Following nearly 100% of prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome in Iceland, parents chose to kill their child in the womb, according to a recent report by CBS News. The almost complementary twitter caption for this articlesuggested that the people of Iceland had found a cure for Down syndrome, rather than simply killing countless children for their disability. The media reaction to eugenics has been disturbingly positive.

If this slaughter was not horrifying enough, consider all the people who view it with indifference or even approval. Parents ask for tests to decide whether their child has a right to life and their society behaves as if nothing is amiss. The desire to live in comfort leads so many to ignore the horrible price, the uncomfortable truth. In Iceland, your humanity is conditional.

A society ostensibly dedicated to combating ableism eradicates a condition by killing those who have it. It indicates not only enormous selfishness and moral decay but also the return of an evil ideology from the past, eugenics.

Initially, many saw eugenics as simply a step towards improving society by applying the research of Mendel and Darwin to humans. However, eugenics quickly became an instrument of the culture of death and a source of countless violations of our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Parts of the United States, including Virginia, embraced this practice. The state government sterilized countless people with mental illness and other conditions. At the same time, Margaret Sanger, a chief proponent of eugenics and the founder of Planned Parenthood sought to prevent minorities from having children. Just as some eugenicists killed the disabled to improve humanity, Sanger sought to limit the number of African-American births in the country. Her legacy lives on in Planned Parenthood and the alt-right. The first is responsible for the murder of countless unborn African-Americans, while many in the latter group support abortion for the same reason.

The National Socialists in Germany adopted many of these ideas. The elderly, the mentally disabled, the physically disabled, the Jews, and many minorities within the region conquered by the Nazis were systematically slaughtered, ostensibly in pursuit of a better mankind. The horror which the widespread application of eugenics in Nazi Germany caused would temporarily damage the popularity of the practice throughout the West. It seems we are beginning to forget.

Of course, Icelanders do not openly claim to be improving the human race by aborting those with Down syndrome. As in the case of Charlie Gard, many claim to be acting in the interests of the child. They weigh the childs future quality of life, but almost always determine that this life is not worth living.

They do not have the right to speak for anyone else in this way, yet they routinely do so. However, this quality of life debate is not just a violation of basic human rights. It is the mark of a society without God, a decaying society. A society that kills those who inconvenience it, wherever and whenever they cannot speak for themselves. This culture of death, often condemned by Pope Francis, pressures the elderly and the sick to consider euthanasia. It kills the unborn, whether for mere convenience or some perceived imperfection.

They have never met those who love their brother, sister, son or daughter who has Down syndrome. They are friends, employees, altar servers, and contributors to our society. I know this from experience because my Catholic community loves each and every one of its children. We recognize their right to life, their humanity. They love life just as much as the rest of us if not more. The eugenicists cannot comprehend this. Icelanders will never give them the chance to love or be loved.

A society that permits such evil will not and should not long survive. Many right-wing observers, rightly or wrongly, fear the combination of falling European birth rates and refugees. Yet this would not be such a great concern if the refugees assimilated and Icelanders raised a new patriotic generation. Iceland has failed on both counts, while this is unlikely to change in the future.

As Icelanders have fewer and fewer children, I see no reason why the next generation there should feel any attachment to their culture.

The potential danger of disaffected youths joining a variety of extremist movements is manifested as they grow to despise their own civilization or even all mankind. Homegrown extremists commit acts of terror, while girls travel abroad to become brides of ISIS. Birth rates decline and native populations age. Religiosity falls as the few who remain wonder how their society eroded so quickly. Mene. Mene. Teckel. Upharsin.

Follow the author on Twitter at: @TOsh0w

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The Ongoing Genocide in Iceland, Eugenics and Down Syndrome - The Narrative Times (blog)

The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) is good at what it does. Thats why it is now trying to tie the white supremacists of the alt-right to the pro-life movement, even though the opposite is closer to the truth. White supremacists at #Charlottesville have close ties not just to Trump, but GOP & anti-choice groups, NARAL announced on Twitter. After connecting one racist marcher to a College Republicans chapter and pointing out that another attended a March for Life, the group rested its case:

It should be no surprise why white supremacists promote #antichoice policies. They disproportionately harm women of color.

This doesnt make much sense. For it to be true, the alt-right would have to want to keep abortion away from racial minorities, even though it knows that abortion reduces Americas black and Hispanic populations. Indeed, NARALs point can be made more effectively the other way around: It is not anti-abortion laws that disproportionately harm women of color, but abortion itself, which has claimed the lives of 19 million black babies since Roe v. Wade in 1973.

That is the reason why, contrary to NARALs protestations, the leaders of the alt-right are actually pro-choice. They dont oppose abortion because its good for racial minorities; they support abortion because it kills them. They hate black people and think America would be better if fewer of them were born.

Though this is terrifying to contemplate, it should not be unfamiliar. In fact, the alt-right tends to praise abortion for the same reasons that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, praised birth control: They helpto rid the country of undesirables.

Richard Spencer, the keynote speaker in Charlottesville and the central figure of the alt-right movement, finds abortion useful. He has explained that abortion will help to bring about his vision of an elite, white America: The people who are having abortions are generally very often Black or Hispanic or from very poor circumstances. The people whom Spencer wants to reproduce, he says, are using abortion when you have a situation like Down Syndrome. It is only the unintelligent and blacks and Hispanics, he claims, who use abortion as birth control.

On this understanding, abortion is a form of eugenics, helping to shape the population to produce more desirables and fewer undesirables. This is why Spencer supports the practice not because he believes that it is a moral good or that women are owed the right to choose, but because he views it as a morally neutral tool that improves the American gene pool by making it whiter and richer.

Spencer has specifically contrasted his position on abortion with that of National Reviews Ramesh Ponnuru. Spencer mocks Ponnurufor undertaking a human rights crusade, built on the assumption that every being that is human has a right to life. Spencer, of course, doesnt believe that is true.

He has openly mocked conservatives who worry about a black genocide or how [abortion] is destroying black communities. He knows that an estimated 75 percent of women who have abortions are poor. He knows that black women, receiving an outsize 36 percent of all American abortions, are almost five times as likely to terminate their pregnancies as white women. Nothing could make him happier.

Also secure in that knowledge is the pseudonymous alt-righter Aylmer Fisher, who writes in Spencers Radix Journal. It is important we not fall prey to the pro-life temptation, Fisher proclaims. Her reasoning is predictable: The only ones who cant [avoid an unwanted pregnancy] are the least intelligent and responsible members of society: women who are disproportionately Black, Hispanic, and poor.

This sort of racism is largely foreign to todays pro-choice movement. Its members genuinely believe that a fetus either does not count as human life or does not carry moral value. The task of pro-lifers is to convince them on the science and ethics, and show that abortion preys on women more than it empowers them.

But abortion hits racial minorities harder than any other group, and this fact has not been incidental to its history in America. As National Reviews Kevin Williamson detailed extensively in a cover story earlier this year, progressive eugenics was the intellectual ferment out of which rose the American birth-control movement.

Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, wanted to make the coming generation into such physically fit, mentally capable, socially alert individuals as are the ideal of a democracy. In other words, she sought to improve the human race.

However, she faced an obstacle the same one that so troubles Richard Spencer and his acolytes: The feebleminded are notoriously prolific in reproduction, wrote Sanger in Woman and the New Race.This would be a problem with a solution to which Sanger devoted her lifes work: controlling the birth rate, especially among the unfit (read: the poor, blacks, and Catholic immigrants).

This goal brought her into contact with Charles C. Little, the president of the American Eugenics Society (AES), and a founding board member of the American Birth Control League (ABCL), which eventually became Planned Parenthood. Littles two associations are not coincidental: The ABCL, founded by Sanger in 1921, even shared office space with the AES. Moreover, as Williamson notes, Little believed that birth-control policy should be constructed in such a way as to protect Yankee stock referred to in Sangers own work as unmixed native white parentage.

