessly. We came to the conclusion that in WW3 there were several EMP bursts that kicked everyone back decades. Records of that 75 year period, the 90s on were sketchy. Maybe Spock was wrong?" In response Khan's own references to the 1996 date, that they simply have be ignored to make the series more relatable to the present; "No easy way to do it if you want the past to look and feel like today. Maybe because in 1967 they didn't anticipate the show still going for another 6 decades." Aaron J. Waltke added: "There's also the ripples of the Temporal Cold War shifting the Prime Timeline in Enterprise at least until the Temporal Accords put an end to that wibbly wobbliness." [1]

The Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars books portray a different view on the Eugenics Wars as being a more covert hidden battle between the genetically engineered "supermen" rather than an overt one in an attempt to marry the original dates of the Eugenics Wars with the events of the present day. This explains why the United States of America is seen as relatively unaffected in the episode "Future's End" and also raises the quite logical hypothesis that Gary Seven, who was present on Earth at the time of Khan's birth and would have known of the eugenics movement, was involved in the overthrow of Khan and the other tyrants. Numerous 20th century Trek characters appear in the story, including Rain Robinson (who at the end of the second book becomes Roberta Lincoln's assistant), Ralph Offenhouse (an early financial backer of the genetic engineering program), Clare Raymond (her death is not an embolism but collateral damage from a nerve gas attack, Khan's assassination of Vasily Hunyadi, the fellow Augment secretly behind the Balkan conflicts of the early 1990s), Gillian Taylor, Flint (as "Wilson Evergreen"), and Jeff, who designed the Botany Bay with Shannon O'Donnel and Walter Nichols involved in the project primarily with technology reverse-engineered from Quark's Treasure.

In the Star Trek: Khan comic book series associated with the alternate reality, the creative team went with a portrayal of the wars as being an open conflict that outright affected the whole planet. The depiction of the wars however was filtered through the lens of Khan telling his own version of the events to a Federation court. As such, the series frequently cast doubt on how much of the events he depicted were actually true to his memory and how much of it was perhaps Khan simply spinning a fanciful version that would garner him sympathy with those present to hear his words.

In "The Rules of War", a short story from the anthology Strange New Worlds 9, the enemy commander whom Archer's great-grandfather Nathan Archer negotiated with in North Africa is Stavos Keniclius.

Here is the original post:

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American birth control activist, educator, and nurse

Margaret Higgins Sanger (born Margaret Louise Higgins; September 14, 1879September 6, 1966), also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.[2]

Sanger used her writings and speeches primarily to promote her way of thinking. She was prosecuted for her book Family Limitation under the Comstock Act in 1914. She feared the consequences of her writings, so she fled to Britain until public opinion had quieted.[3] Sanger's efforts contributed to several judicial cases that helped legalize contraception in the United States.[4] Due to her connection with Planned Parenthood, Sanger is a frequent target of criticism by opponents of abortion. However, Sanger drew a sharp distinction between birth control and abortion and was opposed to abortions throughout the bulk of her professional career, declining to participate in them as a nurse.[5] Sanger remains an admired figure in the American reproductive rights movement. She has been criticized for supporting eugenics.[7]

In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, which led to her arrest for distributing information on contraception, after an undercover policewoman bought a copy of her pamphlet on family planning. Her subsequent trial and appeal generated controversy. Sanger felt that in order for women to have a more equal footing in society and to lead healthier lives, they needed to be able to determine when to bear children. She also wanted to prevent so-called back-alley abortions, which were common at the time because abortions were illegal in the United States.[10] She believed that, while abortion may be a viable option in life-threatening situations for the pregnant, it should generally be avoided.[11] She considered contraception the only practical way to avoid them.[12]

In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In New York City, she organized the first birth control clinic to be staffed by all-female doctors, as well as a clinic in Harlem which had an all African-American advisory council,[13] where African-American staff were later added.[14] In 1929, she formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, which served as the focal point of her lobbying efforts to legalize contraception in the United States. From 1952 to 1959, Sanger served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. She died in 1966 and is widely regarded as a founder of the modern birth control movement.[4]

Sanger was born Margaret Louise Higgins in 1879 in Corning, New York,[15] to Irish Catholic parentsa "free-thinking" stonemason father, Michael Hennessey Higgins, and Anne Purcell Higgins. Michael had immigrated to the United States aged 14, joining the Army in the Civil War as a drummer aged 15. Upon leaving the army, he studied medicine and phrenology but ultimately became a stonecutter, chiseling-out angels, saints, and tombstones.[16]:1213 Michael became an atheist and an activist for women's suffrage and free public education.[17]

Anne accompanied her family to Canada during the Great Famine. She married Michael in 1869. In 22 years, Anne Higgins conceived 18 times, birthing 11 alive before dying aged 49. Sanger was the sixth of 11 surviving children,[19] spending her early years in a bustling household.

Supported by her two older sisters, Margaret Higgins attended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute, before enrolling in 1900 at White Plains Hospital as a nurse probationer. In 1902, she married architect William Sanger, giving up her education. Suffering from consumption (recurring active tubercular), Margaret Sanger was able to bear three children, and the five settled down to a quiet life in Westchester, New York. Margaret would become a member of an Episcopal Church which would later hold her funeral service.[21][22]

In 1911, after a fire destroyed their home in Hastings-on-Hudson, the Sangers abandoned the suburbs for a new life in New York City. Margaret Sanger worked as a visiting nurse in the slums of the East Side, while her husband worked as an architect and a house painter. The couple became active in local socialist politics. She joined the Women's Committee of the New York Socialist party, took part in the labor actions of the Industrial Workers of the World (including the notable 1912 Lawrence textile strike and the 1913 Paterson silk strike) and became involved with local intellectuals, left-wing artists, socialists and social activists, including John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Mabel Dodge and Emma Goldman.[23][pageneeded]

Sanger's political interests, her emerging feminism and her nursing experience all led her to write two series of columns on sex education which were titled "What Every Mother Should Know" (191112) and "What Every Girl Should Know" (191213) for the socialist magazine New York Call. By the standards of the day, Sanger's articles were extremely frank in their discussion of sexuality, and many New York Call readers were outraged by them. Other readers, however, praised the series for its candor. One stated that the series contained "a purer morality than whole libraries full of hypocritical cant about modesty".[23]:65 Both were published in book form in 1916.[24]

During her work among working-class immigrant women, Sanger met women who underwent frequent childbirth, miscarriages and self-induced abortions for lack of information on how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Access to contraceptive information was prohibited on grounds of obscenity by the 1873 federal Comstock law and a host of state laws. Seeking to help these women, Sanger visited public libraries, but was unable to find information on contraception.[25] These problems were epitomized in a story that Sanger would later recount in her speeches: while Sanger was working as a nurse, she was called to the apartment of a woman, "Sadie Sachs", who had become extremely ill due to a self-induced abortion. Afterward, Sadie begged the attending doctor to tell her how she could prevent this from happening again, to which the doctor simply advised her to remain abstinent. His exact words and actions, apparently, were to laugh and say "You want your cake while you eat it too, do you? Well it can't be done. I'll tell you the only sure thing to do .... Tell Jake to sleep on the roof."[26] A few months later, Sanger was called back to Sadie's apartmentonly this time, Sadie died shortly after Sanger arrived. She had attempted yet another self-induced abortion.[28][29] Sanger would sometimes end the story by saying, "I threw my nursing bag in the corner and announced... that I would never take another case until I had made it possible for working women in America to have the knowledge to control birth"; biographer Ellen Chesler[Wikidata] concluded that Sachs may have been "an imaginative, dramatic composite".[23]:63

This storyalong with Sanger's 1904 rescue of her unwanted niece Olive Byrne from the snowbank in which she had been leftmarks the beginning of Sanger's commitment to spare women from the pursuit of dangerous and illegal abortions.[29][30][31] Sanger opposed abortion, but primarily as a societal ill and public health danger which would disappear if women were able to prevent unwanted pregnancy.[32]

Given the connection between contraception and working-class empowerment, Sanger came to believe that only by liberating women from the risk of unwanted pregnancy would fundamental social change take place. She launched a campaign to challenge governmental censorship of contraceptive information through confrontational actions.

Sanger became estranged from her husband in 1913, and the couple's divorce was finalized in 1921. In 1922, she married her second husband, James Noah H. Slee.[34]

In 1914, Sanger launched The Woman Rebel, an eight-page monthly newsletter which promoted contraception using the slogan "No Gods, No Masters".[b][36] Sanger, collaborating with anarchist friends, popularized the term "birth control" as a more candid alternative to euphemisms such as "family limitation"; the term "birth control" was suggested in 1914 by a young friend called Otto Bobstei[23]:97[38] Sanger proclaimed that each woman should be "the absolute mistress of her own body."[39] In these early years of Sanger's activism, she viewed birth control as a free-speech issue, and when she started publishing The Woman Rebel, one of her goals was to provoke a legal challenge to the federal anti-obscenity laws which banned dissemination of information about contraception.[40] Though postal authorities suppressed five of its seven issues, Sanger continued publication, all the while preparing Family Limitation, another challenge to anti-birth control laws. This 16-page pamphlet contained detailed and precise information and graphic descriptions of various contraceptive methods. In August 1914, Margaret Sanger was indicted for violating postal obscenity laws by sending The Woman Rebel through the postal system. Rather than stand trial, she fled the country.[3]

Margaret Sanger spent much of her 1914 exile in England, where contact with British neo-Malthusians such as Charles Vickery Drysdale helped refine her socioeconomic justifications for birth control. She shared their concern that over-population led to poverty, famine and war. At the Fifth International Neo-Malthusian Conference in 1922, she was the first woman to chair a session. She organized the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth-Control Conference that took place in New York in 1925.[23]:225 Over-population would remain a concern of hers for the rest of her life.

During her 1914 trip to England, she was also profoundly influenced by the liberation theories of Havelock Ellis, under whose tutelage she sought not just to make sexual intercourse safer for women but more pleasurable. Around this time she met Marie Stopes, who had run into Sanger after she had just given a talk on birth control at a Fabian Society meeting. Stopes showed Sanger her writings and sought her advice about a chapter on contraception.[45][46]

Early in 1915, Margaret Sanger's estranged husband, William Sanger, gave a copy of Family Limitation to a representative of anti-vice politician Anthony Comstock. William Sanger was tried and convicted, spending thirty days in jail while attracting interest in birth control as an issue of civil liberty.[47][48][49] Margaret's second husband, Noah Slee, also lent his help to her life's work. In 1928, Slee would smuggle diaphragms into New York through Canada[23]:255 in boxes labeled as 3-In-One Oil.[50] He later became the first legal manufacturer of diaphragms in the United States.[51]

Some countries in northwestern Europe had more liberal policies towards contraception than the United States at the time, and when Sanger visited a Dutch birth control clinic in 1915, she learned about diaphragms and became convinced that they were a more effective means of contraception than the suppositories and douches that she had been distributing back in the United States. Diaphragms were generally unavailable in the United States, so Sanger and others began importing them from Europe, in defiance of United States law.[23][pageneeded]

On October 16, 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic at 46 Amboy Street in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States.[52] Nine days after the clinic opened, Sanger was arrested. Sanger's bail was set at $500 and she went back home. Sanger continued seeing some women in the clinic until the police came a second time. This time, Sanger and her sister, Ethel Byrne, were arrested for breaking a New York state law that prohibited distribution of contraceptives. Sanger was also charged with running a public nuisance.[53] Sanger and Byrne went to trial in January 1917. Byrne was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse but went on a hunger strike. She was force-fed, the first woman hunger striker in the US to be so treated.[55] Only when Sanger pledged that Byrne would never break the law was she pardoned after ten days.[56] Sanger was convicted; the trial judge held that women did not have "the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception."[57] Sanger was offered a more lenient sentence if she promised to not break the law again, but she replied: "I cannot respect the law as it exists today." For this, she was sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse. An initial appeal was rejected, but in a subsequent court proceeding in 1918, the birth control movement won a victory when Judge Frederick E. Crane of the New York Court of Appeals issued a ruling which allowed doctors to prescribe contraception. The publicity surrounding Sanger's arrest, trial, and appeal sparked birth control activism across the United States and earned the support of numerous donors, who would provide her with funding and support for future endeavors.<

In February 1917, Sanger began publishing the monthly periodical Birth Control Review.[c]

After World War I, Sanger shifted away from radical politics, and she founded the American Birth Control League (ABCL) in 1921 to enlarge her base of supporters to include the middle class.[61] The founding principles of the ABCL were as follows:[62]

We hold that children should be (1) Conceived in love; (2) Born of the mother's conscious desire; (3) And only begotten under conditions which render possible the heritage of health. Therefore we hold that every woman must possess the power and freedom to prevent conception except when these conditions can be satisfied.

After Sanger's appeal of her conviction for the Brownsville clinic secured a 1918 court ruling that exempted physicians from the law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptive information to women (provided it was prescribed for medical reason), she established the Clinical Research Bureau (CRB) in 1923 to exploit this loophole.[23][pageneeded] The CRB was the first legal birth control clinic in the United States, staffed entirely by female doctors and social workers.[64] The clinic received extensive funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his family, who continued to make anonymous donations to Sanger's causes in subsequent decades.[65][23]:425

John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated five thousand dollars to her American Birth Control League in 1924 and a second time in 1925.In 1922, she traveled to China, Korea, and Japan. In China, she observed that the primary method of family planning was female infanticide, and she later worked with Pearl Buck to establish a family planning clinic in Shanghai.[67] Sanger visited Japan six times, working with Japanese feminist Kato Shidzue to promote birth control.[68]

In 1928, conflict within the birth control movement leadership led Sanger to resign as the president of the ABCL and take full control of the CRB, renaming it the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB), marking the beginning of a schism that would last until 1938.[69]

Sanger invested a great deal of effort communicating with the general public. From 1916 onward, she frequently lectured (in churches, women's clubs, homes, and theaters) to workers, churchmen, liberals, socialists, scientists, and upper-class women.[16]:366 She once lectured on birth control to the women's auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey.[16]:361,3667 In her autobiography, she justified her decision to address them by writing "Always to me any aroused group was a good group," meaning that she was willing to seek common ground with anyone who might help promote legalization and awareness of birth-control. She described the experience as "weird", and reported that she had the impression that the audience were all half-wits, and, therefore, spoke to them in the simplest possible language, as if she were talking to children.

She wrote several books in the 1920s which had a nationwide impact in promoting the cause of birth control. Between 1920 and 1926, 567,000 copies of Woman and the New Race and The Pivot of Civilization were sold. She also wrote two autobiographies designed to promote the cause. The first, My Fight for Birth Control, was published in 1931 and the second, more promotional version, Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography,[16] was published in 1938.

