The idea of eugenics fell out of favor after the Holocaust, and the journal Eugenics Quarterly finally changed its name to Social Biology in 1969. This repudiation of Nazi beliefs may be coming to an end, though, as the eugenics movement gains a new wave of sympathizers.

Blogs | Jul. 21, 2017

Current arguments in favor of eugenics seem oddly familiar.

Since being spoiled for a few decades by the Nazis, eugenics is becoming all the rage again. The most recent example is a new program in White County, Tennessee, which offers inmates the option of having time removed from their jail sentence if they agree to undergo a vasectomy or a birth control implant.

General Sessions Court Judge Sam Benningfield said that when he signed the order he had the best interest of the inmates in mind. I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, to not to be burdened with children. This gives them a chance to get on their feet and make something of themselves, Benningfield reportedly said. I understand it wont be entirely successful but if you reach two or three people, maybe thats two or three kids not being born under the influence of drugs. I see it as a win, win.

Don't you just love it, when government officials are looking out for you?

Male inmates can undergo a vasectomy while women can agree to be given a contraceptive implant. If they agree to it they will have 30 days taken off their jail time. According to news reports, 32 women have thus far received the implant and 38 men are awaiting the scary scissors.

I'm horrified by this. But I kind of just figured that this was some wacky judge who came up with a crazy idea. I was therefore a bit disturbed to see that it seems pretty popular. In perusing comments on news stories, there seems to be a number of arguments in support of this no good horrible very bad idea.

Here's some brief snippets from some of the arguments I saw online which were wildly in favor of this plan.

The "It's about the children" argument.

The Ruth Vader Ginsburg school of thought.

The I heartcontraception crowd.

Straight-up racism or as I call it "The Margaret Sanger Theory of Social Purification."

Big picture argument!

And then the argument for fiscal sanity!!!

And how about this interesting anti-abortion argument for coerced vasectomies?

These arguments have all been made before, folks:

The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject, and indeed at any price, and yet takes the life of a hundred thousand healthy children in consequence of birth control or through abortions, in order subsequently to breed a race of degenerates burdened with illnesses. Adolf Hitler

Read more:

Putting the You in Eugenics - National Catholic Register (blog)