Linda Gordon, author of The Moral Property of Woman: A History of Birth-Control Politics, examined the ABCLs in-house publication, the Birth Control Review. She reports that, A content analysis of the Birth Control Review showed that by the late 1920s only 4.9 percent of its articles in that decade had any concern with womens self-determination. Furthermore, It was Sangers courting of doctors and eugenists that moved the ABCL away from both the Left and liberalism, away from both socialist-feminist impulses and civil liberties arguments toward an integrated population program for the whole society.

There is little doubt that the alt-right would like to pursue just such an integrated population program for the whole society. Unlike pro-lifers, its acolytes have no desire to protect life for its own sake.

Or, as Spencer himself has put it, pro-lifers want to be radical...human rights thumpers and theyre not us. On this point, I wont argue. Neither should anyone whose movements intellectual progenitor is Margaret Sanger.

READ MORE: In Charlottesville, the Alt-Rights Chickens Come Home to Roost Conservatisms Game of Footsie with the Alt-Right Campus Conservatives Gave the Alt-Right a Platform

Elliot Kaufman is an editorial intern at National Review.

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Alt-Right & Abortion: Richard Spencer & Co. Uphold Margaret ... - National Review

Due to the rise of prenatal screening tests, the number of babies born with Down syndrome in the Western world has begun to significantly diminish. And no one, as CBS News puts it, is eradicating Down syndrome births quite like the country of Iceland.

Now, the word eradication typically implies that an ailment is being cured or beaten by some technological advancement. Not so in this case. Nearly 100 percent of women who receive positive tests for Down syndrome in that small nation end up eradicating their pregnancies. Iceland averages only one or two Down syndrome children per year, and this seems mostly a result of parents receiving inaccurate test results.

Its just a matter of time until the rest of the world catches up. In the United States around 67 percent of women who find out their child will be born with Down syndrome opt to have an abortion. In the United Kingdom its around 90 percent. More and more women are taking these prenatal tests, and the tests are becoming increasingly accurate.

For now, however, Iceland has completed one of the most successful eugenics programs in the contemporary world.If you think thats overstated, consider that eugenics the word itself derived from Greek, meaning well born is nothing more than an effort to control breeding to increase desirable heritable characteristics within a population. This can be done through positive selection, as in breeding the right kinds of people with each other, or in negative selection, which is stopping the wrong kinds of people from having children.

The latter was the hallmark of the progressive movement of the 1900s. It was the rationalization behind the coerced sterilization of thousands of mentally ill, poor, and minorities here in America. It is why real-life Nazis required doctorsto register all newborns born with Down syndrome. And the first humans they gassed were children under three years old with serious hereditary diseases like Down syndrome.

Most often Down syndrome isnt hereditary, of course, but for many these children are considered undesirable really, they are considered inconvenient although most are born with moderate cognitive or intellectual disabilities and many live full lives.

If Icelands policy reflects a relatively heavy-handed genetic counseling, as geneticist Kari Stefansson admits in a video, then what will it mean when we have the science to extrapolate on these tests and pinpoint other problematic traits in people? How about children with congenital heart defects or cleft palates or sickle-cell disease or autism? Eradicate?

One day a DNA test will be able to tell us virtually anything we want to know, including our tendencies. So heres the best way to frame the ugliness of these eradication policies in terms more people might care about: Iceland has made great strides in eradicating gay births or Iceland has made great strides in eradicating low-IQ births or Iceland has made great strides in eradicating births of those who lean towards obesity or Iceland has made great strides in eradicating births of mixed-race babies. Feel free to insert the fact of humankind that gets you most upset.

How about, Iceland has made great strides in eradicating female births?

From what I could tell admittedly, this is through social media; I see no polling on the issue most people, many liberals included, reacted to Icelands selective eradication of Down syndrome children negatively. Polling from the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institutehas found that 77 percent believed abortion should be illegal if the sole reason for seeking an abortion was to have a boy or girl.

I dont understand why.If your circumstance or inconvenience is a justifiable reason to eradicate a pregnancy who wants to be punished with a baby, after all? why wouldnt a sex-selective abortion be okay? Does the act of abortion transform into something less moral if we feel differently about it? Does the act change because it targets a group of people that we feel are being victimized? What is the ethical difference between a sex-selective abortion and plain-old abortion of a girl?

One imagines that most women carrying babies with genetic disorders in Iceland did not opt to have abortions because they harbor hate or revulsion towards Down syndrome children. I assume they had other reasons, including the desire to give birth to a healthy child and avoid the complications that the alternative would pose.

A number of U.S. states have passed or want to pass laws that would ban abortions sought due to fetal genetic abnormalities, such as Down syndrome, or because of the race, sex, or ethnicity of a fetus. Such a U.S. House bill failed in 2012. Most Democrats involved claimed to be against sex-selective abortion, but not one gave a reason why. Probably because once you admit that these theoretical choices equate to real-life consequences, like eugenics, you are conceding that these are lives were talking about, not blobs. In America, such talk is still frowned upon.

Icelanders, apparently, are more honest:

Over at Landspitali University Hospital, Helga Sol Olafsdottir counsels women who have a pregnancy with a chromosomal abnormality. They speak to her when deciding whether to continue or end their pregnancies. Olafsdottir tells women who are wrestling with the decision or feelings of guilt: This is your life you have the right to choose how your life will look like.

Well, not everyone gets to choose what his or her life looks like. Certainly not those who are eradicated because they suffer from genetic disorders.Then again, We dont look at abortion as a murder, Olafsdottir explains later. We look at it as a thing that we ended. A thing? Using an ambiguous noun is a cowardly way to avoid the set of moral questions that pop up when you have to define that thing. And science is making it increasingly difficult to circumvent that debate.

Read more:

Pro-Choicers Should Explain Why They Think Eugenics Is Acceptable - The Federalist

By DAVID HARSANYI August 20. 2017 11:12PM Due to the rise of prenatal screening tests in Europe and the United States, the number of babies born with Down syndrome has begun to diminish significantly. And no one, as CBS News puts it, is eradicating Down syndrome births quite like Iceland.

The word eradication typically implies an ailment is being cured or beaten by some technological advancement. Not so in this case. Nearly 100 percent of women who receive positive test results for Down syndrome in that small nation end up eradicating their pregnancy. Iceland averages only one or two Down syndrome children per year. This seems mostly a result of parents receiving inaccurate test results.

Its just a matter of time until the rest of the world catches up. In the United States, an estimated 67 percent of women who find out their child will be born with Down syndrome opt to have an abortion. In the United Kingdom, its 90 percent. More and more women are taking these prenatal tests, and the tests are becoming increasingly accurate.

For now, however, Iceland has completed one of the most successful eugenics programs in the contemporary world. If you think thats overstated, consider that eugenics the word itself derived from the Greek word meaning well-born is the effort to control breeding to increase desirable heritable characteristics within a population. This can be done through positive selection, as in breeding the right kinds of people with each other, or negative selection, which is stopping the wrong kinds of people from having children.

The latter was the hallmark of the progressive movement of the 1900s. It was the rationalization behind the coerced sterilization of thousands of the mentally ill, poor and minorities here in America. It is why Nazis required doctors to register all newborns born with Down syndrome, and why the first to be gassed were children under 3 years old with serious hereditary diseases like Down syndrome.

Down syndrome usually isnt hereditary. Most children born with it have moderate cognitive or intellectual disabilities, and many live full lives. But for many, these children are considered undesirable inconvenient, really.

If Icelands policy reflects a relatively heavy-handed genetic counseling, as geneticist Kari Stefansson admits, then what will it mean when we have the science to extrapolate and pinpoint other problematic traits? How about children with congenital heart defects or cleft palates or sickle-cell disease or autism? Eradication?

One day, a DNA test will be able to tell us virtually anything we want to know, including our tendencies. So heres the best way to frame eradication policies in terms more people might care about: Iceland has made great strides in eradicating gay births or Iceland has made great strides in eradicating low-IQ births or Iceland has made great strides in eradicating the birth of those who lean toward obesity or Iceland has made great strides in eradicating the birth of mixed-race babies. Feel free to insert the facet of humankind that gets you most upset.