During the 1920s, Sanger received hundreds of thousands of letters, many of them written in desperation by women begging for information on how to prevent unwanted pregnancies.[71][72] Five hundred of these letters were compiled into the 1928 book, Motherhood in Bondage.[73][74]

Sanger worked with African American leaders and professionals who saw a need for birth control in their communities. In 1929, James H. Hubert, a Black social worker and the leader of New York's Urban League, asked Sanger to open a clinic in Harlem.[76] Sanger secured funding from the Julius Rosenwald Fund and opened the clinic, staffed with Black doctors, in 1930. The clinic was directed by a 15-member advisory board consisting of Black doctors, nurses, clergy, journalists, and social workers. The clinic was publicized in the African-American press as well as in Black churches, and it received the approval of W.E.B. Du Bois, the co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the editor of its magazine, The Crisis.[77][78][79][80] Sanger did not tolerate bigotry among her staff, nor would she tolerate any refusal to work within interracial projects.[81] Sanger's work with minorities earned praise from Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr.; when he was not able to attend his Margaret Sanger award ceremony, in May 1966, Mrs. King read her husband's acceptance speech that praised Sanger, but first said her own words: "Because of [Sanger's] dedication, her deep convictions, and for her suffering for what she believed in, I would like to say that I am proud to be a woman tonight."[82]

From 1939 to 1942, Sanger was an honorary delegate of the Birth Control Federation of America, which included a supervisory rolealongside Mary Lasker and Clarence Gamblein the Negro Project, an effort to deliver information about birth control to poor Black people.[83] Sanger advised Dr. Gamble on the utility of hiring a Black physician for the Negro Project. She also advised him on the importance of reaching out to Black ministers, writing:[84]

The ministers work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the [Birth Control] Federation [of America] as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

New York University's Margaret Sanger Papers Project says that though the letter would have been meant to avoid the mistaken notion that the Negro Project was a racist campaign, detractors of Sanger, such as Angela Davis, have interpreted the passage "as evidence that she led a calculated effort to reduce the Black population against its will".[85][86][87] Others, such as Charles Valenza, state that this notion is based on a misreading of Sanger's words.[88] He believes that Sanger wanted to overcome the fear of some black people that birth control was "the white man's way of reducing the black population".[88]

In 1929, Sanger formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control in order to lobby for legislation to overturn restrictions on contraception.[89] That effort failed to achieve success, so Sanger ordered a diaphragm from Japan in 1932, in order to provoke a decisive battle in the courts. The diaphragm was confiscated by the United States government, and Sanger's subsequent legal challenge led to a 1936 court decision which overturned an important provision of the Comstock laws which prohibited physicians from obtaining contraceptives.[90] This court victory motivated the American Medical Association in 1937 to adopt contraception as a normal medical service and a key component of medical school curriculums.[91]

This 1936 contraception court victory was the culmination of Sanger's birth control efforts, and she took the opportunity, now in her late 50s, to move to Tucson, Arizona, intending to play a less critical role in the birth control movement. In spite of her original intentions, she remained active in the movement through the 1950s.[91]

In 1937, Sanger became chairman of the newly formed Birth Control Council of America, and attempted to resolve the schism between the ABCL and the BCCRB.[92] Her efforts were successful, and the two organizations merged in 1939 as the Birth Control Federation of America.[93][e] Although Sanger continued in the role of president, she no longer wielded the same power as she had in the early years of the movement, and in 1942, more conservative forces within the organization changed the name to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a name Sanger objected to because she considered it too euphemistic.[23]:393[94]

In 1948, Sanger helped found the International Committee on Planned Parenthood, which evolved into the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1952, and soon became the world's largest non-governmental international women's health, family planning and birth control organization. Sanger was the organization's first president and served in that role until she was 80 years old.[95] In the early 1950s, Sanger encouraged philanthropist Katharine McCormick to provide funding for biologist Gregory Pincus to develop the birth control pill which was eventually sold under the name Enovid.[96] Pincus had recruited Dr. John Rock, Harvard gynecologist, to investigate clinical use of progesterone to prevent ovulation. (Jonathan Eig (2014). "The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution." W. W. Norton & Company. New York. London. pp.104ff.) Pincus would often say that he never could have done it without Sanger, McCormick, and Rock. (Ibid., p.312.)

Sanger died of congestive heart failure in 1966 in Tucson, Arizona, aged 86, about a year after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized birth control in the United States.[f] Sanger is buried in Fishkill, New York, next to her sister, Nan Higgins, and her second husband, Noah Slee. One of her surviving brothers was College Football Hall of Fame player and Pennsylvania State University Head Football coach Bob Higgins.[98]

While researching information on contraception, Sanger read treatises on sexuality including The Psychology of Sex by the English psychologist Havelock Ellis and was heavily influenced by it.[99] While traveling in Europe in 1914, Sanger met Ellis. Influenced by Ellis, Sanger adopted his view of sexuality as a powerful, liberating force.[23]:1314 This view provided another argument in favor of birth control, because it would enable women to fully enjoy sexual relations without fear of unwanted pregnancy.[23]:111117 Sanger also believed that sexuality, along with birth control, should be discussed with more candor,[23]:1314 and praised Ellis for his efforts in this direction. She also blamed Christianity for the suppression of such discussions.[102]

Sanger opposed excessive sexual indulgence. She wrote that "every normal man and woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and women who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells thinking deeply, are never sensual."[103][104] Sanger said that birth control would elevate women away from the position of being objects of lust and elevate sex away from an activity that was purely being engaged in for the purpose of satisfying lust, saying that birth control "denies that sex should be reduced to the position of sensual lust, or that woman should permit herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction."[105] Sanger wrote that masturbation was dangerous. She stated: "In my personal experience as a trained nurse while attending persons afflicted with various and often revolting diseases, no matter what their ailments, I never found anyone so repulsive as the chronic masturbator. It would not be difficult to fill page upon page of heart-rending confessions made by young girls, whose lives were blighted by this pernicious habit, always begun so innocently."[106] She believed that women had the ability to control their sexual impulses, and should utilize that control to avoid sex outside of relationships marked by "confidence and respect". She believed that exercising such control would lead to the "strongest and most sacred passion".[107] Sanger maintained links with affiliates of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (which contained a number of high-profile gay men and sexual reformers as members), and gave a speech to the group on the issue of sexual continence.[108] She later praised Ellis for clarifying "the question of homosexuals ...making the thing anot exactly a perverted thing, but a thing that a person is born with different kinds of eyes, different kinds of structures and so forth ...that he didn't make all homosexuals pervertsand I thought he helped clarify that to the medical profession and to the scientists of the world as perhaps one of the first ones to do that.[102]

Sanger opposed censorship throughout her career. Sanger grew up in a home where orator Robert Ingersoll was admired.[109] During the early years of her activism, Sanger viewed birth control primarily as a free-speech issue, rather than as a feminist issue, and when she started publishing The Woman Rebel in 1914, she did so with the express goal of provoking a legal challenge to the Comstock laws banning dissemination of information about contraception. In New York, Emma Goldman introduced Sanger to members of the Free Speech League, such as Edward Bliss Foote and Theodore Schroeder, and subsequently the League provided funding and advice to help Sanger with legal battles.[110]

Over the course of her career, Sanger was arrested at least eight times for expressing her views during an era in which speaking publicly about contraception was illegal.[111] Numerous times in her career, local government officials prevented Sanger from speaking by shuttering a facility or threatening her hosts. In Boston in 1929, city officials under the leadership of James Curley threatened to arrest her if she spoke. In response she stood on stage, silent, with a gag over her mouth, while her speech was read by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.[113]

After World War I, Sanger increasingly appealed to the societal need to limit births by those least able to afford children. The affluent and educated already limited their child-bearing, while the poor and uneducated lacked access to contraception and information about birth control.[114] Here she found an area of overlap with eugenicists.[114] She believed that they both sought to "assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit." She distinguished herself from other eugenicists, by writing "eugenists [sic] imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her duty to the state. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother."[115] Sanger was a proponent of negative eugenics, which aimed to improve human hereditary traits through social intervention by reducing the reproduction of those who were considered unfit.[7]

Sanger's view of eugenics was influenced by Havelock Ellis and other British eugenicists,[116] including H. G. Wells, with whom she formed a close, lasting friendship.[117] She did not speak specifically to the idea of race or ethnicity being determining factors and "although Sanger articulated birth control in terms of racial betterment and, like most old-stock Americans, supported restricted immigration, she always defined fitness in individual rather than racial terms."[118][23]:1956 Instead, she stressed limiting the number of births to live within one's economic ability to raise and support healthy children. This would lead to a betterment of society and the human race. Sanger's view put her at odds with leading American eugenicists, such as Charles Davenport, who took a racist view of inherited traits. In A History of the Birth Control Movement in America, Engelman also noted that "Sanger quite effortlessly looked the other way when others spouted racist speech. She had no reservations about relying on flawed and overtly racist works to serve her own propaganda needs." Sanger was supported by one of the most racist authors in America in the 1920s, the Klansman Lothrop Stoddard,[121][122] who was a founding member of the Board of Directors of Sanger's American Birth Control League.[123][124] Biographer Ellen Chesler commented: "Margaret Sanger was never herself a racist, but she lived in a profoundly bigoted society, and her failure to repudiate prejudice unequivocallyespecially when it was manifest among proponents of her causehas haunted her ever since."[23]:15

In "The Morality of Birth Control", a 1921 speech, she divided society into three groups: the "educated and informed" class that regulated the size of their families, the "intelligent and responsible" who desired to control their families in spite of lacking the means or the knowledge, and the "irresponsible and reckless people" whose religious scruples "prevent their exercising control over their numbers". Sanger concludes, "There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped."[126]

Sanger's eugenics policies included an exclusionary immigration policy, free access to birth control methods, and full family planning autonomy for the able-minded, as well as compulsory segregation or sterilization for the "profoundly retarded".[127][128] Sanger wrote, "we [do not] believe that the community could or should send to the lethal chamber the defective progeny resulting from irresponsible and unintelligent breeding."[129] In The Pivot of Civilization she criticized certain charity organizations for providing free obstetric and immediate post-birth care to indigent women without also providing information about birth control nor any assistance in raising or educating the children.[130] By such charities, she wrote, "The poor woman is taught how to have her seventh child, when what she wants to know is how to avoid bringing into the world her eighth."

In personal correspondence she expressed her sadness about the aggressive and lethal Nazi eugenics program, and donated to the American Council Against Nazi Propaganda.[128]

Sanger believed that self-determining motherhood was the only unshakable foundation for racial betterment.[131] Initially she advocated that the responsibility for birth control should remain with able-minded individual parents rather than the state.[132] Later, she proposed that "Permits for parenthood shall be issued upon application by city, county, or state authorities to married couples," but added that the requirement should be implemented by state advocacy and reward for complying, not enforced by punishing anyone for violating it.[133]

Margaret Sanger opposed abortion and sharply distinguished it from birth control. She believed that the latter is a fundamental right of women and the former is a shameful crime.[134]:3637[23]:125 In 1916, when she opened her first birth control clinic, she was employing harsh rhetoric against abortion. Flyers she distributed to women exhorted them in all capitals: "Do not kill, do not take life, but prevent."[135]:155 Sanger's patients at that time were told "that abortion was the wrong wayno matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer wayit took a little time, a little trouble, but it was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun."[16]:217 Sanger consistently distanced herself from any calls for legal access to abortion, arguing that legal access to contraceptives would remove the need for abortion.[136] Ann Hibner Koblitz has argued that Sanger's anti-abortion stance contributed to the further stigmatization of abortion and impeded the growth of the broader reproductive rights movement.[137]:182188

While Margaret Sanger condemned abortion as a method of family limitation, she was not opposed to abortion intended to save a woman's life.[138] Furthermore, in 1932, Margaret Sanger directed the Clinical Research Bureau to start referring patients to hospitals for therapeutic abortions when indicated by an examining physician.[23]:300301 She also advocated for birth control so that the pregnancies that led to therapeutic abortions could be prevented in the first place.[139]

Sanger's writings are curated by two universities: New York University's history department maintains the Margaret Sanger Papers Project,[140] and Smith College's Sophia Smith Collection maintains the Margaret Sanger Papers collection.[141]

Sanger's story also features in several biographies, including David Kennedy's biography Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (1970), which won the Bancroft Prize and the John Gilmary Shea Prize. She is also the subject of the television films Portrait of a Rebel: The Remarkable Mrs. Sanger (1980),[142] and Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story (1995).[143] In 2013, the American cartoonist Peter Bagge published Woman Rebel, a full-length graphic-novel biography of Sanger.[144] In 2016, Sabrina Jones published the graphic novel "Our Lady of Birth Control: A Cartoonist's Encounter With Margaret Sanger."[145]

Sanger has been recognized with several honors. Her speech "Children's Era", given in 1925, is listed as #81 in American Rhetoric's Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century (listed by rank).[146][147] Sanger was an inspiration for Wonder Woman, the comic-book character introduced by William Marston in 1941. Marston was influenced by early feminist thought while in college, and later formed a romantic relationship with Sanger's niece, Olive Byrne.[148][149] According to Jill Lepore, several Wonder Woman story lines were at least in part inspired by Sanger, like the character's involvement with different labor strikes and protests.[149] Between (and including) 1953 and 1963, Sanger was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 31 times.[150] In 1957, the American Humanist Association named her Humanist of the Year. In 1966, Planned Parenthood began issuing its Margaret Sanger Awards annually to honor "individuals of distinction in recognition of excellence and leadership in furthering reproductive health and reproductive rights".[151] The 1979 artwork The Dinner Party features a place setting for her.[152][153] In 1981, Sanger was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[154] In 1976, she was inducted into the first class of the Steuben County (NY) Hall of Fame. In 1993, the United States National Park Service designated the Margaret Sanger Clinicwhere she provided birth-control services in New York in the mid-twentieth centuryas a National Historic Landmark.[155] As well, government authorities and other institutions have memorialized Sanger by dedicating several landmarks in her name, including a residential building on the Stony Brook University campus, a room in Wellesley College's library,[156] and Margaret Sanger Square in New York City's Noho area.[157] There is a Margaret Sanger Lane in Plattsburgh, New York and an Alle Margaret Sanger in Saint-Nazaire, France.[158] There is a bust of Sanger in the National Portrait Gallery, which was a gift from Cordelia Scaife May.[159][160] Sanger, a crater in the northern hemisphere of Venus, takes its name from Margaret Sanger.

Due to her connection with Planned Parenthood, many who oppose abortion frequently condemn Sanger by criticizing her views on birth control and eugenics.[161][162][g]

In July, 2020, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York announced their intention to rename the Planned Parenthood headquarters on Bleecker Street, which was named after Sanger. This decision was made in response to criticisms over Sanger's promotion of eugenics. In announcing the decision, Karen Seltzer explained, "The removal of Margaret Sanger's name from our building is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood's contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color."[163][164]

In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning clinic in Harlem that sought to enlist support for contraceptive use and to bring the benefits of family planning to women who were denied access to their city's health and social services. Staffed by a Black physician and a Black social worker, the clinic was endorsed by The Amsterdam News (the powerful local newspaper), the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Urban League, and the Black community's elder statesman, W. E. B. Du Bois.

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Margaret Sanger - Wikipedia

In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court decided, by a vote of 8 to 1, to uphold a state's right to forcibly sterilize a person considered unfit to procreate. The case, known as Buck v. Bell, centered on a young woman named Carrie Buck, whom the state of Virginia had deemed to be "feebleminded."

Author Adam Cohen tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that Buck v. Bell was considered a victory for America's eugenics movement, an early 20th century school of thought that emphasized biological determinism and actively sought to "breed out" traits that were considered undesirable.

"There were all kinds of categories of people who were deemed to be unfit [to procreate]," Cohen says. "The eugenicists looked at evolution and survival of the fittest, as Darwin was describing it, and they believed 'We can help nature along, if we just plan who reproduces and who doesn't reproduce.' "

All told, as many as 70,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized during the 20th century. The victims of state-mandated sterilization included people like Buck who had been labeled "mentally deficient," as well as those who who were deaf, blind and diseased. Minorities, poor people and "promiscuous" women were often targeted.