How about Iceland has made great strides in eradicating female births? If your circumstance or inconvenience were a justifiable reason to eradicate a pregnancy, why wouldnt a sex-selective abortion be OK? Does the act of abortion transform into something less moral if we feel differently about it? Does the act change because it targets a group of people that we feel is being victimized? What is the ethical difference between a sex-selective abortion and plain-old abortion of a female?

One imagines that most women in Iceland who were carrying a baby with a genetic disorder did not opt to have an abortion because they harbor hate or revulsion toward children with Down syndrome. I assume they had other reasons, including the desire to give birth to a healthy child and avoid the complications that the alternative would pose.

A number of U.S. states have passed or want to pass laws that would ban abortions sought due to fetal genetic abnormalities, such as Down syndrome, or because of the race, sex or ethnicity of the fetus. One such U.S. House bill failed in 2012. Most Democrats involved claimed to be against sex-selective abortion, but not one gave a reason why. Thats probably because once you admit that these theoretical choices equate to real-life consequences like eugenics, you are conceding that these are lives were talking about, not blobs. In America, such talk is still frowned upon.

At one hospital in Iceland, Helga Sol Olafsdottir counsels women who have a pregnancy with a chromosomal abnormality, explains the CBS article. She says: We dont look at abortion as a murder. We look at it as a thing that we ended. A thing? Using an ambiguous noun is a cowardly way to avoid the set of moral questions that pop up when you have to define that thing. And science is making it increasingly difficult to circumvent that debate.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter @davidharsanyi.

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David Harsanyi: Pro-choicers should explain why eugenics is acceptable - The Union Leader

Brian Mark Weber Aug. 18, 2017

In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, readers are presented with a dystopian vision of the future in which the whole process of conception and birth is delegated to the scientific community. Parents have no emotional connection to their children, and motherhood itself is considered embarrassing and obscene.

The novel, written in 1931, seemed far-fetched at the time. Yet it wasnt long after Huxley penned his dark and frightening tale that science and politics began to consider the implications, and the possibilities, of playing God with human reproduction in order to bring about desired results.

Columnist David Harsanyi writes, [Negative selection eugenics] was the rationalization behind the coerced sterilization of thousands of mentally ill, poor, and minorities here in America. It is why real-life Nazis required doctors to register all newborns born with Down syndrome. And the first humans they gassed were children under three years old with serious hereditary diseases like Down syndrome.

But why wait? Aborting unborn children with Down syndrome is gaining acceptance once again, and the latest wave of news is from Iceland. Yet the childs suffering or the elimination of a human life doesnt seem to be part of the conversation, nor does the post-abortion health of the mother.

Whats interesting is that, according to Kevin Burke in the Washington Examiner, About 80 percent of parents facing the same diagnosis, who were provided with the option of perinatal hospice care for the child and family, chose to carry their disabled child to term. Apparently, most parents planning to abort their children dont receive this advice.

Burke adds, Those who advocate for routine screening to detect fetal disabilities also fail to advise parents of the potential for serious post-abortion reactions. The fallout from this loss can place a tremendous strain on couples as they struggle with the shock and pain that can follow the abortion. Some abortion advocates may concede that some women suffer symptoms of depression and grief immediately after termination of disabled babies, but they see this as a short-term condition. Research, however, confirms that women often suffer symptoms of emotional trauma and complicated grief years after such procedures.

Sadly, and just like the people in Brave New World, Icelanders no longer seem to value human life. Parents who fail to think of their unborn child as human are less likely to keep their child when the options are presented to them.

As Helga Sol Olafsdottir, a counselor at Landspitali University Hospital, helpfully explains, We dont look at abortion as a murder. We look at it as a thing that we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication preventing suffering for the child and for the family.

A thing? If children are considered things, then it cant be long before countries like Iceland start passing their own version of Nazi Germanys Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.

How far away is it when people like Princeton University professor Elizabeth Harman say, Some early fetuses will die in early pregnancy due to abortion or miscarriage. And in my view that is a very different kind of entity. Thats something that doesnt have a future as a person and it doesnt have moral status.

While those on the Left may rush to defend a program that frees parents from the burden of raising a disabled child, they should seriously think about the implications of going down this path.

The situation is not much better in the United States, where nearly two-thirds of American women whose prenatal screening tests reveal Down syndrome choose to have an abortion. Fortunately, theres still some resistance at the political level.

Harsanyi notes, A number of U.S. states have passed or want to pass laws that would ban abortions sought due to fetal genetic abnormalities, such as Down syndrome, or because of the race, sex, or ethnicity of a fetus. Such a U.S. House bill failed in 2012. Most Democrats involved claimed to be against sex-selective abortion, but not one gave a reason why. Probably because once you admit that these theoretical choices equate to real-life consequences, like eugenics, you are conceding that these are lives were talking about, not blobs.

And what if science develops to the point where we can identify other traits in humanity that parents may find undesirable: a genetic heart condition or a low IQ or, where it would really hit home for leftists, homosexuality? Gender-based abortions of girls are already the norm in Communist China. When society reaches the point where only desirable children are allowed to enter this world, are we still a civilization? And if a free society lacks the moral compass to speak out against this practice, how can we oppose another government that one day might decide that Jews, Africans or Christians are a problem?

These are the questions that should be asked before science allows us to discover even more undesirable traits in unborn children, and before the political class yields to social and cultural decay. Lets face it: Were living in a Brave New World today. But unlike the society in Huxleys novel, we must summon the courage and decency to end the ghastly practice of eugenics.

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Brian Mark Weber: The 'Brave New World' of Down Syndrome ... - Patriot Post

Last night, CBS News took a break from hyperventilating about the looming Nazi menace to spend a few minutes exploring the benefits of eugenics.

And heres how CBS frames it:

Should the rest of the world follow suit? I thought we answered that question in 1945.

As a lot of people have pointed out, this isnt eliminating Down Syndrome. Its killing people who have an unpreventable genetic abnormality. Its eugenics.

If youre an abortion enthusiast oh, sorry, if you support abortion rights you have no problem with this. You believe that some lives matter more than others. You believe that the difference between a fetus and a baby is up to the mother. You might even believe that its okay to kill a baby because it doesnt have a future because youre killing it.

You believe that a person with problems you dont have, and that youd rather not deal with, isnt really a person.

So why not? After all, youre only ending a pregnancy with an abnormality. Its not as if were talking about a human being.

If you want more liberty and lower taxes and the freedom to say so, youre a Nazi. But not if you want to wipe out the untermenschen to bring about a glorious, genetically perfect future. Thats where we are now.

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CBS News Asks: Is Eugenics Right For You? - The Daily Caller

Recently, a CBS news crew traveled to Iceland, producing a report titled Inside the country where Down syndrome is disappearing. As much as it sounds like it, the headline is not clickbait or hyperbole: In Iceland, nearly every women who undergoes prenatal testing and whose fetus receives a diagnosis of Down syndrome decides to end her pregnancy. Each year, according to their sources, only a child or two is born with Down syndrome in Iceland.

Up to 85% of pregnant women in Iceland choose to take prenatal testing. The specific test in question, which CBS calls the combination test, takes into account ultrasound images, a blood draw, and a mothers age to determine the likelihood that a fetus has Down syndrome. (Older mothers are more likely to have babies with Down syndrome because chromosomal errors are more likely as women age.)

In essence, pregnant women in Icelandand presumably their partnersare saying that life with disability is not worth living. It is one thing to decide that a child who will never walk, talk, feed herself, or engage with caregivers may not have a good quality of life. But children with Down syndrome do not fit this description. If a woman doesnt want to have a child with Down syndrome, their bar for what qualifies as a life worth living is set quite high. Are babies who are born deaf destined to lead a worthwhile life? What about babies with cleft palates, which can be corrected but leave a visible scar?

Heres the interesting thing: Down syndrome, or Trisomy 21 as it is also called, is actually one of the less severe chromosomal conditions. Unlike many other trisomies (genetic conditions in which a person has three copies of a chromosome instead of the standard two), its compatible with life.

People with Down syndrome have an extra copy of their 21st chromosome, which causes intellectual delays and readily identifiable facial features such as almond-shaped eyes. But the way that Down syndrome expresses itself in an individual can be highly variable. About half of babies born with Down syndrome have heart defects that require surgical correction. Some children with Down syndrome grow up to be adults who go to college and get married; others never live independently.

Can she live a full life without without ever solving a quadratic equation? Without reading Dostoyevsky? Im pretty sure she can.I have interviewed Amy Julia Becker many times over the years. Becker wrote a book about her daughter, Penny, who has Down syndrome. In A Good and Perfect Gift, Becker, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton, chronicles her shift in thinking about intelligence. Pre-Penny, she had assumed that being smart is a prerequisite for being happy and fulfilled. Post-Penny, she changed her mind. Can she live a full life without without ever solving a quadratic equation? Without reading Dostoyevsky? Im pretty sure she can. Can I live a full life without learning to cherish and welcome those in this world who are different from me? Im pretty sure I cant.

Deciding what sorts of lives are worth living brings us disturbingly close to the bygone era of eugenics, when only the right sorts of people were supposed to procreate.

In 1927, a US Supreme Court decision upheld the right of the state of Virginia to sterilize Carrie Buck, whose daughter, Vivian, was deemed to be feeble-minded. Paul Lombardo, a professor of law at Georgia State University who is an expert on eugenics, believes that Vivian was in fact of normal intelligence. Eventuallyand fortunatelyeugenics fell out of favor, and several US states have issued apologies to people who were forcibly sterilized over the years. Yet the bias against people with disabilities is still very much evident.

When I interviewed Lombardo for my book, The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies Are Changing the Way We Have KidsAnd the Kids We Have, he noted that theres a long list of physical and mental disabilities that people find discomfiting. At the top of that list? Intellectual disabilities.In other words, Down syndrome and other similar conditions that result in people not being able to pursue a PhD or do quantum physics are often seen as bigger impediments to a life worth living than physical impairments. But is that our choice to make for them?

Deciding that people with Down syndrome dont live worthwhile lives can snowball into a groupthink situation. It will become less and less acceptable to raise a child with Down syndrome, and that will translate into fewer support services available to parents who decide to buck the trend. The lack of support will further encourage women to terminate their pregnancies, leading to even fewer babies born with the condition in the future. If we continue to follow this path, the disappearance of Down syndrome will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And to what end?

You can follow Bonnie on Twitter. Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

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Down syndrome in Iceland: The disturbing, eugenics-like reality that ... - Quartz

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Aug. 18, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Nexus Caridades Attorneys Inc. announced comprehensive civil action against White County, White County Judge, Sam Benningfield, White County Sheriff Oddie Shoupe, and White County personnel involved in the resurgence of eugenics in our country.

View/Download Entire Press Conference:Click for Facebook Live Coverage View/Download Entire Complaint ViaDrop Box: Ward v. Stroupe, et al, Federal Lawsuit

The lawsuit states, "Simply put, in 2017, our country has come too far with respect to promoting the inherent worth and dignity of people (incarcerated or otherwise), to go this far backwards."The lawsuit further points out "White County Jail inmates, including Ms. Ward, had Nexplanon injected into their arms in exchange for a promised 30-day jail time reduction prior to Judge Benningfield's order," therefore, "In his capacity as Sheriff, Shoupe, was the final policy maker for White County with respect to all health programs in which White County Jail inmates participated."

Mike Donovan, Civil Rights Advocate, and President and CEO of Nexus Services, Inc. stated during the press conference, "This is not about sentence reduction.It's not about family planning.It is about who Sheriff Shoupe considers undesirable to procreate in White County." Donovan added, "That the sheriff and the judge are playing God.

Attorney, Mario Williams, Chief of the Nexus Caridades, Inc. Civil Rights Division also addressed the media imploring: "The number one question we should ask, is a Constitutional Right. The law already says that Americans shall be free from coercion about making decisions about reproductive rights and procreation."

Prior to a judge's order, the lawsuit states," [Sheriff] Shoupe ordered his subordinate Daniels to take Ms. Ward and each person that completed the Department of Health Neonatal Syndrome Education (NAS) Program to the White County Jail Infirmary so that Ms. Ward and others could be sterilized by officials from the Tennessee Department of Health."

The suit is being filed by Nexus Caridades Attorneys Inc. Nexus Caridades Attorneys Inc. is one of the largest providers of pro bono legal services in the country.Nexus Caridades, Inc. is committed to standing up for victims of abuse by government agencies and officials.http://www.nexuscaridades.com/

Nexus Services, Inc. is a leading provider of immigrant bail securitization and electronic monitoring. The organization funds Nexus Caridades Attorneys Inc. as part of its corporate giving and in an effort to increase access to justice for disadvantaged people across the United States.http://www.nexushelps.com/

MEDIA INQUIRIES: Jen LittleDirector of Public RelationsNexus Services, Inc. Mobile: 540-255-9492 rel="nofollow">jlittle@nexushelps.com nexushelps.com

View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nexus-services-inc-announced-federal-lawsuit-practice-of-eugenics-at-the-hands-of-white-county-sheriff-judge-sheriffs-deputy--white-county-administration-300506676.html

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Posted: Aug 18, 2017 12:01 AM

Due to the rise of prenatal screening tests in Europe and the United States, the number of babies born with Down syndrome has begun to diminish significantly. And no one, as CBS News puts it, is "eradicating Down syndrome births" quite like Iceland.

Now, the word "eradication" typically implies that an ailment is being cured or beaten by some technological advancement. That's not so in this case. Nearly 100 percent of women who receive positive test results for Down syndrome in that small nation end up eradicating their pregnancy. Iceland averages only one or two Down syndrome children per year, and this seems mostly a result of parents receiving inaccurate test results.

It's just a matter of time until the rest of the world catches up. In the United States, an estimated 67 percent of women who find out their child will be born with Down syndrome opt to have an abortion. In the United Kingdom, it's 90 percent. More and more women are taking these prenatal tests, and the tests are becoming increasingly accurate.

For now, however, Iceland has completed one of the most successful eugenics programs in the contemporary world. If you think that's overstated, consider that eugenics -- the word itself derived from the Greek word meaning "well-born" -- is the effort to control breeding to increase desirable heritable characteristics within a population. This can be done through "positive selection," as in breeding the "right" kinds of people with each other, or "negative selection," which is stopping the wrong kinds of people from having children.

The latter was the hallmark of the progressive movement of the 1900s. It was the rationalization behind the coerced sterilization of thousands of the mentally ill, poor and minorities here in America. It is why Nazis required doctors to register all newborns born with Down syndrome, and why the first to be gassed were children under 3 years old with "serious hereditary diseases" like Down syndrome.

Down syndrome usually isn't hereditary. Most children born with it have moderate cognitive or intellectual disabilities, and many live full lives. But for many, these children are considered undesirable -- "inconvenient," really.

If Iceland's policy "reflects a relatively heavy-handed genetic counseling," as geneticist Kari Stefansson admits, then what will it mean when we have the science to extrapolate and pinpoint other problematic traits? How about children with congenital heart defects or cleft palates or sickle-cell disease or autism? Eradication?

One day, a DNA test will be able to tell us virtually anything we want to know, including our tendencies. So here's the best way to frame eradication policies in terms more people might care about: "Iceland has made great strides in eradicating gay births" or "Iceland has made great strides in eradicating low-IQ births" or "Iceland has made great strides in eradicating the birth of those who lean toward obesity" or "Iceland has made great strides in eradicating the birth of mixed-race babies." Feel free to insert the facet of humankind that gets you most upset.