Adam Cohen is a former member of The New York Times editorial board and former senior writer for Time magazine. Eleanor Randolph/Penguin Press hide caption

Cohen's new book about the Buck case, Imbeciles, takes its name from the terms eugenicists used to categorize the "feebleminded." In it, he revisits the Buck v. Bell ruling and explores the connection between the American eugenics movement and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.

Cohen notes that the instinct to "demonize" people who are different is still prevalent in the U.S. today, particularly in the debate over immigration.

"I think these instincts to say that we need to stop these other people from 'polluting us,' from changing the nature of our country, they're very real," Cohen warns. "The idea that those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it it's very troubling that we don't remember this past."

On the case of Carrie Buck

This is this poor young woman, really nothing wrong with her physically or mentally, a victim of a terrible sexual assault, and there's a little hearing, she's declared feebleminded and she gets sent off to the colony for epileptics and feebleminded. ...

Imbeciles

The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck

by Adam Cohen

When she's at the colony, the guy who is running the colony, Dr. Albert Priddy, is on the prowl. He's looking for someone to put at the center of this test case that they want to bring, so he's looking for someone to sterilize, and he sees Carrie Buck when she comes in, he does the examination himself, and there are a lot of things about her that excite him. She is deemed to be feebleminded, she has a mother who is feebleminded, so that's good because you can show some genetics, and then they're hoping that [her] baby could be determined to be feebleminded too, then you could really show a genetic pattern of feeblemindedness. The fact that she had been pregnant out of wedlock was another strike against her. So he fixes on her and thinks Carrie Buck is going to be the perfect potential plaintiff. ...

He chooses her, and then under the Virginia law, they have to have a sterilization hearing at the colony, which they do and they give her a lawyer (who is really not a lawyer for her; it's really someone who had been the chairman of the board of the colony and was sympathetic to the colony's side) and they have a bit of a sham hearing where she is determined to be a suitable person for sterilization; they vote to sterilize her, and that is the order that then gets challenged by Carrie as the plaintiff first in the Virginia court system and then in the Supreme Court.

On why he considers Buck v. Bell to be one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in American history

If you start by just looking at all the human misery that was inflicted, about 70,000 Americans were sterilized as a result of this decision, so that's an awful lot of people who wanted to have children who weren't able to have children. Also, we have to factor in all the many people who were being segregated, who were being held in these institutions for eugenic reasons, because they were feebleminded, whose lives unfolded living in places like the colony, rather than living in freedom. Beyond the human effect though, there was something just so ugly about this decision and when [we] think about what we want the Supreme Court to be, what the founders wanted the Supreme Court to be, it was supposed to be our temple of justice, the place that people could go when all the other parts of our society, all the other parts of the government, were not treating them right.

On how eugenicists sought to address the "threat" to the gene pool

The eugenicists saw two threats to the national gene pool: One was the external one, which they were addressing through immigration law; the other was the internal one what to do about the people who were already here. They had a few ideas.

The first eugenics law in the United States was passed in Connecticut in 1895, and it was a law against certain kinds of marriages. They were trying to stop certain unfit people from reproducing through marriage. It wasn't really what they wanted, though, because they realized that people would just reproduce outside of marriage.

So their next idea was what they called segregation. The idea was to get people who were deemed unfit institutionalized during their reproductive years, particularly for women, keep them there, make sure they didn't reproduce, and then women were often let go when they had passed their reproductive years because they were no longer a threat to the gene pool. That had a problem too, though. The problem was that it would be really expensive to segregate, institutionalize the number of people the eugenicists were worried about. ...

Their next idea was eugenic sterilization and that allowed for a model in which they would take people in to institutions, eugenically sterilize them, and then they could let them go, because they were no longer a threat. That's why eugenic sterilization really became the main model that the eugenicists embraced and that many states enacted laws to allow.

On deeming people "feebleminded"

"Feebleminded" was really the craze in American eugenics. There was this idea that we were being drowned in a tide of feeblemindedness that basically unintelligent people were taking over, reproducing more quickly than the intelligent people but it was also a very malleable term that was used to define large categories of people that again, were disliked by someone who was in the decision-making position. So, women who were thought to be overly interested in sex, licentious, were sometimes deemed feebleminded. It was a broad category and it was very hard to prove at one of these feeblemindedness hearings that you were not feebleminded.

On the involuntary sterilization procedure

For men it was something like a vasectomy. For women it was a salpingectomy, where they cauterized the path that the egg takes toward fertilization. It was, in the case of women, not minor surgery and when you read about what happened, it's many, many days of recovery and it had certain dangers attached to it, and a lot of the science was still quite new. ...

When you add onto all that, the fact that in many, many cases the women involved were not told what was being done to them, they might be told that they were having an appendectomy, they weren't being told that the government has decided that you are unfit to reproduce and we're then going to have surgery on you, so that just compounds the horror of the situation.

On how the Nazis borrowed from the U.S. eugenics sterilization program

We really were on the cutting edge. We were doing a lot of this in the 1910s and 1920s. Indiana adopted a eugenic sterilization law, America's first in 1907. We were writing the eugenics sterilization statutes that decided who should be sterilized. We also had people who were writing a lot of what might be thought of as pro-Aryan theory. So you have people like Madison Grant who wrote a very popular book called The Passing of a Great Race, which really talked about the superiority of Nordics, as he called them, and how they were endangered by all the brown people and the non-Nordics who were taking over.

On a 1924 immigration law, which was inspired by eugenicists, that prevented Anne Frank's family from entering the U.S.

Under the old immigration laws where it was pretty much "show up," they would've been able to emigrate, but suddenly they were trapped by very unfavorable national quotas, so this really was a reason that so many Jews were turned away.

One very poignant aspect of it that I've thought about as I was working on the book is in the late '90s some correspondence appeared, was uncovered, in which Otto Frank was writing repeatedly to the State Department begging for visas for himself and his wife and his two daughters, Margot and Anne, and was turned down, and that was because there were now these quotas in place. If they had not been, it seems clear that he would've been able to get a visa for his whole family, including his daughter Anne Frank.

So when we think about the fact that Anne Frank died in a concentration camp, we're often told that it was because the Nazis believed the Jews were genetically inferior, that they were lesser than Aryans. That's true, but to some extent Anne Frank died in a concentration camp because the U.S. Congress believed that as well.

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The Supreme Court Ruling That Led To 70,000 Forced Sterilizations - NPR.org

When Splatoon burst onto the scene in 2015 with its squids, who are also heavily-armed children, people were instantly drawn to its brightly coloured. The team-based multiplayer shooter, where matches are won by covering the ground with ink, is enjoyed by adults and kids alike. Its primary 4v4 Turf War mode drives Splatoons multiplayer, and thats where youll find most of its players on any given day. A single-player campaign teaches new players the basics and lets them try out different weapons in a safe environment, preparing them to join the multiplayer arena. However, because completing the single-player mode is not a pre-requisite for accessing multiplayer, many Splatoon players havent so much as looked at it. This means they have no real idea of the world these games take place in or how truly dark it is.

To learn about this, its probably best to start at the beginning. What follows is the incredibly bleak story of Splatoon.

Long before the events of the original Splatoon, humans were Earths most dominant species, though we had descended into frequent, pointless wars. Three more World Wars shook the planet, giving way to numerous civil wars. Finally, during the fifth World War, one country (it is no longer remembered which) launched a warhead at Antarctica, intending to melt it. The ultimate if we cant have it, no one can approach. Humans fled into large underground caverns to avoid the coming environmental decimation. It was all in vain. The planet was flooded entirely, and with it, humanity was destroyed.

As disaster loomed, a professor placed his pet cat, Judd, into a cryogenic chamber. Judd, it turned out, was a master tactician and had rendered sound judgment on every major human war. Because Judd had proven himself so tactically important, the professor chose to freeze Judd instead of himself. As a contingency plan, he created an AI, a keeper of all human knowledge; a torch passed to the next sentient species to help them avoid making humanitys mistakes.

This theming of genocidal global conflict and environmental destruction is a throughline in both games.Splatoon makes a very specific point: its characters live in the ecological wreckage of the human race. This, however, is just the beginning, and things are already fairly dire. But wait, it gets worse.

The next ten thousand years are fairly quiet. As the waters finally recede, some ocean-going life forms are forced to move onto land and evolve. Among these are the Inklings, the Octarians and the Jellyfish. At the same moment, Judd awakens from his cryogenic sleep. At first, relations between the species are cordial. They participate in friendly ink-based games with Judd adjudicating. However, over time, the water levels begin to rise once more. Water has become deadly to the evolved sea life now living on the surface. A rising sea level poses an existential threat.

And so, The Great Turf War began.

The Great Turf War tore the world into two groups, the Octarians and the Inklings. Though the lore never clearly explains their reasons for doing so, most other former sea creatures also took the Inklings side in the war. The Octarians, led by the terrible Octavio, are made up of intelligent octopi humanoids, Octolings, and their sentient appendages. The latter is kind of stupid and obedient and is created by any Octoling cutting off one of the tentacles on their head.

The first year of the Great Turf War saw the Inklings on the back foot as the Octarians raced to create weapons of mass destruction called the Great Octoweapons. With their backs to the wall, the Inklings answered in kind, building weapons of their own. Even with new armaments in their pocket, the Inklings were lucky to survive: a Sunken Scroll in the original game mentions that Inklings had a bad habit of sleeping in and missing battles.

In the wars second year, the Squidbeak Splatoon was created by Judd, Capn Cuttlefish, Ammoses Shellendorf and two other Inklings. This would ultimately prove to be the moment that changed the course of the war. The Inklings began to regain ground on the Octarians. However, what sealed an Inkling victory was that a plug powering the Great Octoweapons was accidentally removed. With the weapons non-operational, other species were able to claim the land. As a result, the Octarians moved underground into the humans old dwellings, using kettles as doorways. These underground settlements required a lot of energy to run, as the areas walls are made up of screens, imitating the outside world at all times.

As mentioned earlier, its never explained why or how the Zapfish are allied with the Inklings. Free of any context, the arrangement seems awfully one-sided. The Inklings use the electricity the Zapfish generate, and the Zapfish get freedom, perhaps? At the beginning of the original Splatoon, news reporters Marie and Callie announce that the Great Zapfish is missing. It would later turn out that the Octarians energy crisis was even worse than first thought and that they had kidnapped the Great Zapfish, hoping it could solve all their problems.

Capn Cuttlefish, believing the Octarians were to blame for the Great Zapfishs disappearance, finds an enterprising young squid they dub Agent 3, enlisting them in the brand new Squidbeak Splatoon. On Cuttlefishs orders, Agent 3 explores Octo Valley, now the games underground hub, via kettles to reach and free the Zapfish. Octo Valley is broken into five sections, each containing some of the Octarians Great Octoweapons. Defeating these weapons frees even more Zapfish. Agent 3 is also helped by Agent 1 and Agent 2, who are definitely not Callie and Marie in trenchcoats (it is). During their travels, Agent 3 fights a great number of Octarians. They also occasionally encounter the Octolings, who seem to have goggles as part of their uniform.

Agent 3 finally finds the Great Zapfish. They are moments from freeing it when its sucked up by DJ Octavio, the same Octavio who led the Octarians in the Great Turf War. Agent 3 struggles to defeat DJ Octavio, and, just as all seems lost, Callie and Marie arrive on the scene, singing Calamari Inkantation. Agent 3 is able to defeat a distracted DJ Octavio, but the music has an added effect: the goggles worn by the Octolings, secretly brainwashing tech created by Octavio, were left scrambled and inert. When Octavio had originally proposed his scheme, the Octolings vetoed the idea, refusing to join him. Instead, hed used the goggles to control the defiant populace. In the crowd of the Octarians is Marina Ida, who, after hearing Calamari Inkantation, defects from the Octarian army and heads to the surface. DJ Octavio is confined in a snow globe with Capn Cuttlefish to watch over him. The Great Zapfish is returned to his place on the antenna of Inkopolis Plaza.

Day-to-day life in Inkling society continues, none the wiser.

After a bruising final Splatfest in which Inkling society was asked if they preferred Callie or Marie from The Squid Sisters, the idol duo took a break to focus on their own things for a while. During this time, Agent 3 and Capn Cuttlefish went off to investigate some rumours theyd heard.

Octoling Marina, now on the surface after her defection, encounters an Inkling named Pearl on Nantai Mountain, practising her singing. Marina later pitches Pearl with a demo of a song she calls Ebb and Flow. The two agree to become a pop duo called Off the Hook. They enjoy a rapid rise to fame, eventually replacing the Squid Sisters as hosts of both the news broadcast and Splatfest.

The subject of one of Pearl and Marinas first broadcasts is a tragedy: Callie and the Great Zapfish, who had moved to Inkopolis square, are both missing. Most Inklings are relatively unconcerned, but Marie knows better. She goes to Octo Valley to confirm a hunch and, sure enough, finds DJ Octavios snow globe broken. Furthermore, there is no sign of Capn Cuttlefish. Keeping a low profile in Inkopolis Square, she approaches an Inkling to help her find out what exactly has happened. The newest member of the Squidbeak Splatoon is dubbed Agent 4 and sent off to explore Octo Canyon, the Octarian settlement near Inkopolis square. Weapons store owner Sheldon joins Agent 4, lending them fire support. Similar to the original game, Agent 4 encounters Octolings, all of them wearing the same suspicious sunglasses. As they progress, Squidbeak Splatoon receives repeated messages telling them to turn back.

The voice in the message sounds suspiciously like Callie.

This is confirmed when the three eventually find the Great Zapfish, Callie and DJ Octavio. Callie talks about how her shades make her look so fresh, and DJ Octavio explains that they are mind-control sunglasses. His latest brainwashing tech, he claims, is so strong that the Calamari Inkantation cant scramble them. Agent 4 must then face the combined might of DJ Octavio and Callie in a remix the duo calls the Spicy Calamari Inkantation. Agent 4 holds their own but is unable to gain any ground either. Thats when Sheldon and Marie show up in a flying truck. Maries uses her E-litre to knock the glasses off Callies face, allowing Agent 4 to attack. Once again, DJ Octavio is defeated, the Great Zapfish is saved, and Octolings can think for themselves. Several start to make their way to the surface, where the Inklings assume they are simply other Inklings following a weird hair trend.

(Editors note: How are the Inklings still alive? They dont seem very bright. David)

An Octoling wakes up in a subway with only the memory of the Calamari Inkantation. Capn Cuttlefish explains that he and Agent 3 were fighting our amnesiac Octoling when all three were knocked out. Unable to find Agent 3, Cuttlefish concedes he is willing to work with the Octoling to ensure their survival. Unfortunately, the only thing at their disposal is a telephone in the middle of the Platform. The phone explains that they are in the deep-sea metro and must find the promised land. The voice on the other end of the line calls the Octoling Test Subject 10,008, and says they must complete a series of challenges, including finding the four thangs. Capn Cuttlefish dubs the Octoling Agent Eight, and the phone, Tartar, gives them a CQ-80 to provide access to the tests. A train pulls in, and Agent 8 and Capn Cuttlefish board, ready to begin.

However, the moment theyre inside the train, two new players named MC.Princess and DJ_hyperfresh accidentally hack the CQ_80, offering to help them escape the facility.

After collecting the four Thangs and bringing them to Tartar, he asks a pair of important questions: is Agent 8 prepared for a higher plane of existence? Are they ready to be something bigger than themselves? It is revealed that the four Thangs fuse together to create a blender, with Tartar intending to turn Agent 8 and Capn Cuttlefish into raw material. If a test subject is smart enough to complete all the challenges and collect the Thangs, they receive the honour of being turned into primordial ooze. Tartar reveals that he is the AI left by Judds scientist friend to pass on the knowledge of humanity. Though Tartar was excited to pass on his knowledge when he saw the Inklings and Octolings evolving into their humanoid forms, he was dismayed to see them come into conflict. When he saw them fighting over what he deemed were trivial matters, Tartar created his own new directive: destroy them all and replace them with sanitised versions.

DJ_hyperfresh, (who is actually Marina in disguise) attempts to hack into the blender to prevent Agent 8 and Cuttlefish from being turned into a cephaloid slushie. Unable to break through, she sends out a distress signal. Agent 3 breaks through the roof, sending Tartar and the blender flying. Capn Cuttlefish decides to stay with the now unconscious Agent 3 but encourages Agent 8 to escape with Pearl (the disguised MC.Princess) and Marinas help.

Travelling through the structure, Agent 8 makes their way through sections of the facility, which are named after sections of the human digestive tract (and its kind of gross considering theyre moving through it backwards). During the Spinal phase, they are stopped by a partially sanitised Agent 3. The two Agents duke it out, with Agent 8 triumphant. Agent 8, Agent 3, and Capn Cuttlefish make their escape, ending up on a small island as Pearl and Marina swoop overhead in their helicopter.

As theyre getting ready to leave, the island begins to shake, rising out of the ocean. A giant human bust slowly rises from the seabed, with Commander Tartar at the controls. He tells the assembled Inklings and Octolings that he is so incensed by their treachery that he will coat Inkopolis in the sanitising liquid. This would destroy the free will of everyone in Inkopolis if it doesnt kill them first.

Marina realises that the statue is drawing solar power to charge itself and devises a plan to cover it in ink. Agent 8 has three minutes until the statue fires its sanitising doom laser. Marina offers Agent 8 prototype hyper bombs to help them ink the whole thing. Succeeding prevents the NILS statue from getting a full charge, but thats not enough to stop Commander Tartar, who decides to fire it anyway. Pearl unleashes a Booyah via a Killer Wail weapon so powerful it destroys the NILS statue and Tartar with it. Defeated, Tartar takes solace in the idea that he can be with his inventor, the professor, again.

Tartar was so upset with how the Inklings and Octolings had conducted themselves that he decided the answer was eugenics. Do you know who else came to that conclusion? It starts with H and ends with itler.

Now, up to this point, its been a secret that there is third species in the world of Splatoon: the Salmonids. They live in a dam and keep mostly to themselves, living in the water and only emerging every 70 years to spawn. Inklings are forbidden from having any contact with the Salmonids, but a shady corporation called GrizzCo hires Inklings to participate in a competition called the Salmon Run. Their goal is to collect Salmonid power eggs and the ultimate prize, golden eggs.

The Salmonids and the Octarians have a trade agreement. As long as the Octarians provide the Salmonids shields and technology, the Salmonids will supply the Octarians with power eggs. The golden eggs, however, are off-limits. Meanwhile, Salmonid meat is available for sale at Mako Mart, the Inkling supermarket. Salmonids view being eaten as the ultimate honour. Therefore, they are perfectly happy to be consumed. This law of consumption is a two-way street, however: Salmonids arent against eating Inklings either. Salmonids believe in the food chain and that eating (or being eaten) is natures way. While there is no mention of whether the Salmonids will eat each other, inklings can and will eat squids, their non-evolved forms. Is this technically cannibalism?!

So, to recap: the story of Splatoon contains six world wars, a mass extinction, numerous weapons of mass destruction, the despotic oppression of an entire people, eugenics, and kidnapping. With Splatoon 3 set to release with the Return of the Mammalians campaign, it could get even worse. The Octarians appear to be sprouting fur, which the Salmonids can eat. Is it some kind of virus spreading across the world? Possibly! Well find out when the game launches on September 9, exclusively on Nintendo Switch.

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World Wars, Eugenics, Mass Extinctions: Would You Believe Were Talking About Splatoon? - Kotaku Australia

Over the course of 175 years and more than 2 million pages of newsprint, its no surprise the Lewiston Falls Journal and its successors have on occasion gotten some things wrong, sometimes egregiously so.

For instance, consider the Lewiston Evening Journals August 1972 take on Watergate: An incident that must be rated as trivial compared to the major issues that should be the focal point of attention during the 1972 presidential campaign.

When Richard Nixon, who won the race, resigned in disgrace from the presidency two years later, the Journals editorial stood out as notably off the mark.

But shortsighted is one thing. Unforgiveable is quite another.

From 1900 through the 1930s, the Journal backed a movement mired in the pseudo-science of eugenics, which led followers to conclude that bettering the human race required active steps to prevent some people from having children.

The newspaper at times endorsed involuntary sterilization and flirted with the notion of having the government murder people to prevent them from having sex and potentially bring children into the world who might share qualities the movement frowned on, such as intellectual disabilities or addiction to liquor.

The Lewiston newspaper wasnt alone in its support for the real-life application of eugenics theory.

The ideas pushed by eugenics adherents proved so popular that many states passed laws allowing forced sterilizations, including Maine, and many prominent men and women, from Winston Churchill to Helen Keller, endorsed it.

The embrace of eugenics became common enough to be taught in many schools, touted in international conferences and endorsed by such diverse organizations as the U.S. Supreme Court and Germanys Nazi Party.

Nazi leader Adolf Hiter once told comrades, I have studied with interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock, according to the former head of his economic policy office, cited in Stefan Kuhls 1984 book The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism and German National Socialism.

The American eugenics movement began to fade in the 1930s and fell into disfavor nearly everywhere after Hitler carried its ideas so far that his minions slaughtered millions in a bid to snuff out people seen as unfit, including Jews, homosexuals, communists and people with mental and physical challenges.

Academics who have since delved into the eugenics push in America cite it as one of the intellectual foundations for Hitlers concentration camps.

PEACEFUL EXTERMINATION

Arthur Staples, who worked at the Journal for 57 years and edited it for two decades, laid out how he saw the problem in a 1925 column in which he complained, We have bred from the worst to the worst in the most foolish way.

As a result, Staples wrote, We are striving to lug along incompetents and feeble persons in the march of progress.

He pointed out how potato farmers throw away the small potatoes while society, coping with far more important choices, was attempting to raise the culls when it comes to people who are idiots, imbeciles and sub-normals.

Then Staples took an even greater leap.

He said men of conscience and courage no doubt including himself among them wonder if a certain form of peaceful extermination were not better.

Though Staples immediately said he wasnt advocating any such thing, merely pondering it, he proceeded to compare these poor travesties of human beings with demon-possessed swine.

Staples concluded society must take care that imbeciles and sub-normals do not reproduce, urging the state to sterilize them to improve the overall quality of Mainers.

The state, he said, must stop the growing rot in the seed of the race and not be squeamish about telling things as they are.

At the time, Staples and the Journal were hardly alone in their calls for government to sterilize people they regarded as lesser beings.

The Supreme Court, in the never-overturned 1927 case of Buck v. Bell, widely noted as one of its most dreadful rulings, agreed with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. when he insisted three generations of imbeciles are enough, in a ruling granting the right for states to sterilize residents to prevent feebleminded and socially inadequate people from having children.

It was a decision, and a movement, which led to the forcible sterilization of at least 60,000 Americans, many of them Black women. Maine was among the states to do so.

Not surprisingly, Nazi defendants at the war crimes trials at Nuremberg after World War II sought to justify their crimes by citing the precedent set in the United States for sterilization and extermination.

The judges didnt buy it. But there was some truth to their finger-pointing.

NEWS AND VIEWS SUPPORTING EXTERMINATION

On March 2, 1900, the Journal carried a news story under the headline By Painless Extermination.

Beneath it was a lengthy account of a new book by Dr. Duncan McKim of New York who proposed the betterment of society and the abolition of the evils of heredity by the gentle removal from this life of incorrigible criminals, idiots, imbeciles, epileptics and habitual drunkards.

He said they could be led into a lethal chamber where they could be gassed to death.

The painless extinction of these lives would present no practical difficulty, McKim said.

The number of individuals to whom the plan would apply is large, McKim wrote in his book.

The Journals story did not question either the idea motivating McKims proposal or his suggestion for implementing it.

McKims Heredity and Progress, published by G.P. Putnam, was part of a movement promoting the notion that people should, in effect, be bred like livestock or pedigreed dogs, aiming to improve the overall quality of humanity by culling the least fit.

It is not the mere wearing of a human form which truly indicates a man, McKim wrote. The idiot and the low-grade imbecile are not true men, for certain essential human elements have never entered into them, and never can; nor is the moral idiot truly a man, nor, while the sad condition lasts, the lunatic.

He wrote they are no more human than beasts of prey.

Once dismissed as mere animals, it wasnt hard for some in the movement to embrace the suggestion that involuntary sterilization or death was a reasonable solution to the problem McKim identified.

Its an idea the Journal found attractive.

In its Book Chat column on Feb. 24, 1900, the Journals illustrated magazine praised the volume and hailed McKims call for a gentle and painless death to those who are very weak and very vicious degenerates who are under the absolute control of the state, including murderers, habitual drunkards, nocturnal house-breakers and people with epilepsy, who were seen by some as a uniquely criminal class in those days.

Dr. McKim has brought the darker side of life before us in a clear and forceful manner and his arguments are logical and convincing, the Journal said.

It was a theme repeated now and again, with only occasional hesitation, in many of the papers stories and some of its opinion columns in the following decades.

In a 1904 front-page news story headlined Minds Mislaid And Minds Lost By Heredity And Vice, the Journal noted how Auburn schools had reported having 14 mentally incapacitated children.

The next sentences said, Criminal re-enforcement of decadents and imbeciles is a grave menace to the State. There are many cases where the reproduction of dangerous imbeciles has proved a fruitful source of municipal expenditure and moral waste. To prevent the breeding and intermarriage of decadent classes is essential to the well-being of the commonwealth.

It said feeble-mindedness is typically hereditary and that to descend from a long line of paupers is to descend further into pauperism.

In ancient Sparta, the story said, the answer would have been to lop the heads off the people it viewed as problematic, but the Journal noted with a tinge of regret that modern morality would not allow such barbarism.

In 1914, the paper reported favorably on the views of Gertrude MacDonald, principal of the State School for Girls in Hallowell, who told the Maine Federation of Womens Clubs that because defects are passed on in family lines, government should see to it that the continued pollution of its bloodstream must be checked by such means that have the approval of sane, far-seeing men.

Reproduction of the feeble-minded, the insane, the grossly immoral, the physically imperfect must be cut off, and it should lie within the power of the state to bring this to pass by segregation, for the most part, and more drastic means when absolutely necessary, MacDonald said.

In the same year, after a judge threw out a eugenics law in Wisconsin he deemed unconstitutional, the Journal wrote an editorial fretting that damaged goods would multiply as what it viewed as feeble-minded people reproduced until societys views on the issue change.

With better education, it said, we can climb the hill of the Capitol and get into written constitutions the better things needed by the nation namely a constitutional amendment to ease the way for the practical application of eugenics.

A BIG YEAR FOR BAD IDEAS

The push for forced sterilizations appears to have peaked in the Journal in 1925, the year Staples mused in his column about peaceful extermination of unfortunate Americans.

In June, the daily spotlighted an honor thesis by Bates College student Priscilla Frew that insisted defectives should be controlled so they cannot multiply, which means strict segregation or sterilization.

The following month, the Journal covered a talk to the Lewiston and Auburn Rotarians by Dr. Stephen Vosburgh, head of the Maine School of the Feeble Minded in Pownal. He told the group that segregation and sterilization were the only ways to stop the growth of feeble-minded Mainers.

Vosburgh told the Rotarians that tests given to new arrivals at his school determine with ease whether the newcomer is an idiot, with the mental capacity of a 2-year-old, or an imbecile who has the mental abilities of a typical child between the ages of 3 and 7, or a moron, whose mind is equivalent to a 7- to 12-year-old.

He said a state law prevented all of them from getting married but town clerks failed to enforce it, so the state passed a law that permits sterilization of the so-called feeble-minded under some circumstances.

Vosburgh also said there were many sub-normal (people) in alms houses and attractive women of child-bearing age who should be cared for and segregated in institutions until they were too old to have children. Otherwise, he said, the state would have too many morons.

In November 1925, the Journal wrote an editorial about the states insane asylum discussing a delicate subject that requires a lot of common sense.

The paper said Maine ought to extend the sterilization law for idiots and imbeciles in order to sterilize these people by the authorities without having to get so many permissions.

After all, it said, society would never allow unnecessary operations of this sort only those approved after a proper hearing.

The chances of the idiot or the imbecile or even the moron or subnormal reproducing like to like are almost certain, the paper said. The chances are small that these people will produce normals.

Nobody likes to discuss this subject, the editorial noted. Nobody likes to sponsor these profoundly personal laws. But what is to be done? Is society through a mawkish sentimentality to be permitted to go on doing what we do not permit cattle to do? Are we going to overload society with fools?

It went on to detail a misinterpreted and often mistaken 1877 study of an American family published by Richard Louis Dugdale as The Jukes: a Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity, Also Further Studies of Criminals.

Comparing the Juke family to the successful descendants of famed colonial-era preacher Jonathan Edwards, the Journal used their example to prove idiots produce idiots when allowed to have children and should not be allowed to reproduce.

It was a theme pushed repeatedly over the years by the Lewiston paper, until the scale of the eugenics-inspired horror unleashed by the Nazis became clear.

AFTER THE NAZIS

The Journal printed hundreds of news stories during and after World War II detailing German crimes. It wrote about the international tribunals prosecuting Nazi criminals. It published stories about concentration camp survivors and about the reality of the Holocaust they witnessed.

But it doesnt appear the Journal ever took note in later years of its own role in promoting eugenics or its complicity in the spread of a doctrine leading directly to the crimes against humanity laid out at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.

That the Journal chose to push eugenics is made clear by comparing its coverage in those years to its morning counterpart, the Lewiston Daily Sun, which rarely mentioned eugenics and doesnt appear to have hailed it at all.

There is no apology possible for having played any role at all in laying the foundation for the Holocaust. But the paper can, at last, recognize its failure.

This was perhaps the worst thing the Journal and its successors ever did in 175 years of news coverage.

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The shameful support of eugenics by the Lewiston Evening Journal - Lewiston Sun Journal

How can we learn from the past? That is the profound question we face in the new documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust, a three-part, six-hour series, directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, with narration by Peter Coyote. The film explores Americas response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the 20th century. Inspired in part by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museums Americans and the Holocaust exhibition, the film examines the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany in the context of global antisemitism and racism, the eugenics movement in the United States, and race laws in the American South revealing how as the catastrophe of genocide unfolded in Europe, the U.S. took in only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of refugees trying to escape the Holocaust. Read more about the film and learn about free panels to attend, below.

Get a roundup of broadcast and digital premieres, special offers, and events with our weekly newsletter.

Former prisoners of Buchenwald concentration camp. Elie Wiesel is in the second row of bunks, 7th from left, next to the vertical beam.Photo: National Archives & Records Administration.

Through riveting firsthand testimony of witnesses and survivors who endured persecution and violence as their families tried to escape Hitler, the series delves deeply into the tragic human consequences of public indifference, bureaucratic red tape, and restrictive quota laws in America. It tackles questions relevant to our society today, including how racism influences policies related to immigration and refugees, and how governments and people respond to the authoritarian states that manipulate history and facts.

Rabbi Stephen Wise addresses a crowd at a rally outside Madison Square Garden in NYC. Photo Library of Congress

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles Lindbergh, Dorothy Thompson, Rabbi Stephen Wise, and Henry Ford are among the historical figures in the film, as well as Anne Frank and her family, who applied for but failed to obtain visas to the U.S. before they went into hiding in The Netherlands.