How about "Iceland has made great strides in eradicating female births"? If your circumstance or inconvenience were a justifiable reason to eradicate a pregnancy, why wouldn't a sex-selective abortion be OK? Does the act of abortion transform into something less moral if we feel differently about it? Does the act change because it targets a group of people that we feel is being victimized? What is the ethical difference between a sex-selective abortion and plain-old abortion of a female?

One imagines that most women in Iceland who were carrying a baby with a genetic disorder did not opt to have an abortion because they harbor hate or revulsion toward children with Down syndrome. I assume they had other reasons, including the desire to give birth to a healthy child and avoid the complications that the alternative would pose.

A number of U.S. states have passed or want to pass laws that would ban abortions sought due to fetal genetic abnormalities, such as Down syndrome, or because of the race, sex or ethnicity of the fetus. One such U.S. House bill failed in 2012. Most Democrats involved claimed to be against sex-selective abortion, but not one gave a reason why. That's probably because once you admit that these theoretical choices equate to real-life consequences like eugenics, you are conceding that these are lives we're talking about, not blobs. In America, such talk is still frowned upon.

At one hospital in Iceland, "Helga Sol Olafsdottir counsels women who have a pregnancy with a chromosomal abnormality," explains the CBS article. She says: "We don't look at abortion as a murder. We look at it as a thing that we ended." A thing? Using an ambiguous noun is a cowardly way to avoid the set of moral questions that pop up when you have to define that "thing." And science is making it increasingly difficult to circumvent that debate.

Read the original:

Pro-Choicers Should Explain Why They Think Eugenics Is Acceptable - Townhall

Iceland has nearly achieved a shocking goal the country has eliminated almost 100 percent of children with Down syndrome.

They've aborted almost all of them.

CBS News reports it's due to widespread use of prenatal screening.

Even though most people born with Down syndrome live long, healthy lives, most pregnant women in Iceland choose to abort these babies. Only one or two babies with the disorder slip past the screening process each year.

Other countries are doing the same thing. Denmark has aborted 98 percent and the U.S. has aborted at least 67 percent of babies with this genetic disorder.

Wednesday, Christian evangelist Joni Eareckson Tada, who has been a quadriplegic in a wheelchair for 50 years following a diving accident, issued a statement saying, "Over 25 years ago when I served on the National Council on Disability, we responded vehemently against a report from the National Institutes on Health which listed abortion as a 'disability prevention strategy.' All 15 bi-partisan council members strongly advised the NIH to remove any reference which used abortion as a tactic in eliminating disability."

She added,"Each individual, no matter how significantly impaired, is an image-bearer of our Creator God. And people with Down syndrome are arguably some of the most contented and happy people on the planet. From them, we learn unconditional love and joyful acceptance of others who appear different. Now, even that is in jeopardy of being eradicated."

Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America also spoke out against the practice.

"Iceland sounds like they are proud of the fact that they've killed nearly all unborn babies that had an in-utero diagnosis of Down syndrome," Nance said. "This is not a medical advancement. This is eugenics and barbarianism at best." And Dr. James Dobson wrote, "I have rarely seen a story that so closely resembles Nazi-era eugenics as a recent report about Iceland 'eradicating' nearly 100 percent of Down syndrome births through abortion."

"We should all be deeply sorrowful and outraged. This practice is as equally inhumane as the views of the racist bigots who disgraced our country in Charlottesville this past weekend," he continued.

Pro-life actress Patricia Heaton is also weighing in.

"Iceland isn't actually eliminating Down Syndrome. They're just killing everybody that has it. Big difference," Heaton tweeted.

This high number of abortions in the U.S. and elsewhere are because of a simple, new blood test that detects Down syndrome. The test is non-invasive and can be performed early in pregnancy. Therefore, many, if not most, women have it.

Before today's non-invasive blood test, the test to determine whether an unborn child had Down syndrome, by comparison, was rarely performed. Called an amniocentesis, it was invasive and could have damaged, even killed, the baby. It was performed in the later stages of pregnancy and involved inserting a needle into the mother's placenta to extract amniotic fluid.

Today, the reason so many women choose to abort their Down syndrome babies is because they believe their child's life is not worth living. However,parents of Down syndrome childrensay that'snot true.

For example, whenCherry Jensengave birth to a Down syndrome baby, she recalls how her doctors vastly underestimated how high her daughter would function. Now Cherry uses her daughter's story to convince other women to keep their unborn Down syndrome children. There are many stories of people with Down syndrome who are successful inbusiness, sports and other endeavors, evenmodeling.

A coffee shop is Wilimington, North Carolina is giving people with Down Syndrome the chance to work. Check out the story here.

According to astudyof parents of children with Down syndrome:

According to astudyof people with Down syndrome over age 12:

7MYTHSabout people with Down syndrome:

Read this article:

SHOCKING Eugenics in Iceland: Nearly All Babies with Down Syndrome Aborted - CBN News

Well, that was a rough day, America. Id count on more of the same today. But with all its insanity and hoopla, it is this story by Alexandra DeSanctis, on Iceland having no room for babies with Down Syndrome, that frightens, enrages, and is most likely to result in Gods wrath and fury.

And now, back to the fallout of the Charlottesville Weekend. About those other matters, here are nine suggestions of worthwhile pieces and podcasts that you will find on NRO today.

1. Very fine people? David French writes in The Corner that Donald Trump Just Gave the Press Conference of the Alt-Rights Dreams.

2. Jonah Goldberg slams Conservatisms Damaging Game of Footsie with the Alt-Right.

3. Limitations of statues: Kyle Smith asks Destroying Symbols: Where Does It End? From his piece:

Once every Confederate monument in the country is down, what then? How is a statue of an ordinary rebel soldier in Durham, N.C., more offensive than a gorgeous building-sized tribute to slave-owning racist Thomas Jefferson on the Tidal Basin? We are reaching the point where, if the Washington Monument were to be blown up tomorrow, it would be anyones guess whether jihadists or the anti-fascist Left did it.

4. Related: Quin Hillyer argues in The Corner against removing all Confederate Monuments.

5. A Nobel Peace laureate dies in a Chinese prison. Here is a slice of Jianli Yangs article Liu Xiaobos Stern Warning:

Liu Xiaobo feared then that the West might repeat the same mistake as it did during the rise of the fascist Third Reich and the Communist USSR. He warned that the international community must remain vigilant in the face of the rising Chinese Communist dictatorship because the game for world dominance had changed. The Chinese Communists had also morphed into a new beast more adaptive, cunning, and deceptive.

6. Michelle Malkin wants to know Where Is the Corporate Disavowal of Black Lives Matters?

7. Will the Trump Administration give billions to West Virginias coal industry? Michael Tanner calls the plan corporate welfare that needs to be stopped.

8. On a new episode of The Editors, Rich, Charlie, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and Dan McLaughlin discuss the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginiaand its fallout. Listen here.

9. And in a special history edition of The Editors, Rich Lowry talks with eminent historians Victor Davis Hanson and Andrew Roberts to discuss the evacuation of British and French forces from Dunkirk at the outset of World War 2. Listen here.

Its 7AM and I am already exhausted. Only a few more days and Big Jim Geraghty will be back in the MJ saddle. Until tomorrow, God bless.

Excerpt from:

The Morning Jolt - National Review

Maybe CBS News missed it, but this is called EUGENICS

Nearly 100% of women in Iceland whose unborn baby tests positive for Down syndrome are aborting them. From CBS News:

Since prenatal screening tests were introduced in Iceland in the early 2000s, the vast majority of women close to 100 percent who received a positive test for Down syndrome terminated their pregnancy.

While the tests are optional, the government states that all expectant mothers must be informed about availability of screening tests, which reveal the likelihood of a child being born with Down syndrome. Around 80 to 85 percent of pregnant women choose to take the prenatal screening test, according to Landspitali University Hospital in Reykjavik.