Dr. Joseph Tenenbaum, NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise during a United Jewish War Effort event on W. 42nd Street. Circa, 1943. Photo courtesy US Holocaust Memorial Museum

History cannot be looked at in isolation, Ken Burns says. While we rightly celebrate American ideals of democracy and our history as a nation of immigrants, we must also grapple with the fact that American institutions and policies, like segregation and the brutal treatment of indigenous populations, were influential in Hitlers Germany. And although we accepted more refugees than any other sovereign nation, America could have done so much more to help the millions of desperate people fleeing Nazi persecution.

Virtual online panels related to this series will be presented by THIRTEEN and The WNET Group the week of The U.S. and the Holocaust broadcast. Visit our Thirteen.org/Community page for more information, soon.

Free RegistrationIn advance of the September 18 premiere, join a free virtual talk on Thursday, September 8 with two of the filmmakers, Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein, in conversation with Madlin Sadler, COO, International Rescue Committee. Jake Tapper moderates the discussion on The Holocaust and Refugees: Lessons for Today.

Marquee advertising a screening of U.S. Army Signal Corps film, Nazi Atrocities. New York City. May 8, 1945.

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The U.S. and the Holocaust. Revisiting America's Role | THIRTEEN - New York Public Media - MetroFocus

When Mortals Play God: Eugenics and One Familys Story of Tragedy, Loss and Perseverance by John Erickson; publishes Sept. 15 by Rowman and Littlefield Publishers

This book by John Erickson focuses on Ericksons own family history and their generational tragedies to take a deeper look at the idea of eugenics in Minnesota and those who were and still are affected by it.

Erickson shares a very intimate look at a family punished for not being perfect in societys eyes a family whose struggles and tragic circumstances were during a time when society and those in power had very little compassion for those it deemed different.

It is very clear that Erickson put in a lot of time and effort to research his own family history as well as the history of the laws and the area that his family called home. His writing allows the reader to find not only relatable humanity but love and compassion for a family that was fundamentally failed by their community, society as a whole and by the government created to establish order and protection for its most vulnerable citizens. He allows the reader to walk a mile in their shoes.

contributed / John Erickson

This book is packed with Brainerd history, early logging and railroad history in Minnesota and early laws and treatment for those deemed feebleminded in and around the 1920s. This examination of a part of Minnesota history that is oftentimes overlooked because of its uncomfortable nature needs to not be forgotten and the real life account of Ericksons grandmother, Rose, and all that she and her family endured is an invaluable lesson that we can continue to learn from.

I really related to this family through Ericksons writing and could see how easily someone can be let down by a society over and over until they are then punished for those shortcomings or differences that were never aided. He shows how easily it could happen to almost anyone. I laughed and cried while reading this book.

John Erickson grew up in Minneapolis and graduated from the University of Minnesota with a journalism degree. He has spent more than 30 years in journalism and led coverage for multiple finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, including the winner for National Reporting in 1998. He was inducted into the Ohio Associated Press Media Editors' Hall of Fame in 2019. He now lives in Dayton, Ohio, with his family.

Fresh Midwest: Modern Recipes from the Heartland by Maren Ellingboe King; publishes Sept. 20 by Countryman Press

What do you get when you marry traditional Scandinavian cooking with modern culinary elegance? The answer is Fresh Midwest: Modern Recipes from the Heartland by Maren Ellingboe King. This hardcover book is filled with traditional Midwest comfort food blended with modern updates to make grandmas hotdish a stylish centerpiece.

"Fresh Midwest"

Cookbooks make me very excited, and this one caught my eye immediately. After making a few recipes from the book, I am really looking forward to making more. The flavor of the Garlic-Chive Mashed Potatoes was delicious and the Cheeseburger Hotdish will become a new regular in my house. My daughters and I had a lot of fun with the Norwegian Fondue and I really enjoyed the flavors.

Ellingboe Kings career as a food stylist is showcased in the recipes and one of the best parts of this book is the modern styling of the food that is shown spectacularly in the 100 color photographs featured in this book. So many family recipes get left on the shelf when they become dated. Ellingboe King has taken so many of these recipes off the shelf and given them a refresh to bring modern elegance to the table.

Maren Ellingboe King is a recipe developer and food stylist who grew up outside of St. Paul. A former Food & Wine editor, she has worked with the likes of Sunset, New York Times, Williams-Sonoma, Target, and more. She now lives with her family in Minneapolis.

Kelsey Hawley / Post Bulletin

Kelsey Hawley / Post Bulletin

Contributed / Countryman Press

Contributed / John Erickson

Book Nook is a feature that highlights books from Minnesota authors. Got a recommendation? Email us at life@postbulletin.com with the subject line "Book Nook."

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Families highlighted with books on history and cooking - Rochester Post Bulletin

The paradox of education is precisely this that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. James Baldwin

As the academic school year begins, and the COVID pandemic continues with new variants, there is much discussion about learning loss, typically referencing school-based achievement. Who is catching up? Who is behind? This preoccupation with timely learning is long-standing. Largely measured by standardized tests that have been researched and proven to be based in eugenics, a pseudoscience created to perpetuate racism, and that continually reinstate white supremacy, test scores and report cards are distractions from learning. A learning loss via those assessments is not a national crisis because schooling, since its formation in this settler nation, is one of the nations most efficient delivery systems for societal stratification.

However, there have been several learning losses during an ongoing pandemic. None of these losses are absolute, but they loom large until they are redressed.

What learning has been lost?

Timely political education has been sidelined during the pandemic. Although many have been quick to quote the closing paragraph of Arundhati Roys April 2020 essay on the pandemic, few have referenced the essays larger point and precise focus on the rise of totalitarianism. Focusing on India, Roy detailed how in the weeks prior to the pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted then-President Donald Trump, and in preparation for the visit, ramped up anti-Muslim raids in several districts. On March 24, 2020, Modi gave a nation of 1.3 billion people four hours notice of nationwide lockdown, and police brutally enforced the curfew. As in the U.S., those who had already been made most vulnerable by racial capitalism bore the brunt of sickness and death.

During this ongoing pandemic, global totalitarianism has created vulnerabilities for millions of people. For instance, the loneliness and related experiences of isolation and powerlessness proved to be the fertile ground for the rise of totalitarianism in China, India and the U.S., just as Hannah Arendt outlined in 1973. In New Orleans, Black people account for 53 percent of the citys population, where wealth and poverty are neighbors. One year into the pandemic, Black people were 75 percent of the citys total death toll. In Peru and El Salvador, more than 60 percent of the workforce is composed of informal laborers, such as street food vendors and women who made small trinkets for tourists. This already working poor population, who had to walk back to their villages, and as in India, suffered the most sickness and death from the virus.

Neither empire nor totalitarianism is new, but not critically analyzing and learning from these violent formations of power and their impact on already marginalized lives is a profound learning loss.

Our society lost a chance to disambiguate learning from schooling. Being a good student doesnt mean that learning is happening. It usually means that obedience is happening. We lost learning how freedom sounds from young children. As Carla Shalaby describes in her research, the troublemakers in school, the ones who fidget (which can and often is a form of self-soothing), who speak when they are supposed to be quiet and those who simply refuse these children are crying for freedom. Weve been conditioned to hear disobedience.

The closing of schools could have taught us that for some students, simply not being overwhelmed by considerable stimuli provided relief. Education could have learned that a dis/ability is always in dynamic with spaces, people and objects. The rise in Black homeschooling during the pandemic could have taught us that given an escape from the anti-Black racism in schooling, many Black families figured out ways to not return to that violent normal. Two years into the pandemic and counting, the number of Black homeschooling families has increased five-fold. However, the rise in Black homeschooling is a departure from the history and contemporary funding and legal support of homeschooling from Christian-based white organizations and exploitive corporations like Walmart.

During the summer of 2020, people across the world witnessed and/or participated in global uprisings against state-sanctioned murders of Black people. And they took to the streets, as part of an intergenerational struggle for freedom. Dozens upon dozens of colleges and universities started initiatives and offered public but largely toothless mission statements in response to the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In fact, these responses were not focused on the state-sanctioned murders of Black people. They were largely a self-interested reaction to the global uprisings in summer 2020, to prevent further uprisings. Unintentionally, formal education taught (and people learned) about what moved the wealthiest of universities, as well as the limits of their actions.

When university leaders wrote emails in the summer of 2020 to their communities about the center/initiative/new chief diversity officer for equity in response to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, they likely were also working on announcements providing details about campuses reopening for the academic year. University staff didnt need these emails because they were already back at work, PPE gear or not, or they had been laid off. Campus hourly workers who provided food service, cleaned buildings or performed as administrative assistants, largely working poor people of color, lost their jobs when campuses closed in Spring of 2020. This same population were the essential workers that had to risk infection to ready campuses to reopen before salaried, majority white faculty and administrators returned.

Perhaps most profoundly, this society has engaged in a mass displacement of grief, including learning how to grieve. This is a nation ruled by racial capitalism far more than either political party. Racial capitalism has no interest in humanizing deeply human experiences, including births, deaths and grieving. The U.S is infamous for having the cruelest policies for bereavement leave. The Fair Labor Standards Act is poignantly unfair, requiring exactly zero paid time off for bereavement. The nation officially recognized having lost 1 million lives to COVID in May 2022. An accurate accounting of life and loss of life remains elusive because of the numbers of incarcerated and undocumented people who are part of the U.S. population. Because this carceral society doesnt treat life with care here, the number of lives counted is literally smaller.

The United States has never really found grieving useful. As a nation formed from the seizure of land and stolen labor, property owners built wealth through subjugation. From the perspective of racial capitalism, in which there can never be too big of a profit, grieving is, simply, time not working, time not making money for the company. During the first year of the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised masking, social distancing and testing as the most powerful tools to combat the pandemic. In August 2022, with the BA.5 variant registering 500 COVID-related deaths daily and schools reopening mostly without hybrid options, the CDC announced that COVID is here to stay and that masking is advised for five days while a person is infected, but not mandatory.

As masking and other protective guidelines have fallen despite new variants, federal policies cue to the public that the pandemic, or taking precautions for it, is over. For a society that worships individualism, people rejoiced in dispensing with their K-95 masks, flooded airports with booked vacations and, of course, the pandemic has meant difficult, painful restrictions of social interaction, yet that loss pales in comparison to the massive death and grief that is muffled by flight attendants singing with passengers to lose their masks. As Ashon Crawley wrote, there is so much un-dealt with grief, referencing the laughter of a White House official taking the place of acknowledging the rising death toll due to AIDS in the early 1980s.

In the COVID pandemic, un-dealt with grief has surged alongside infections and deaths. While rampant homophobia and ignorance fueled ignoring grief and even mocking death in the 1980s, the refusal to acknowledge the still-growing numbers of COVID-linked deaths is related and distinct. The pandemics deaths have been un-dealt with via confusing and often contradictory policies, but most profoundly by prioritizing saving the economy rather than lives.

Compounded mass dislocation of grief also robs people of learning how to be with grief, how we might be changed by it. If provided the opportunity to grieve deeply, while reckoning with inequitable, population-level loss of life, there is an opportunity to become more humane and grow our collective political education. Millions have lost an opportunity to grieve thousands upon thousands of lives at the time when those lives were lost. While the basics of physics teach that time is not linear, there is something to be reckoned with what festers when an immediate grief is squelched. When the most advanced nation in the world created little to no structure to support grieving, including collective grief, it underscored its interest in returning to an already violent normal and quickly forgetting lost lives.

No loss is simply an absence. School days not spent at school are not simply an erased space on the chalkboard. Losses are palpably present. The loss of over 1 million souls will continue to shape this society. Roy noted in the closing of her essay that no society goes unchanged by a pandemic. Surely, this is true for the willful displacement of grief for millions of people.

Where and how can a society put down the pressure to create, punish, and keep it moving? Social geographer and abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore states it plainly: Where life is precious, life is precious. Roy and Gilmores work and writings teach that being complacent with mass death and grief is not an option if our interest is freedom. Societies have the will to imagine anew, to take this still active opportunity to drop the weight of hollow narratives of individualism and to choose interrelated well-being.

Social media posts are full of pictures of young people dressed for their first days back at school, and stores are packed with largely maskless shoppers buying back-to-school gear. At the same time, the BA.5 variant is spreading like wildfire, and as science writer Ed Yong states, the nations leaders have normalized becoming infected, with masking mandates all but a thing of the past.

However, we still have a chance to correct this loss of ethics, this loss of humanity, this loss of collective demand for a public health infrastructure that openly counters centuries-long health inequities. Learning is always on offer.

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Focusing on "Learning Loss" Obscures How Much Weve Truly Lost in the Pandemic - Truthout

Boston public media producer GBH and the Boston Symphony Orchestra will host THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST: An Evening with Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein on Monday, September 12, 2022 at 7 p.m. at Symphony Hall, Boston.

This special event is being presented in connection with the release of THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST, a new three-part documentary directed and produced by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein. The film explores America's response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises in history.

THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST: An Evening with Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein will feature clips from the film, followed by a behind-the-scenes conversation with the filmmakers. Music from the film will be performed live by musicians Kyle Sanna and Johnny Gandelsman, who performed the music in the documentary. The discussion will be moderated by Pam Johnston, general manager of GBH News. Tickets are $15-$25 and are available now at bso.org/events and at the box office at Symphony Hall, Boston.

Inspired in part by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's "Americans and the Holocaust" exhibition and supported by its historical resources, THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST examines the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany in the context of global antisemitism and racism, the eugenics movement in the United States, and race laws in the American South.

The film features interviews with some of the country's leading scholars on the period, including Daniel Greene, Rebecca Erbelding, Peter Hayes, Deborah Lipstadt, Daniel Mendelsohn, Daniel Okrent, Nell Irvin Painter, Mae Ngai, and Timothy Snyder. On-camera witnesses include Susan Hilsenrath Warsinger, Eva Geiringer [Schloss], Joseph Hilsenrath, Marlene Mendelsohn, Sol Messinger, and Guy Stern, who recently turned 100 years old.

THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST will air September 18, 19, and 20, at 8-10 p.m. ET on GBH 2, PBS.org, and the PBS Video app. Funding for THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST was provided by Bank of America; David M. Rubenstein; the Park Foundation; the Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation; Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A.Darling; The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations; and by members of The Better Angels Society. Funding was also provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by public television viewers.

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BSO and GBH Host 'An Evening With Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, And Sarah Botstein' at Symphony Hall Next Month - Broadway World

Weather: Showers likely. A slight chance of thunderstorms in the morning, then thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Some thunderstorms may produce heavy rainfall in the afternoon. Highs around 90. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent.Monday Night: Mostly cloudy. Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly in the evening. Some thunderstorms may produce heavy rainfall. Lows in the lower 70s. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60 percent.

Today at the Editors Glance:

In Court: Circuit Judge Terence Perkins holds arraignments, pleas, sentencing and bond hearings throughout the day.

The Flagler County School Board holds a closed-door session to discuss an ongoing collective bargaining dispute with its service workers union, who have been promised a minimum pay of $15 an hour, but who are arguing that those above that threshold should be getting some higher pay as well. The meeting is at 8:30 a.m. in the superintendents conference room.

Nar-Anon Family Groupsoffers hope and help for families and friends of addicts through a 12-step program, 6 p.m. at St. Mark by the Sea Lutheran Church, 303 Palm Coast Pkwy NE, Palm Coast, Fellowship Hall Entrance. See the website, http://www.nar-anon.org, or call (800) 477-6291. Find virtual meetingshere.

The US Open begins in Flushing meadows, Queens. Unfortunately, Palm Coasts Reilly Opelka, now ranked 28th in the world after a difficult summer, had to pull out because of injuries. Medvedev is seeded first, Nadal second, Djokovic, currently sixth in the world, is not playing, since hes unvaccinated (and Moderna, the vaccine manufacturer, is a top sponsor of the US Open this year).

Keep in mind, I: Private Behind the Scenes Tour at the Sea Turtle Hospital at Whitney Laboratory Let one of our Sea Turtle Biologists guide you through our Hospital. Youll learn about who we are, what we do and meet our current patients. Behind the Scenes Tours of the Sea Turtle Hospital are a great way to see the day to day activities at the Hospital. Please be aware tours last an hour to an hour and a half depending on group questions. Participants will spend that time standing and walking between various areas of the Hospital, occasionally on unpaved surfaces and steps. School aged children are welcome on this tour. COST: $200, for up to five people. Reservations are required. For questions, email[emailprotected] Whitney Laboratory Sea Turtle Hospital, St. Augustine.

Keep in Mind, II: The Flagler Youth Orchestra Strings Program, a special project of the Flagler County School District, is launching its eighteenth season. Visit the string programs website at http://www.flagleryouthorchestra.org to enroll online. Enrollment is open now and until Sept. 14. An open house and information session will be held August 31 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Flagler Auditorium, 5500 State Road 100, in Palm Coast. Flagler Countys public, private, charter and home-schooled students, 8 years old and older, may sign up to play violin, viola, cello, or double bass. Beginner, intermediate and advanced musicians are welcome. Tuition is free. Limited instrument scholarships are available. Students will learn about the enriching world of classical music and many other genres while receiving comprehensive string instruction in a player-friendly environment twice a week after school. One-hour classes are held at Indian Trails Middle School on Mondays and Wednesdays between 3:30 and 6:30 p.m., depending on your childs time slot. Some scheduling restrictions apply. Attend the August 31st orientation at the Flagler Auditorium to learn more about the strings program and how to get started. For more information about the program, call (386)503-3808 or email [emailprotected].

Notably: Todays notable birthdays are a trifecta of paradoxes: Theres John Locke (1632), founding father to our founders and the religion of political liberty who nevertheless was a slave trader, not just owner. Theres Michael Jackson (1958), superstar of superstars and shadowy pedophile. And theres Oliver Wendell Holmes, on whom Ill concentrate todays cake and ice cream. Holmes was considered to be part of the minuscule liberal wing of the Supreme Court, along with Louis Brandeis (a more authentic liberal), during one of the courts most acidly conservative eras (an era the Thomas court is now mirroring). But he was also a fanatical war lover, a supporter of eugenics, and the author of one of the most repugnant opinions authored at the Supreme Court, Buck v. Bell, the 1927 decision upholding the right of government to sterilize the mentally disabled, itself a dog-whistle for the poor. Holmess words drip with contempt, if not hatred, the way Orwell inThe Road to Wigan Pier at one point describes what we were taughtthe lower classes smell. The smell of their sweat, the very texture of their skins, were mysteriously different from yours. Read these lines of Holmess and you get the same sense of disgustfirst from his prose, then for him, for being a man capable of writing this prose. But before you read this passage, take note of the line right before the one about imbeciles: The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. So anti-vaxxers are not completely, entirely without some historical context for their opposition, however subconscious it may be: when the government wields the tools of public health, it can very well be a slippery slope, as Buck v. Bell proved, and the people at the lower ends of the scales pay: The decision allowed 30 states to adopt laws to that effect. I think Albert Alschuler had it right when he called Holmess jurisprudence law without value. Heres Holmes:

The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization, and thereupon makes the order. In view of the general declarations of the Legislature and the specific findings of the Court obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, 25 S. Ct. 358, 3 Ann. Cas. 765. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. (See the full decision.)

Now this: Dedicated, of course, to Jill Woolbright.

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Viewing life as a race or contestan occasion for functioning and nothing more was a basic Holmesian theme. When Yale University awarded Holmes an honorary degree in 1886, he responded: I never heard anyone profess indifference to a boat race. Why should you row a boat race? Why endure long months of pain in preparation for a fierce half-hour that will leave you all but dead? Does any one ask the question? . Is life less than a boat race? At a law school dedication in 1902, Holmes observed, Art, philosophy, charity, the search for the north pole, the delirium of every great moment in mans experience- all alike mean uneconomic expendituremean wastemean a step toward death. He then remarked an explorers account of his search for the pole rather loses than gains in ideal satisfaction by the pretence of a few trifling acquisitions for science.

From Albert Alschulers Law Without Values: The Life, Work and Legacy of Justice Holmes (2000).

The Cartoon and Live Briefing Archive.

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The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Monday, August 29, 2022 | FlaglerLive - FlaglerLive.com

It must take incredible levels of evil to demonise the rest of the world based on nothing but skin colour. But then, skin-colour racism was just the industrialised Wests avatar of a far more ancient racism: dividing the world into believers and heathens. The heathen, like the Kaffir was condemned by birth. He needs saving or slaughter. There is no middle path.

In a truly brilliant essay, Michael Crichton, one of the last great novelists of our own time, tore apart an even more contemporary version of Western racism.

"Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

I dont mean global warming. Im talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago.

Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California It was said that if Jesus were alive, he would have supported this effort.

Today, we know that this famous theory that gained so much support was actually pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent. And the actions taken in the name of theory were morally and criminally wrong. Ultimately, they led to the deaths of millions of people.

THE THEORY WAS EUGENICS, and its history is so dreadful and, to those who were caught up in it, so embarrassing that it is now rarely discussed The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit, and the feeble minded.

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The West has a Caste System and this is Just the Latest Proof - The Dharma Dispatch

Eugenic feminism was a component of the women's suffrage movement which overlapped with eugenics.[2] Originally coined by the eugenicist Caleb Saleeby,[3][4][5] the term has since been applied to summarize views held by some prominent feminists of the United States. Some early suffragettes in Canada, particularly a group known as The Famous Five, also pushed for eugenic policies, chiefly in Alberta and British Columbia.

Eugenic feminism began to be articulated in the late 1800s and faded in the 1930s, alongside decreasing support for eugenics itself.[6][7] Eugenic feminists argued that if women were provided with more rights and equality, the deteriorating characteristics of a race could be avoided. They desired gender equality and pushed for eugenic law and science to compromise and meet their views in order to breed a superior race.

When Francis Galton originally formulated eugenics, he saw women functioning as a mere conduit to pass desirable traits from father to son. Later eugenicists saw women in a more active role, placing an increasing emphasis on women as mothers of the race. In particular new research in the science of heredity and the studies of procreation, child rearing and human reproduction led to changes in eugenic thought, which began to recognize the importance of women in those parts of the human life cycle. This change in emphasis led eventually to eugenicist Caleb Saleeby coining the term eugenic feminism in his book Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles (1911).[3][4] Saleeby wrote,

The mark of the following pages is that they assume the principle of what we may call Eugenic Feminism, and that they endeavour to formulate its working-out. It is my business to acquaint myself with the literature of both eugenics and feminism, and I know that hitherto the eugenists have inclined to oppose the claims of feminism [...]

Devereux characterizes Saleeby's coining of eugenic feminism as "at least partly a deceptive rhetorical strategy" whose goal was to "draw middle-class women's rights activists back to home and duty".[1]

In the 1930s eugenic feminism began to decline as eugenic feminists began to fall out with mainstream eugenicists, and had largely failed to sway the public opinion.[8]

Victoria Woodhull was a prominent advocate of eugenics. Woodhull also had a husband that was abusive, alcoholic, and disloyal, which she thought that might have contributed to the mental disability of her son, Byron.[7] With her newly sparked interest in eugenics, Woodhull promoted her views by giving addresses and publishing various books. A significant address was made on September 1871 and was titled Children: Their Rights and Privileges in which she claimed that a perfect humanity must come of perfect children.[11]

Moreover, she mentioned the importance of having the best seed to be able to have children that can grow into functional adults, the nurturing of parents to children, and the wickedness of abortion. With the effort of promoting eugenics by Woodhull, a portion of feminists also started to advocate for eugenics as well. These women thought that there were too many children and supported families that had fewer. In an 1876 speech in New Jersey, Woodhull placed a great importance on eugenics, more than the importance of obtaining the rights for women to vote, mentioning that women's suffrage was unimportant compared to creating a more superior human race.[11]

Woodhull's version of eugenics, which held that adherence to then-prevalent sexual norms led to degenerate offspring, was sharply divergent from the mainstream eugenics of the 1890s. Her views shifted over time, never fully aligning with the eugenicist mainstream, particularly on birth control.[6]

As a leading feminist author of her time, Charlotte Perkins Gilman published various feminist literary works, including poems, articles on eugenics for The Forerunner, and novels such as: Women and Economics, Herland, With Her in Ourland and His Religion and Hers.[7][12][13] In Herland, Gilman champions eugenic feminism by imagining an all-female utopian society made up of women who somehow were able to reproduce asexually. They all descended from a single mother, therefore miscegenation was not a problem in her imagined society, neither, it seems, was inheriting undesirable genes, as those who were deemed unfit to reproduce were discouraged from doing so.[12] Gilmans arguments essentially promoted feminism by representing eugenic ideology as the source of help.[13] She advocated equal sexual rights for men and women and advocated legalizing birth control for women.[7]

In the 1940s, eugenic feminism began to decline. There were irreconcilable differences between feminism and eugenics that could not accommodate each other. Feminists abandoned their eugenic ideas and opinions when it became harder to gather support and more difficult to combine the two movements. Additionally, support for the eugenics movement as a whole began to wane as the public compared American sterilization practices to the sterilization laws of Nazi Germany which were deemed "totalitarian."[7]

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Eugenic feminism - Wikipedia

U.S. Rep. Alma Adams, D-N.C. is seen during a voting rally for in Greensboro, N.C., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

Was Congresswoman Alma Adams arrested for demanding abortion rights? Not really. She was arrested for sitting down in the middle of a busy intersection to block traffic for publicity for abortion. Let me remind you more about Alma Adams.

Congresswoman Adams also served many years in the North Carolina House of Representatives. She was known for support for the victims of the North Carolina Eugenics Program and for her support for any and all abortions. As a result Planned Parenthood gave Representative Adams its honorary Margaret Sanger Award.

It is not well known that in 1967 North Carolina became the second state in the nation (after Colorado) to somewhat liberalize its 1881 abortion law. The main architect of the change was Dr. Wallace Kuralt, the head of Mecklenburg County Social Services. He was the main proponent of involuntary sterilizations in the post war era. The North Carolina program lasted until the early 70s. Kuralts eugenics orientation was the principal rationale for the 1967 liberalization of abortion law.

Margaret Sanger was the main proponent of eugenics in the U.S. as well as contraception. But Margaret Sanger wrote against abortion in her 1920 book The American Woman.

In 2011 during debate on the Womans Right to Know Act, Rep. Adams made a passionate speech against women having the right to know the truth about abortion. I asked a Page to deliver to Rep. Adams, after her speech, a copy of Sangers 1920 Essay opposing abortion. She paced around looking very angry.

Now in the United States House of Representatives, Congresswoman Adams just voted for a bill that goes way beyond even Roe v. Wade. She and all but one Democratic member have taken a position supported by only 10-15% of North Carolina voters.

Has she cancelled her Margaret Sanger award yet?

Paul Stam was the Majority Leader of the North Carolina House in 2011 and Speaker Pro Tem in 2013-2016. He practices law in Apex. For more information http://www.paulstam.info.

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STAM: Alma Adams, eugenics and radical abortion The North State Journal - North State Journal

San Francisco, California, Chinatown. Chinese Railroad Workers Mural, by Amy Nelder. Stockton Street. (Via Alamy)

The Great Replacement theory didnt just emerge in Buffalo, El Paso, Pittsburgh, Charleston, or any of the other racist mass murders of the 21st century. Theres a long history to white Americans fear of being replaced. This history is often traced back to the early 20th century when falling birth rates among Anglo-American families, coupled with worries about fecund immigrants from Eastern Europe, fueled the eugenics movement and Immigration Act of 1924. But it was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that saw the first federal attempt to enshrine something like a Great Replacement theory into U.S. law. To make the case for exclusion, anti-Chinese activists warned of the evils that would overrun America if heathen hordes were allowed free entry.

For the Reverend Samuel Blakeslee, the United States was supposed to be Gods bastion for Christianity. In an 1877 address given before the General Association of Congregational Churches of California, and later submitted in a report to the California State Senates Special Committee on Chinese Immigration, Blakeslee said that America had been preserved for thousands of years for the experiment of true Christian liberty against the petrified tyrannies, errors, vices, and irreligions of the old continents. Erasing the presence of Native Americans, Blakeslee, like many before and after him, saw America as a city on a hill for the rest of the world.

But for Blakeslee, the Chinese threatened all of this. He had originally come to San Francisco some 20 years earlier in part to missionize the Chinese. Yet, the language barrier proved too difficult for him and he turned from thinking that the Chinese could be effectively evangelized in the U.S. to arguing that the Chinese would instead convert Americans to heathenism if allowed to immigrate freely. To prostitute all American advantages and opportunities to a vast people, confirmed in old systems of debasement, idolatry, prejudice, immorality, and clannishnessis exceedingly dangerous, he charged. It is exposing our whole country and its policies to volcanic eruptions of heathen hosts and abominations.

Heathens were understood to be people who worshiped anything but the one true God, misdirecting their energies to the worship of nature, idols, or their own dead. Originally, the term referred to those Europeans who lived on the edges of society and rejected the new Christian religion, choosing instead to worship the old gods like Thor and Odin. Over time, the term expanded to include anyone who fell outside of the Abrahamic traditions not Christians, not Muslims, not Jews.Europeans and Euro-Americans read all of these heathens through the same lens, as people who didnt know how to take care of their bodies or their lands, and who needed Christians to help. Activated by the Great Commissions charge to make disciples of all nations, missionaries went overseas to try to do just that.

But it was one thing to go to the heathen, and quite another when the heathen began arriving on Americas shores. Though some ministers continued to see the arrival of the Chinese as an opportunity to convert them, others, like Blakeslee, began to claim that immigration restriction was necessary to keep America itself from becoming heathenized. The Great Commission needed to become the Great Omission, omitting anyone who threatened to replace the white American Christian way of life with something else. To think otherwise, Blakeslee alleged, was false Christianity, false benevolence, false patriotism. America needed to be a fortress. True patriots needed to defend that fortress in order to preserve a way of life that the rest of the world was supposed to emulate but only from a distance.

There was a crucial economic component to anti-Chinese hostility. White laborers worried about Chinese competition and feared that capitalist elites were bringing Chinese workers into the country to take the place of Black labor after the Civil War, pricing white laborers out of existence. This, too, anticipates the Great Replacement theorys belief that American elites are conspiring to replace so-called real Americans with immigrants from poor countries.

But fear of economic competition from the Chinese also had religious roots. Heathenism was supposed to be the reason for the negative qualities the Chinese brought to America. Anti-Chinese demagogues claimed that Chinese laborers were willing to live on next to nothing, crowding into tenements in Chinatown and making meals from rats, because their heathen religion taught them to devote all their energy and earnings to dead ancestors. Focusing on their dead, they supposedly neglected their living, bringing down the quality of life wherever they went. As Reverend William Lobscheid, pastor of San Franciscos United German Evangelical Lutheran St. Marks Church, put it in 1873, Is this lack of public spirit not a proof that you are Pagan?