They act like it is the test thats eliminating Down syndrome

Gosh, whats the word for killing people with a certain trait or disability its on the tip of our tongue:

OH YEAH, thats it.

Besides, those tests are never wrong, right?

Hrm.

Wait, you mean doctors dont always know best?

Get outta here.

Its CBS, you have to ask?

Like its just every day where people abort imperfect children yup.

Scary times.

Related:

Because YOU think youre a MAN! Woman loses collective shiznit on cops outside Trump Tower

Excerpt from:

EUGENICS: Patricia Heaton BLASTS CBS for report on Iceland eliminating Down syndrome via abortion - Twitchy

In her book The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics And Feebleminded, poet Molly McCully Brown explores themes of disability, eugenics and faith. Kristin Teston/Persea hide caption

In her book The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics And Feebleminded, poet Molly McCully Brown explores themes of disability, eugenics and faith.

Growing up in southwestern Virginia in recent decades, poet Molly McCully Brown often passed by a state institution in Amherst County that was once known as the "Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded."

Since 1983 the facility, which was founded in 1910, has been called the Central Virginia Training Center, and it is now a residential home for people with various intellectual disabilities. But in the early 20th century, the place Brown now refers to as "the colony" was part of the eugenics movement taking hold in the U.S., and a variety of treatments now considered inhumane were practiced there including forced sterilization. Brown, who has cerebral palsy, notes that had she been born in an earlier era, she might have been sent to live at the institution herself.

"It is impossible to know that for sure," she says. "I can look at my life and look at my family and look at my parents and think, No, never. That never would have happened. But I also understand that if I had been born 50 years earlier, the climate was very different."

She hopes to give voice to those early generations of residents, in her book of poetry, The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics And Feebleminded.

For Brown, the themes of disability and poetry have been constant throughout her life: "In my life, there has always been my body in some state of falling apart or disrepair or attempting to be fixed, and there has always been poetry. And I couldn't untwine those things if I tried."

Interview Highlights

On seeing the buildings and grounds of the old facility

It was incredibly moving and incredibly powerful. The place is interesting because it is still an operational facility for adults with really serious disabilities, although it is in the process of closing. But like a lot of things in Virginia, it was initially built on an enormous amount of land. And, so, a really interesting thing happened, which is that as the buildings that were originally part of the colony fell into disrepair, they were largely just moved out of and new buildings were built on accompanying land, but those original buildings were not necessarily torn down. So the place itself is this really strange combination of functioning facility and ghost town of everything that it has been. I've never been in a place that felt more acutely haunted in my life.

On how some people assume her physical disability means she also has an intellectual disability

We do have a strange tendency in this country to equate any kind of disability with less intellectual capability and with even a less complete humanity. Certainly as a child and as a teenager and even now as an adult [I] encountered people who assumed that just because I used a wheelchair, maybe I couldn't even speak to them. I often get questions directed at people I'm with, as opposed to me, and that's a really interesting phenomenon.

On the connection between poetry and theology

Both poetry and theology for me are about paying attention to the world in a very intentional way, and about admitting a mystery that is bigger than anything that I rationally understand. ... I think poetry has always been for me a kind of prayer. So those things feel very linked for me. And, again, poetry does feel like the first and in some ways best language I ever had for mystery and for my sense of what exists beyond the world we're currently living in.

On how Catholicism has helped her accept her body

One of the things that I find so moving about Catholicism is that it never forgets that to be a person is inherently and inescapably and necessarily to be in a body a body that brings you pain, a body that brings you pleasure, a body that can be a barrier to thinking more completely about your life and your soul but [that it] can also be a vehicle to delivering you into better communion with the world, with other people and to whatever divinity it is that you believe in.

What Catholicism did for me, in part, is give me a framework in which to understand my body as not an accident or a punishment or a mistake, but as the body that I am meant to have and that is constitutive of so much of who I am and what I've done and what I hope I will do in the world.

More and more ... I've come to see my body as a place of pride and potential, and as something that gives me a unique outlook onto the world. And I'd rather that, I guess, than be infuriated by it.

On her twin sister, who died shortly after birth

She lived about 36 hours after we were born. ... It's a phenomenon in my life that I have not a lot of rational explanation for, ... but it is true that I miss my sister with a kind of intense specificity that has no rational explanation, and that I feel aware of her presence in this way that I can't exactly explain or articulate, but which feels undeniable to me. ...

I do think that that sort of gave me no other option than to believe in some kind of something beyond this current mortal life that we're living. Because what is the explanation otherwise for the fact that I feel like I miss and I know this person who only lived a matter of hours? And for the fact as much as I know that she is dead and is gone in a real way, she doesn't feel "disappeared" to me.

On how her physical disability and her poetry are intertwined

I think the easiest way I have of describing it is I have two [early] memories. ... One of them is of sitting on a table in a hospital room in the children's hospital in St. Louis, choosing the flavor of the anesthetic gas I was going to breathe when they put me under to do my first major surgery. I was picking between cherry and butterscotch and grape. And the second memory that I have is of my father reading a Robert Hayden poem called "Those Winter Sundays."

Roberta Shorrock and Therese Madden produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Deborah Franklin adapted it for the Web.

Read more:

Poet Imagines Life Inside A 1910 Institution That Eugenics Built - NPR

LISTEN TO TLRS LATEST PODCAST:

Written by Brent Derider

On May 15th 2017 at 2:05PM, Sessions Judge Sam Benningfield signed a standing order that, effectively, puts White County, TN, in the business of trading sterilization for freedom. It stated that any inmate who completes a neonatal health class has an option to have their jail time reduced. Female inmates can get a Nexplanon birth control implant in their arm and male inmates are subjected to a vasectomy. For this, they receive 30 days credit toward their sentence.

Proponents of the order tout the program as relieving the burden on taxpayers and the welfare system and deny accusations of coercive eugenics, claiming that the program is voluntary. Says former S.C. Republican Congressional hopeful, Kris Wampler, Right now, we pay people to have kids by offering them welfare. We are literally subsidizing the birth of countless kids no one will care for. Doesnt it make more sense, if were going to pay someone anyway, to pay them to be less of a burden on society?

Judge Benningfield claims the order will give them a chance when they get out to not be burdened with children.

It seems, however, that not everyone is quite so thrilled with White Countys new involvement in eugenics. District Attorney Bryant Dunaway opposes the order. Those decisions are personal in nature, and I think thats just something the court should neither encourage nor mandate. said Dunaway. The White County DA further remarks I instructed my staff not to be involved in this type of arrangement in any way.

Thomas C. Arnold Jr., respected liberty advocate and LPTN Chair, spoke clearly against the action. It is a heinous attack on civil liberties in Tennessee. No individual, regardless the crime, should be coerced in this manner. It sickens me.

Most inmates are a product of the failed war on drugs and shouldnt be incarcerated at all, but even actual criminals have the right to their ability procreate. Forcing people to choose between sterilization and their freedom isnt an offer. Its coercion. If a person can be released into society, safely, they should be. Sterilization has no role to play. This goes far beyond government over-step. This is a great stride down a dark road that leads us directly back to 1940s Germany.

As far as this activist is concerned, enough is enough. A clear message needs to be sent to Judge Benningfield and those like him. As both a Libertarian and a proud southerner, I am appalled at this clear attempt to target the reproductive ability of a class of people that Mr. Benningfield finds unappealing. This is not within the scope of legitimate government. This is coerced eugenics and stopping it is the duty of every one of us.

To contact Sam Benningfield and share your thoughts on this abuse of power:

111 Depot Street, Suite 2, Sparta, TN 38583

Phone & Fax: 931-836-3600

eugenicsprisonSterilization

Read the original post:

Eugenics in Tennessee: Trading Sterilization for Freedom - The Libertarian Republic

Jewish Chronicle

Montreal to rename street honouring doctor who supported Nazi eugenics policy Jewish Chronicle Montreal to rename street honouring doctor who supported Nazi eugenics policy. Alexis Carrel, the French Nobel Prize-winning scientist, backed the Vichy regime which collaborated with the Third Reich. Montreal is going ahead with plans to remove any ...