By contrast, Europeans had improve[d] the country wherever they settled, said Lobscheid. But this required money: money to spend on sizeable homes, healthy food, clean clothes, churches, schools, and hospitals. Blakeslee explained that money kept the white American laborer and his family from liv[ing] more nearly like a heathen. He added that the Chinese, in his less expenses, can always underbid the American unless the American will descend to the same level with him, in a cheap, wretched, uncivilized, unchristian manner of living.

Anti-Chinese hate took vicious and violent forms. Again, religion was at the heart of it. In a February 1873 speech, Father James Buchard, a Catholic priest, referred to the Chinese as these pagan, these vicious, these immoral creatures and claimed that they were incapable of rising to the virtue that is inculcated by the religion of Jesus Christ.

The following month, Methodist missionary Otis Gibson valiantly tried to defend the Chinese in the face of such hate. He countered Buchards insinuation that to murder a Chinaman would not be a greater sin than to kill a monkey. Gibson understood all too plainly that dehumanizing the Chinese as intrinsically inferior heathens, rather than seeing them as humans made of one blood, opened the door to extreme violence against them. The litany of hate crimes against the Chinese in the late 19th century the massacre of ten percent of Los Angeless Chinese population in 1871, and another massacre of over two dozen Chinese miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming in 1885, among many other incidents of violence proved him sadly correct.

Gibson, and others such as Presbyterian missionary William Speer, had spent time in China. Their views of the Chinese aligned with an older posture of respect for the longevity of the Chinese empire and for fine Chinese goods, coupled with paternalistic pity for Chinese heathenism. But they always saw the Chinese as capable of conversion, and they believed that the arrival of the Chinese on Americas shores was a providential development that would make it easier to missionize them without having to travel all the way to China to do so.

That the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882 shows how Gibsons and Speers views became increasingly muffled by the clamor of anti-Chinese demagogues over time. Whereas Gibson and Speer drew on the Great Commission to argue that the Chinese should be allowed entry, anti-Chinese ministers argued for a Great Omission to preserve America as a Christian nation.

The Great Omission reveals an abiding impulse to exclude or eradicate threats to white American identity. The Christian case against Chinese immigration set a precedent for later white Christian nationalists that exclusion whether carried out through law or extrajudicial violence could be an appropriate response to the presence of people they believed to threaten their way of life.

Though the Buffalo shooter from May didnt claim to be a Christian, he rooted whiteness in the religion of Christianity and Christian values. And at least one of the Patriot Front members arrested in Idaho in June had ties to a church whose pastor has supported Christian nationalism. The Great Replacement theory that motivated the shooter, and the Patriot Fronts belief that America belongs to Europeans, represents nothing but the tired, paranoid, violent case for the preservation of white Christian America that this country has seen again and again.

Kathryn Gin Lum is Associate Professor of Religious Studies in collaboration with the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and History (by courtesy) at Stanford University. This article is based on ideas first presented in her book, Heathen: Religion and Race in American History, published by Harvard University Press in May 2022.

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The Religious and Anti-Chinese Roots of Replacement Theory - Religion & Politics

Nate Silvers FiveThirtyEight website claims to use statistical analysisto tell compelling stories about elections, politics, sports, science and life and attempts to present itself as a moderate voice, alongside its fellow Disney-owned media properties such as ESPN and ABC News, both of which have endured heavy criticism for erroneous and ideologically driven reporting in recent years. FiveThirtyEights recent abortion article, however, goes a long way toward disabusing readers of the notion that it is an empirical or centrist media outlet.

The inaccurate screed argues that the pro-life movement is intrinsically rooted in racism, even though the modern abortion industry is an outgrowth of blatantly racist and eugenicist thought among early 20th-century progressives. Even more bizarrely, it argues the pro-life movement has ties to replacement theory, an oft-quoted idea in corporate media that the left will politically dominate due to a massive influx of immigrants.

The article, How The Fight To Ban Abortion Is Rooted In The Great Replacement Theory, written by Alex Samuels and her colleague Monica Potts, even openly contradicts its own thesis.

In order to make this tenuous assertion, the article invokes the recent racist mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. The authors note that in the shooters 180-page manifesto, he expressedconcern about the declining birth ratesof white people. Thats because the anti-abortion movement, at its core, has always been aboutupholding white supremacy.

However, the shooter never once mentioned the word abortion, and thats probably for a very obvious reason: Racists understand that legal abortion is very helpful for their twisted cause. Abortion rates for black women are about four times that of white women, and abortion advocates routinely oppose laws designed to prevent abortion based on the sex and race of the child being aborted. Planned Parenthood has 62 percent of its abortion centers strategically placed within two miles of concentrated African American populations.

FiveThirtyEight also launches into a very dubious history lesson: Declining white birth rates, along with the rising eugenics movement a now-discredited pseudoscience focused on the genetic fitness of white Americans were connected to the practice of abortion, and this helped bolster flawed, racist arguments for a total ban of the procedure. FiveThirtyEight makes no attempt to explain how opposition to euthanasia and abortion would lead to flawed, racist arguments for a total ban of abortion, since abortion reduces the black population and euthanasia has historically been a means of targeting minorities and those with disabilities.

The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, spoke to the KKK and was a proponent of euthanasia and birth control, known for her saying, Eugenics without birth control seems to us a house builded upon the sands. It is at the mercy of the rising stream of the unfit. In 2020, Planned Parenthood took Margaret Sangers name off a New York City facility, and said the move was the first of many organizational shifts to address Sangers legacy and system of institutional racism.

And while it might be understandable that reporting on an issue as polarizing as abortion would cause reporters to rely on ideologically driven sources, FiveThirtyEight resorts to fringe voices such as the co-founder of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism.

Finally, in a key paragraph, the authors seem to admit that the premise of their own article is contradictory and incoherent:

Even on its own terms, though, the logic of tying the anti-abortion movement to the racist great replacement theory is deeply convoluted and downright inaccurate. For instance,fewer women are seeking abortions, and women of color particularly those who are Black are more likely than white women to seek an abortion.

This idea that they are writing about the nation, that the fight over abortion rights is somehow tied to great replacement theory theres just no evidence for in what theyve written, Dr. James Sherley, stem cell biologist and associate scholar of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, told The Federalist. If you look at all of the causes of deaths for African Americans, that rate is still less than all the deaths due to abortions so abortion is the number one killer of black people in America. That just really flies in the face of this article by FiveThirtyEight.

Its just really a terrible article, he added. Its a random assortment of random observations.

Beth Whitehead is an intern at The Federalist and a journalism major at Patrick Henry College. Mollie Hemingway is editor-in-chief of The Federalist.

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FiveThirtyEight Contradicts Its Own Claim That Pro-Life Movement Is Racist - The Federalist

My latest novel, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, takes The Island of Doctor Moreau as a launching pad, probing the connections with race and colonialism inherent in H.G. Wells fiction, as well as its literary and film cousins. It is, as youll see, a long and distinguished lineage.

The Island of Doctor Moreau focuses on a shipwrecked mans discovery of a distant facility in which a reclusive researcher vivisects animals in an effort to turn them into humansa hobby that makes him one of the grand mad scientists of literature. By the end of the short novel, Dr. Moreaus carefully cultivated animal-human society has descended into chaos and murder. But H.G. Wells was not the first, nor the last writer, to tackle the idea of creation gone awry.

Mary Shelleys Victor Frankenstein must hold one of the top spots for a scientist with questionable medical theoriesHerbert West and his zombies seem the only suitable contenders for medical malpractice in fiction.

Frankensteins plan to create a human out of a medley of corpses yields a very tall, hideous, and angry being that has a vendetta against the man who made and abandoned him. As the creature explains: I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel

The James Whales adaptation of Frankenstein released in 1931 is, even to this day, probably the version of the story most people know. Even if they havent watched it, people recognize the unique makeup used to transform Boris Karloff into a monster. Many of its elements, including the look of its laboratory, have been imitated and mined by countless other films and TV shows. Eugenics, the theory of racial improvement and planned breeding, did not exist when Shelley wrote her book, but it was in full swing in the early part of the 20thcentury and it is not surprising that eugenicist ideas percolate in this adaptation.

In the film, Professor Waldman gives a speech on anatomy with two brains in a jar as visual examples:

And here, the abnormal brain of the typical criminal. Observe, ladies and gentlemen, the scarcity of convolutions on the frontal lobe as compared to that of the normal brain, and the distinct degeneration of the middle frontal lobe. All of these degenerate characteristics check amazingly with the history of the dead man before us, whose life was one of brutality, of violence and murder.

Frankenstein sends his assistant to fetch a brain for his creature. The assistant drops the normal brain and must take the criminal abnormal brain instead. As a result, the creature is degenerate: violent, incapable of coherent speech, though also endowed with a dangerous strength.

We owe the concept of criminal brains to Cesare Lombroso, an Italian physician who promulgated the idea that criminality was inherited, and that criminals could be identified by physical defects, which indicated savage or atavistic traits. Sloping foreheads or left-handedness were some of the physical signs of primitive qualities inherent in criminal brains. Lombrosos theories on criminality would be incorporated into eugenic discourse, and the idea of the criminal brain as a source for the creatures violent actions would be reused in many more adaptations to come.

In 1911, German novelist Hanns Heinz Ewers published Alraune. A researcher interested in the study of heredity impregnates a prostitute with the semen of a hanged murderer. The result of this union is a soulless, unscrupulous, cruel girl; a femme fatale of the early 20th century. Alraunes namewhich is the German term for a Mandrake rootharkens back to legends about witches. It was believed that when men were hanged, they would ejaculate. A mandrake root sprouted from their spilled seed and witches used the root to conceive children.

Ewers, who would become a Nazi sympathizer in later years, was obviously building a plot based on notions of heredity and eugenics. Numerous studies conducted on families such as the Jukes served as examples of hereditary criminality, prostitution and poverty. The idea that criminals would birth children who were criminal by nature was utilized to discriminate, sterilize and institutionalize a wide number of people. The scientist in Alraune is therefore even more perverse than Victor Frankensteinwho can be viewed as an unintentionally neglectful manfor he seeks to essentially conduct an experiment in criminality.

The 1932 film Murders in the Rue Morgue is an adaptation of the Poe story of the same name only in the loosest sense. A Parisian scientist abducts young women and injects them with animal blood to create a mate for his sideshow ape. While one can question the soundness of the doctors biological theories, the movie provides plenty of chewy implications on bestiality, miscegenation, and evolution.

One of the great fears in the 19thcentury after the publication of Darwins theory of evolution was that humans were not so different from animals after all. As naturalist W.H. Hudson said: the fact of evolution in the organic world was repellentbecause we did not like to believe that we had been fashioned, mentally and physically, out of the same clay as the lower animals.

The fear that animals and humans shared an uncomfortable number of traits acquired racial and class components when it was bundled with eugenicists rhetoric. Humans of certain races or classes were given animalistic characteristics to denote their inferiority. For example, Elise Lemires Miscegenation: Making Race in America, has shown how Black men were often associated with apes in racist biological discourses. The film version of Murders in the Rue Morgue showcases the terror not only of an infatuated ape, but of white womanhood in danger and of the possible consequences: rape and the birth of a mixed-race child.

The 1932 adaptation of The Island of Doctor Moreau titled The Island of Lost Souls introduced Lota, the panther woman, as an exercise in both erotizing the original, and peeking at the horrors of miscegenation once again. The hero, Edward Parker, is saved from engaging in amorous activities with Lota by the appearance of his fiance, who literally rescues him. Lota, portrayed as a pseudo-native girl in a sarong, is a monster but also a racial other. The real danger in this island is miscegenation and degeneration into a lower state of existence. Barbarism lurks around the corner in fantastic fiction of this era, threatening to pull humanity down the evolutionary ladder.

Finally, there is Julian Huxleys The Tissue-Culture King (1926). An Englishman named Hascombe, who was captured by a remote African tribe, uses his knowledge of biological sciences to culture the living tissue of the tribes King for use in religious rituals. He also creates animal monstrosities (living fetishes), such as two-headed toads, and experiments on humans. As Hascombe explains:

I took advantage of the fact that their religion holds in reverence monstrous and imbecile forms of human beings. That is, of course, a common phenomenon in many countries, where half-wits are supposed to be inspired, and dwarfs the object of superstitious awe. So I went to work to create various new types.

Huxleys story ultimately envisions a world in which religion and science meld together to control the population.

Huxley was an avid eugenicist. You can hear him speak in this 1937 film where he explains how humanity could be improved if defectives were weeded out of our species. Huxley took great pains to differentiate himself from Nazi eugenicists, arguing that Nazi race theory was pseudo-scientific while his ideas were supposedly scientifically valid. In the end, The Tissue-Culture King is an excellent example of a science fiction tale where the issues of race, colonialism and science fiction are grotesquely mixed.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau therefore serves as a natural excavation of this science fiction legacy and an interrogation of the distinguished genealogy of scientists who have haunted the imagination for decades past.

____________________________

Silvia Moreno-Garcias The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is now available from Del Ray.

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Bad Seeds and Mad Scientists: On the Build-A-Humans of 19th-Century Literature - CrimeReads

Scientists have generated artificial lab-grown sperm and eggs from rats and mice, which have gone on to successfully produced healthy offspring, a procedure known as In Vitro Gametogenesis (IVG). Progress has been rapid.

Back in 2016, researchers at the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences produced functional sperm from mouse stem cells that can generate healthy offspring, and these went on to give birth to the next generation.

In 2021, Katsuhiko Hayashi, of Kyushu University, generated functional eggs from skin-derived stem cells of mice. This was achieved by artificially replicating the natural soup of nutrients and growth factors present in mouse ovaries within the culture dish.

In April 2022, it was announced that Toshihiro Kobayashi, of Tokyo University, had derived functional sperm from rat stem cells that can generate viable offspring, a feat that was previously possible only with mice.

There are still many hurdles before IVG can be applied to humans. Nevertheless, it is highly plausible that the technique will eventually be realized for human fertility treatment.

How this works out in Singapore, a highly urbanized Asian country with ultra-low fertility rates, a rapidly aging population, and a sophisticated biotech industry will influence other East Asian countries.

IVG is complex, and labour-intensive, so it will cost much more than conventional fertility treatment which is already extremely expensive. IVG for the relatively small number of patients with primary infertility arising from congenital defects, accidental injury to reproductive organs, chemotherapy and premature ovarian failure will not be commercially viable.

It is going to be a niche market for the wealthy. .

One application which could be exploited commercially is posthumous reproduction for bereaved spouses and parents. Tissues and cells could be harvested from a corpse and be used to produce artificial eggs and sperm via IVG, with the resulting embryos being transferred to a surrogate mother. Needless to say, this would be highly controversial, especially if there is no informed consent from the deceased. Additionally there are also ethical concerns pertaining to the rights, welfare and psychological impact on posthumous children.

Another tiny market would be transgender and intersex couples. Under Singapore law, intersex and transsexual people are allowed to get married, provided they have undergone gender-reassignment surgery, which allows them to legally change their gender on their personal identification documents. Nevertheless, there are very few intersex and transgender people in Singapore.

So where is the market potential? There are four areas: age-related female infertility; same-sex couples; mass-production of donor eggs and sperm for the treatment of infertile patients; and mass-production of human eggs for eugenics applications.

In Singapore, there would be hardly any moral objections to treating age-related infertility with IVG. Singapore is a rapidly ageing society with one of the worlds lowest birth rates. The government is unlikely to discourage novel methods of producing more children. However, IVG may lead to new ethical issues in the treatment of age-related female infertility, such as pressure on women to give birth at an advanced age or pressure on women to follow male career structures.

More problematic would be IVG to enable gay and lesbian couples to have children that share their genetic heritage. For example, artificial eggs could be produced from male stem cells, which can be fertilized by sperm from another man, and the resulting embryos implanted into a surrogate mother. Likewise, artificial sperm can be produced from female stem cells and be used to impregnate another woman.

Even in Singapore, this might be a step too far. But same-sex Singaporean couples could still access IVG overseas. This could put legal and political pressure on the government to recognise offspring as Singaporean citizens. Indeed, recent court cases have emphasized the importance of genetic affinity and blood ties between children and parents, as well as prioritizing the childs welfare above public policy based on societal norms.

For example, in the court ruling of the IVF sperm mix-up case by Thomson Fertility Centre a few years ago, it was explicitly stated that The ordinary human experience is that parents and children are bound by ties of blood and this fact of biological experience heredity carries deep sociocultural significance. In another landmark court case the Singapore High Court granted a gay mans bid to adopt his biological son born via a surrogate mother. The Chief Justice declared that the need to promote the welfare of the child is paramount and outweighs public policy against the formation of same-sex family units.

My feeling is that the Singaporean government will reluctantly recognize the relationship of IVG-conceived children to same-sex parents. They will have citizenship and residency rights, parenthood subsidies, and automatic right of inheritance of the child to the parents estate, in the absence of a will.

Mass production of sperm and eggs for infertile patients could be a lucrative market but an ethical minefield. Customised IVG for individual patients would lead to excess production of eggs and sperm which could be donated to other infertile patients who cannot afford the high costs of the procedure.

Besides the obvious issue of informed consent of patients in the donation process, there are also ethical and legal issues related to the rights and welfare of children conceived in this manner. The most pressing of these involves the fractured and confused identity of donor-conceived children, and their right to know their genetic heritage, such as family history of hereditary diseases. It is for this reason that anonymous sperm and egg donation is currently banned in several Western countries.

Still more contentious would be mass production of eggs and sperm from film stars, fashion models, sport stars, brilliant musicians, Nobel prize-winning scientists and so on. If demand for eggs from a model or sperm from a baseball star were high enough, IVG could power up mass production to supply boutique eugenics agencies.

Of course this risks unintended incestuous sexual relationships and marriages between numerous donor-conceived offspring of a single individual. There is also the possibility of the well-documented phenomenon of Genetic Sexual Attraction between close relatives who first meet as adults.

Finally, IVG has eugenic potential. Its promoters claim that it can be used to prevent transmission of genetic diseases. But the same techniques will facilitate eugenics for prospective parents. Even if genome editing is banned, IVG greatly increases the available number of embryos from which to select the ideal future child via genetic testing and analysis. Currently, artificial intelligence algorithms are being developed for selecting the best and healthiest IVF embryos via genetic screening.

After all, some bioethicists have argued, parents desire the best for their children. They invoke the theory of procreative beneficence, which holds that parents have significant moral reason to select, of the possible children they could have, the child who is most likely to experience the greatest well-being that is, the most advantaged child, the child with the best chance at having the best life.

All these possibilities are coming down the pike. Fast. Singapore needs to be prepared.

Dr Alexis Heng Boon Chin is an associate professor of Biomedical Science at Peking University, China. He had previously worked in the field of human clinical assisted reproduction research in Singapore, and has authored 50 international journal publications on ethical and legal issues relating to new reproductive technologies, in addition to also having published more than 250 scientific journal articles.

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Is Singapore ready for mass production of eggs and sperm from stem cells? - BioEdge

When the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade on 24 June, permitting the state criminalisation of abortion in America, the only thing everyone could agree on was that it was a historic decision. Unfortunately for America, the history it was based on was largely fake. The ruling, Dobbs v Jackson Womens Health Organization, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, claims that in reversing Roe v Wade, the court restores the US to an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment [that] persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973, when Roe legalised abortion. This assertion, however, is easily disproven.As historians have exhaustively explained, early American common law (as in Britain) generally permitted abortions until quickening, or perceptible foetal movement, usually between 16 to 20 weeks into a pregnancy. Connecticut was the first state to ban abortion after quickening, in 1821, which is roughly two centuries after the earliest days of American common law. It was not until the 1880s that every US state had some laws restricting abortion, and not until the 1910s that it was criminalised in every state. In the wake of Dobbs, social media was awash with examples from 18th- and 19th-century newspapers that clearly refuted Alitos false assertion, sharing examples of midwives and doctors legally advertising abortifacients, Benjamin Franklins at-home abortion remedies, and accounts of 19th-century doctors performing therapeutic (medically necessary) abortions.

Dobbss inaccurate claims about the history of US abortion law is one of many reasons why it is so controversial. It is arguably the most divisive ruling since 1857, when the supreme court found that Dred Scott, who had been enslaved and was suing for his freedom, had no standing in US federal courts as a Black man. The Dred Scott decision was a casus belli of the US civil war four years later, and there are many reasons to fear that Dobbs could prove as divisive.

Another proximate cause of the civil war was the Fugitive Slave Act, which led Harriet Beecher Stowe to write what was until 1936 the most popular American novel ever, Uncle Toms Cabin, condemning the cruelty of slavery and the insanity of the fugitive slave laws. The Fugitive Slave Act impelled states to return enslaved humans to their enslavers, even if they were residing in free states that did not recognise slavery, and financially incentivised remanding people into slavery. It was this division that prompted Lincoln to give his famous house divided speech, saying that a nation could not endure half-slave and half-free: because an individuals human rights were drastically changing from state to state. Dobbs has created for pregnant women an analogous situation to the fugitive slave laws, with the bounty hunter laws it has permitted in states like Idaho and Texas, where women may be prosecuted by the state in which they reside for obtaining an abortion beyond its borders. It will create legal chaos, triggering inter-state conflict, as fights over extradition and a states legal rights beyond its own borders will certainly erupt once more.

But there is yet another, less well-known cause for all this in civil-war era America. Although most people today assume that anti-abortion laws were motivated by moral or religious beliefs about a foetuss right to life, that is far from the whole story. In fact, the first wave of anti-abortion laws were entangled in arguments about nativism, eugenics and white supremacism, as they dovetailed with a cultural panic that swept the US in the late 19th and early 20th century as a result of the vast changes in American society wrought by the conflict. This panic was referred to at the time in shorthand as race suicide.

The increasing traction today of the far-right great replacement theory, which contends that there is a global conspiracy to replace white people with people of colour, and has explicitly motivated white supremacist massacres in the US, is often said to have originated with a French novel called The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail. Published in 1973, the same year that Roe v Wade enshrined American womens rights to reproductive autonomy, it is a dystopian account of swarthy hordes of immigrants sweeping in and destroying western civilisation. But there were many earlier panics over white extinction, and in the US, debates around abortion have been entangled with race panic from the start. The fight to criminalise abortion may have successfully passed itself off as a moral crusade, but its origins are rooted in a political one.The idea of race suicide was popularised in the early 20th century largely by Theodore Roosevelt, who urged white women to have more babies to protect native American society against diminishing birth rates. He harangued Americans that intentional childlessness rendered people guilty of being criminals against the race. Roosevelt gave speeches declaring: I believe in children. I want to see enough of them and of the right kind.

The Dobbs opinion explicitly rejects arguments that anti-abortion laws were historically motivated by eugenicist nativism, rather than by religious or moral beliefs. It says that the opposition was only able to produce one prominent proponent of the idea that earlier anti-abortion laws were driven by fear that Catholic immigrants were having more babies than Protestants and that the availability of abortion was leading White Protestant women to shirk their maternal duties. Yet even a cursory survey of American discourse a century ago shows how utterly ubiquitous this idea was, as newspapers and lectures and sermons warned that abortion would mean that Catholics and other foreign-born immigrants would outnumber Protestant, native-born Americans. To take just one example among thousands, a 1903 editorial on population statistics noted that the Protestant population of the US was increasing by 8.1% while the Catholic population was increasing by 21.8%. This alarming condition of things was reflected by physicians reporting on the average more than five abortions a month, none of them in Catholic families. The piece was headlined Religion and Race Suicide.

As a concept, race suicide goes back to the aftermath of the civil war. The fundamental problem of primogeniture ensuring the legitimacy of property succession in a male-dominated society had an even nastier twist in a slave society. Under the laws of American slavery, the more children a Black woman produced, the more human capital her enslaver acquired, while the more white children a white woman produced, the more political capital white men accrued in a representative democracy in which only white men voted and made laws on behalf of all white citizens. But the civil war, and the civil rights amendments that followed it, upended the legal foundations for that old racial and gendered hierarchy. They would have to be rebuilt, and controlling Protestant white womens reproduction to ensure the reproduction of the Protestant elite was central to that project.

The war had devastated a generation of white men, with estimates of around 750,000 dead, or 2.5% of the population, as the ratio of white men to women plummeted after the war. White women were gaining self-determination, forcing their way into higher education and professions. (Men were fighting back: as historians have shown, when American male doctors professionalised in the mid-19th century, one of their projects was to hobble the competition by undermining the legitimacy of midwives and nurse practitioners in caring for pregnant women, and assert their sole control over womens reproduction, which included supporting anti-abortion laws, except when under their care.) Contraception and medical standards were improving while urban industrialisation mitigated against the need for large families to work farms. As a result, white Americans fertility rates dropped precipitously across the 19th century, with families having an average of seven children in 1800, falling to four by 1900. A newly emancipated racial underclass was suddenly shifting the nations power structures, even as huge waves of immigration threatened to undermine Anglo-Saxon cultural and political dominance.

Already in existence as a phrase, race suicide rapidly became shorthand for the protection of white purity. The expression was used in the former Confederate states to describe mixed-race marriages: an 1884 editorial railed against anyone who approves of miscegenation for tolerating the great shame and crime of race suicide. It was invoked to restrict Asian immigration: to allow coolie competition,, wrotedeclared a 1900 editorial in baldly racist terms, is to commit race suicide.

Soon spokesmen for the patriarchal class (politicians, physicians, preachers and professors) were making explicit claims about the racial obligations of Protestant adults to sustain their political dominance.

When Roosevelt and other prominent figures such as sociologist Edward A Ross took up the cry, a panic about race suicide began sweeping the nation, as elite Americans explicitly discussed how to maintain their political dominance if their numbers were dwindling. Antirace suicide clubs were formed, as students at Ivy League universities pledged to have no fewer than five children. By 1918, the US armys campaign for sexual hygiene among soldiers included an educational film called Beware of Race Suicide! Meanwhile, editorials across America called for lawmakers to prevent the awful waste of life at present so great due to abortions and stillbirths: and, more important still, to refuse the right of marriage to the hopelessly diseased and unfit. The argument was straightforwardly eugenicist; soon it was shaping bestselling books, such as Madison Grants 1916 The Passing of the Great Race, which Hitler referred to as his bible.

When the resurgent Ku Klux Klan paraded in Louisiana in 1922, they bore banners that read White Supremacy, America First, One Hundred Per Cent American, Race Purity and Abortionists, Beware! People are sometimes confused by the Klans animus against abortionists, or impute it to generalised patriarchal authoritarianism, but it was much more specifically about race purity: white domination can only be maintained by white reproduction.

Along the way, improvements in medical science had revealed the gradual development of a human foetus and eliminated the simpler idea of quickening, as moral and existential questions about the beginnings of human life became more complex. By the late 1920s and 30s, the successful criminalisation of abortion had sent it underground, while purporting to protect the purity of white women. By 1938, abortion had become so synonymous with the phrase that a film about a criminal abortion ring that preys on young women was titled Race Suicide.

In a forgotten 1928 bestseller called Bad Girl, a married young white woman considers an abortion to maintain her freedom; having decided to keep the baby, she casually employs a racist slur in thinking about the Black mothers with whom she will have to share a ward: But I guess you dont care who your neighbours are once the pain starts, she reflects. The same point is made from an anti-racist perspective in Langston Hughess 1936 story Cora Unashamed, in which a white girl dies from the abortion her mother forces her to undergo rather than see her bear the child of a Greek immigrant. Cora, the Black protagonist, although racially and economically subjugated, has at least borne her own illegitimate mixed-race child free of these lethal hypocrisies.

It was the same year Margaret Mitchell published Gone With the Wind, which replaced Uncle Toms Cabin as Americas bestselling novel. It is also, by no coincidence, a tale of slavery and the civil war, although instead of condemning slavery, it defends it and condemns the war that ended it. The plot of Gone With the Wind is driven less by war, however, than by pregnancy and childbirth. Melanie Wilkes narrowly survives her first labour only to die following a later miscarriage. Scarlett miscarries one child, loses a daughter and contemplates a back-alley abortion.

This focus on the dangers of pregnancy for 19th-century women is part of Gone With the Winds white feminism but is also inextricable from its white supremacism. Melanie wont move north after the war because her son would go to school with Yankees and Black children. Wanting her children to bear witness, and to bear power, she teaches them to hate the Yankees, who have set the darkies up to lord it over us, who are robbing us and keeping our men from voting! Scarlett thinks in similar terms when contemplating her plantation Tara, the red earth which would bear cotton for their sons and their sons sons. Meanwhile Rhetts love for the daughter he forcibly stops Scarlett from aborting is more than paternal adoration and displaced love for Scarlett. Mitchell also makes clear that Rhetts devotion to his daughter is a reflection of his dedication to his people his race and his determination not to let them die out.

By 1939, the year Gone With the Wind premiered as a film, the subtext of race suicide had become manifest. Reporting the latest population statistics, a California paper declared the race suicide prophecies we have heard for many years dont seem to have been justified, as theres evidently life in the white race yet.

Fifteen years later, the United States launched into another of its periodic surges of violence in the onward fight for civil rights and a multiracial democracy. Another landmark supreme court ruling, Brown v Board of Education in 1954, desegregated American public schools. In response, social conservatives began setting up private Christian schools, which also happened to be all-white. As late as 1968, evangelicals at a symposium refused to denounce abortion as a sin, citing individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility as justifications for ending a pregnancy. But with the passage of Roe in 1973, the picture altered, as ever more single women began exercising their rights to bodily autonomy. At the same time, the Nixon administration decided to remove the tax-exempt status of segregated white Christian schools, causing leading social conservatives to seek a wedge issue. As historians have shown, archival correspondence reveals they found in abortion a socially acceptable pretext for a battle that would mobilise social conservatives and allow them to fight for white Christian patriarchy as they understood it, reproducing their dominance.

The day after Dobbs revoked American womens right to reproductive autonomy, Republican congresswoman Mary Miller of Illinois publicly thanked Donald Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, for putting on to the court the justices who created the historic victory for white life in the supreme court. She later claimed it was a slip of the tongue, but the crowd cheered nonetheless. Anyone who was startled by this reaction to the injection of race into a decision supposedly about womens rights does not know the history of abortion law in America. It has always been a contest not only over womens reproduction, but also over the reproduction of political power because in a (putatively) representative democracy, power is a function of population. The assault on womens rights is part of the wider move to reclaim the commanding place in society for a small minority of patriarchal white men. And, as Alitos decision shows, where legal precedent and other justifications cannot be found, myth will fill the vacuum.

The Wrath to Come: Gone With the Wind and the Lies America Tells by Sarah Churchwell will be published by Head of Zeus on 4 August.

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Body politics: the secret history of the US anti-abortion movement - The Guardian