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Montreal to rename street honouring doctor who supported Nazi eugenics policy - Jewish Chronicle

Last month, headlines about a judge in Tennessee who offers criminals reduced sentences if they agree to be get vasectomies or take long-term birth controlshocked the nation. The scrutiny didn't elicit any remorse from the judge, who argues sterilization can combat the rise of drug-addicted newborns. But it did cause the health department to effectively end the program.

The news was a flashback to America's long history of forced eugenic sterilizations.

In the 20th century, state governments deemed 60,000 Americans -- mostlyprisoners, the mentally ill and poor people -- unfit to reproduce and forced them to undergo mandatory sterilization. Almost half of the controversial medical procedures occurred in just three states: California, North Carolina and Virginia.

North Carolina and Virginia have since passed laws to compensate the surviving victims of their eugenics programs, but the same can't be said of California, which forcibly or coercively sterilized more people than any other U.S. state. From the time the states eugenics law was passed in 1909 to the day it was repealed 70 years later, California sterilized about 20,000 people.

In 2003, former California Gov. Gray Davis issued a formal apology to victims of forced sterilization, saying"it was a sad and regrettable chapter ... one that must never be repeated." Yet a decade later, theCenter for Investigative Reportingrevealed that California had been sterilizing prisoners without proper consent as recently as 2010 -- some of whom claimed to be coerced into it by prison staffers.

One lawmaker in the state wants to finally make amends.

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia plans to introduce a reparationsbill in 2018 that would likely provide victims with somewhere between $20,000 and $25,000, comparable to what North Carolina and Virginia respectively offered. The reparations, however, would not be extended to the women who were sterilized in state prisons as a punitive measure.

Garcia (one of only 10 Latina members of the California Assembly) felt drawn to the issue immediately, especially when she learned that Latina women made up a disproportionate number of the victims, suffering this fate at 2.65 times the rate of other women. To her surprise, one of the institutions that performed these surgeries was located in Norwalk, a city in her district.

I wanted to show my neighbors that this happened in our own backyard, says Garcia. This isnt far-fetched or far away.

If the bill is passed quickly, as many as 600 victims of the sterilization program could still be living, according to Alexandra Minna Stern, a historian and researcher at the University of Michigan who has written extensively about the states history of sterilization. (Stern is working with Garcia and others to draft the legislation.)

But victims could be difficult to find.

Most of them are likely approaching their late 80s, and since Davis apology in 2003, only one victim --a man living out of his car -- has ever come forward. For that reason, Stern says, a successful bill in California must allocate resources to locating living victims.

Stern has been pressing for reparations from the state since 2007, when she stumbled upon sterilization recommendation forms for nearly 20,000 patients tucked away in a filing cabinet in the state's mental health department. All of the patients listed were sterilized in California state hospitals from 1919 to 1952, some as young as 7 years old. The records provided proof.

So what's taken California -- arguably the most progressive state in the nation -- so long to right its historical wrongs?

One reason could be the seeming absence of any victims in California willing or able to come forward. In North Carolina and Virginia, Stern says dozens of victims began drumming up media attention, creating political pressure for a bill.

Whats more, most of Californias sterilizations happened earlier in the century, dropping off significantly in the 1950s. In North Carolina, sterilizations actually increased during this period, which means the number of living victims in that state is rather large.

Garcia, for her part, speculates that it has to do with political representation.

I think it partly has to do with the demographics of our legislature. This is an issue that has affected women and women of color, she says. We legislate from experience. So when we dont have diversity in the legislature, theres a real limitation in what were legislating on.

Stern says she's happy Garcia and other legislators are finally working on this bill, and she believes the money can make a great deal of difference for victims, many of whom are likely living in poverty.

But the bill won't help all sterilization victims.

What were talking about [with this bill] is officially recorded sterilization, people that are on a list and all their names can be found, says Stern. But what that means is that people who cant check all those boxes might not qualify for compensation. What about people who might have been sterilized at the same clinic by the same doctor, but it wasnt ordered by the sterilization board?

This has already proven to be a problem in North Carolina, where many victims don't qualifyforreparations because they were sterilized by the order of local judges who didn't receive approval from the State Eugenics Board.

Garcia is aware of the bill's shortcomings. But to her, some progress is better than none.

This [bill] definitely doesnt get justice for everyone out there, says Garcia. Its about elevating the discussion and then eventually building on it.

More here:

California Sterilized More People Than Any US State But Has Yet to Compensate Victims - Governing

This aim is the essence of eugenics: not to make people better but to make better people.

A Catholic research institute has described the gene editing of human embryos at a US university as the essence of eugenics, adding that the study raises serious ethical concerns.

Scientists at Oregon Health and Science University used a gene editing tool called Crispr-Cas9 to remove a genetic mutation that causes sudden heart failure, the first reported success in gene editing outside of China.

Dr David Albert Jones, director at the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, England, said: The whole rationale for this experiment is to take a step towards genetic modification as an assisted reproductive technology.

Dr Jones released the statement after Nature, an international science journal, reported the researchers findings on 2 August, pointing to ethical concerns in the process and aims of gene editing research.

Women are being encouraged by financial inducements to part with their reproductive potential, Dr Jones said, highlighted the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome for participants in the project.

Dr Jones also addressed the overall ambitions for advocates of gene editing.

The embryo is conceived with the intention that it will be modified. Hence, whichever method is used the aim is the same: to produce a modified embryo.

This aim is the essence of eugenics: not to make people better but to make better people.

Dr Jones added: Historic examples, not only in Germany but in Sweden and in the United States show vividly how easily programmes for the eradication of defects in the human stock can undermine principles of equality, solidarity and respect for people with heritable conditions.

Eugenics involves not only scientific experimentation but social experimentation and we have seen the results of such experiments. They do not end well.

The United States does not allow government funding for research involving human embryos, but the work is not illegal if it is funded by private donors.

In February, a report on gene editing by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) called the procedure highly contentious.

The technology would therefore cross a line many have viewed as ethically inviolable, the NAS report stated.

Go here to read the rest:

Gene editing could lead to eugenics, ethicist warns - Catholic Herald Online

Eugenics is alive and well in Tennessee.

This spring, Judge Sam Benningfield approved a program in which prisoners at the White County Jail in Sparta were offered reproductive sterilization in exchange for reduced sentences. As of May 15, more than two dozen women had reportedly agreed to birth-control implants and 38 men to vasectomies.

Sterilizations to lessen criminal sentences are not a new phenomenon in Tennessee. Between 2010 and 2015, they were offered as part of plea deals in four criminal cases.

To put these sterilizations in perspective, we need to go back to the beginning.

In 1866, an Augustine monk named Gregor Mendel found that when he crossed pea plants, certain physical traits like plant size and leaf color dominated. Mendel proposed that pea plants were inheriting one factor from each parent. Today we call these factors genes.

A few years after Mendel published his findings, a British scientist named Francis Galtonwho was a half-cousin of Charles Darwinmade the leap from peas to people and from physical traits to something broader. If we could breed better animals, reasoned Galton, couldnt we breed better humans, too? Wouldnt traits like intelligence, loyalty, bravery, and honesty also be inherited? And wouldnt selecting for these traits make for a better world? One free from drunkenness, violence, and poverty. A world, he proposed, where the lower classes could be bred out of existence, no longer a burden to society. He called his plan eugenics, from the Greek for well born.

In the early 1900s, this ideology crossed the ocean and landed in a small cove near Huntington, New York. The two men who championed Galtons cause were Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin. As [society] claims the right to deprive the murderer of his life, said Davenport, so also it may annihilate the hideous serpent of hopelessly vicious protoplasm.

Davenport and Laughlins list of vicious protoplasm included the feeble-minded, the poor, alcoholics, criminals, epileptics, the insane, the constitutionally weak, those suffering from venereal diseases, the deformed, and those deaf, blind, or mute.

In October 1910, their Eugenics Records Office opened for business. Its mission was clear: Determine which Americans were of inferior stock and prevent them from marrying or having children. The first step was to confine them to unisex institutions for the insane or mentally disabled. The next was to sterilize those who were still roaming free.

The eugenicists had completely bastardized Mendels laws. While physical characteristics such as eye color can be mapped to specific genes, traits like criminality, alcoholism, or susceptibility to venereal diseases cant. Not everything can be accounted for by strict Mendelian genetics.

Nonetheless, the false notion that selective breeding could make for a better society allowed Americans to cloak some of their worst prejudices in the gilded robes of science.

The zealous efforts of Davenport and Laughlin shaped a nation.

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By 1928, about 400 colleges and universities in the U.S. offered courses in eugenics, and 70 percent of high-school biology textbooks embraced the pseudoscience. The eugenics movement also changed the law: Four states prohibited the marriage of alcoholics, 17 banned the marriage of epileptics, and 41 forbade the marriage of the feeble-minded and the insane. By the mid-1930s, America was the world leader in banned marriages. (Marriage-restriction laws werent declared unconstitutional until 1967.)

American citizens were now ready to take the next stepto legislate forced sterilization. When the dust settled, 65,370 poor, syphilitic, feeble-minded, insane, alcoholic, deformed, lawbreaking, or epileptic Americans in 32 states had been sterilized. California alone had more than 20,000. Few rose in protest. It was one of the darkest moments in American history.

Most of those sterilized didnt understand what was being done, and were surprised that they could no longer have children. Some were told they were having a different surgical procedure. (Because of its popularity in the South, sterilizations were often referred to as Mississippi appendectomies.) Others were told to sign a form that they couldnt read. In 1927, civil libertarians were delighted when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of a woman who was being sterilized against her will. At last, the most disenfranchised members of society would have their day in court. The person who was being sterilized was Carrie Buck. The doctor who was to perform the sterilization was John Bell.

The associate justice who wrote the opinion for the majority was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. A proud defender of the Constitution and individual liberties, Holmes had authored nearly a thousand valued opinions.

On May 2, 1927, justices ruled 8-1 in favor of Carrie Bucks sterilization. Holmes wrote, Carrie Buck is a feeble-minded white woman. She is the daughter of a feeble-minded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feeble-minded child. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crimes, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Then Holmes authored the words that placed Buck v. Bell in the pantheon of Americas most embarrassing Supreme Court decisions: Three generations of imbeciles are enough, he wrote, effectively solidifying laws that even the most ardent eugenicists thought were unenforceable. One critic later wrote that Holmess opinion represented the highest ratio of injustice per word ever signed on by eight Supreme Court justices.

On Oct. 19, 1927, her legal options exhausted, Carrie Buck was sterilized; she thought she was having an appendectomy.

In 1933, the year that he came to power, Adolf Hitler passed the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. The list of those to be sterilized was virtually identical to that first generated by the Eugenics Records Office in Cold Spring Harbor. Clinics were established and doctors were fined if they didnt comply with the law.

Within a year, 56,000 Germans had been sterilized; by 1935, 73,000; by 1939, 400,000, logarithmically dwarfing the number of sterilizations performed in the U.S. The procedure was so common that it had a nickname: Hitlerschnitte, Hitlers cut. Americans took note. Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginias Western State Hospital, lamented, Hitler is beating us at our own game!

Twenty years later, Buck v. Bell would be presented in support of SS officer Otto Hofmann during the Nuremberg military tribunal investigating Nazi war crimes.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never officially overturned its verdict.

Paul A. Offit is a professor of pediatrics and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. He is the author of Pandoras Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong (National Geographic Press).

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Our Sickest Pseudoscience Resurfacesin a Tennessee Jail - Daily Beast

Where genetic engineering really can do something that embryo selection cannot is in genetic enhancement better known as designer babies. Photograph: Roger Bamber / Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Stock Photo

Hope for families with genetic conditions, and scientific breakthrough: that is how headlines are proclaiming a project that modified human embryos to remove mutations that cause heart failure. But anyone who has concerns about such research is often subjected to moral blackmail. We are regularly lumped in with religious reactionaries or anti-abortion campaigners.

The medical justification for spending millions on such research is thin: it would be better spent on developing cures

I am neither. If you peel away the hype, the truth is that we already have robust ways of avoiding the birth of children with such conditions, where that is appropriate, through genetic testing of embryos. In fact, the medical justification for spending millions of dollars on such research is extremely thin: it would be much better spent on developing cures for people living with those conditions. Its time we provided some critical scrutiny and stopped parroting the gospel of medical progress at all costs.

Where genetic engineering really can do something that embryo selection cannot is in genetic enhancement better known as designer babies. Unfortunately, thats where its real market will be. We have already seen that dynamic at work with the three-parent IVF technique, developed for very rare mitochondrial genetic conditions. Already, a scientist has created babies that way in Mexico (specifically to avoid US regulations) and a company has been set up with the aim of developing the science of designer babies.

Scientists who started their careers hoping to treat sick people and prevent suffering are now earning millions of dollars creating drugs to enhance cognitive performance or performing cosmetic surgery. We already have consumer eugenics in the US egg donor market, where ordinary working-class women get paid $5,000 for their eggs while tall, beautiful Ivy League students get $50,000. The free market effectively results in eugenics. So its not a matter of the law of unintended consequences or of scaremongering the consequences are completely predictable. The burden of proof should be on those who say it wont happen.

Once you start creating a society in which rich peoples children get biological advantages over other children, basic notions of human equality go out the window. Instead, what you get is social inequality written into DNA. Even using low-tech methods, such as those still used in many Asian countries to select out girls (with the result that the world is short of more than 100 million women), the social consequences of allowing prejudices and competitiveness to control which people get born are horrific.

Most enhancements in current use, such as those in cosmetic surgery, are intended to help people conform to expectations created by sexism, racism and ageism. More subtly, but equally profoundly, once we start designing our children to perform the way we want them to, we are erasing the fundamental ethical difference between consumer commodities and human beings. Again, this is not speculation: there is already an international surrogacy market in which babies are bought and sold. The job of parents is to love children unconditionally, however clever/athletic/superficially beautiful they are; not to write our whims and prejudices into their genes.

Its for these reasons that most industrialised countries have had legal bans against human genetic engineering for the last 30 years. Think about that for a moment: its pretty unusual for societies that normally put technological innovation at the centre of their policies to ban technologies before theyre even feasible. There have to be very good reasons for such an unprecedented step, and its not to do with protecting embryos. Its to do with the social consequences.

Genetically modified crops are a good comparison. Faced with a similarly irresponsible absolutism from the scientific community as well as with the obvious competition for fame and profit the green movement and the left felt they had to take the issue of GM food into their own hands. Now it looks like its time to campaign for a global ban on the genetic engineering of people. We must stop this race for the first GM baby.

Dr David King is a former molecular biologist and founder of Human Genetics Alert, an independent secular watchdog group that supports abortion rights

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Editing the human genome brings us one step closer to consumer eugenics - The Guardian

Catholic World News

August 04, 2017

The director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in England has raised the alarm about recent experiments in genetic editing of human embryos, saying that the procedure involves the acceptance of eugenics.

David Albert Jones remarked that the experiment also involved the reproductive exploitation of women who contributed eggs for the research and the experimentation on and destruction of embryos in the process.

While the genetic editing experiments have been hailed as a means of preventing disease, Jones pointed out that the procedure aims not to make people better but to make better people. He explained that in the editing technique, a modified embryo is created; since the embryo did not exist before the modification, the procedure cannot be said to be therapy.

Jones warned: Instead of treating existing human beings in ways that respect their rights and do not pose excessive risks to them or to future generations, we are manufacturing new human beings for manipulation and quality control, and experimenting on them with the aim of forging greater eugenic control over human reproduction

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'Gene editing' poses threat of eugenics, ethicist warns - Catholic Culture