Category Archives: Eugenics

The House took up a bill Thursday that would ban disability abortions in Florida, readying the measure for debate and a floor vote.

Sponsored by Republican Rep. Erin Grall, the bill (HB 1221)would prohibit a physician from performing an abortion if they know or should know that a womans decision to abort is based on a test result that suggests a disability.

The bill makes exceptions for abortions deemed necessary to save a womans life. It also extends immunity to a woman if they violate or conspire to violate the provision.

I believe that the state does have a compelling interest in making sure that abortions are not used as a form of modern-day eugenics, Grall told lawmakers on the House floor.

Throughout the committee process, Democratic lawmakers have expressed staunch opposition to the measure.

On Thursday, they questioned the bills intricacies including privacy concerns and possible impacts on minority and low-income women.

They also questioned how the bill would be exercised if signed into law.

In previous committees, Grall explained that a family member or medical worker could report an instance in which they believe an abortion violates the proposal.

A complaint would be filed with law enforcement and law enforcement would be able to undergo an investigation and obtain evidence in the way that they would normally, Grall added Thursday.

Democrats filed four amendments including one to make an exception for pregnancies related to rape and human trafficking.

Republicans rejected all amendments.

If passed, Florida would become the 10th state to ban disability abortions.

Notably, legal challenges are ongoing in seven of the nine states with similar laws in place.

According to a staff analysis, data on disability abortions is limited and not tracked by most states.

However, retrospective analysis of abortions from 1995-2011 estimated that 67%-85% of women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome in the United States elect to abort the fetus, the staff analysis adds.

If passed and signed into law, the bill would take effect on July 1.

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Disability abortion bill teed up in House Rep. Erin Grall. - Florida Politics

The UK government is coming under increasing pressure to call a public inquiry into its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Whilst the country is amongst the world leaders in rolling out vaccinations, it also has the fourth-highest rate of deaths per capita in the world. According to the government, 126,000 people in the UK have died of Covid-19 since the pandemic began. But why did so many people die? And were any of these deaths preventable? Georgette Mulheir, a global expert on the impact of institutional care on health and life chances, asserts that any public inquiry must ask serious questions about Britains system of care for older people and adults with disabilities. At least 20% of those who died were living in care homes, whilst care home residents make up only 0.6% of the population. Although older people are at a higher risk of dying from Covid, the deaths in care homes are still wildly disproportionate. The UK is not alone. Almost half of Swedens Covid deaths were in care homes. In New York State, the figure is 30%.

According to Mulheir, this phenomenon may relate to deep-seated discriminatory attitudes. One of the most disturbing aspects of the way Covid deaths are reported in the UK, she says, is that the deceased are routinely referred to as older people or as people with a disability or underlying health problem. The unspoken implication seems to be that these people are expected to die in any case. Equally concerning, she continues is the sense that these lives are of less value than young, healthy people.

Most of the care home deaths are of older people, but disturbing news is emerging of disproportionate Covid deaths among adults with learning disabilities those aged 18 to 34 with are 30 times more likely to die of Covid than their peers of the same age. One doctor observed that the biggest factor associated with the increased rate of death was living in care homes or residential settings.

Georgette Mulheir believes that any inquiry must take account of the history of discrimination against people with disabilities. If we do not understand the past, she says, we miss the clear reasons behind what appear to be inexplicable errors of policy and practice.

Why would young people with learning disabilities be more likely to die of Covid-19? One reason that seems obvious is rarely mentioned in reporting. Large groups of people are not meant to live together in one building. Lack of resources and limited staff time make it impossible to provide individualised care for each resident. So much activity is done communally that, if one person gets sick in an institution, the disease spreads like wildfire.

According to Georgette Mulheir, across the world, institutional settings have long been associated with higher mortality rates. But there is a tendency to imagine the deaths are due to the illness, disability or frailty of the residents, rather than the institutional system itself. This is rarely the case, says Mulheir, who has led programmes to reduce mortality rates in institutions in many countries in a baby institution in Sudan, where the rate was over 80%, in Romania, where some institutions had mortality rates of 30% to 40%. In nearly all cases, deaths were due to neglect or abuse. Changing the approach to care reduced mortality dramatically.

In one institution for children with disabilities in Bulgaria, Mulheir says, we asked the director why the mortality rate was so high and she replied, You must understand, these children are sent here to die. The average life expectancy of one of these children is 11 years. If a child lives longer, we feel we have done an exceptionally good job. However, when Georgette Mulheir investigated, she found that most of the deaths had no direct relation to disability. Instead, the children were dying from malnutrition. Observing mealtimes showed that, on average, each child was given 1 minute 20 seconds to eat their meal. Mulheirs team worked to change the way personnel fed children, reducing the mortality rate almost to zero.

According to Georgette Mulheir, such pseudo-scientific explanations for high death rates in institutions are not new. A belief that people with disabilities intrinsically have a shorter life expectancy than their peers, coupled with a discriminatory judgment that their lives are of less value has, in many countries, led to warehousing people with disabilities in institutions and waiting for them to die. Once removed from their families and hidden away from society, in some circumstances, this led to a suggestion that curtailment of life might be expedient, even merciful.

Georgette Mulheir Reveals Legacy of the Eugenics Movement in Social Care Today

The Eugenics movement was born nearly 150 years ago but reached the height of its influence between the two world wars. One stated aim was to improve the health of the nation by breeding out defects, isolating people with disabilities and ensuring they could not procreate. UK scholars and politicians played a leading global role, with London hosting the first International Eugenics Conference in 1912. The audience, including Winston Churchill and Lord Balfour, was addressed by Charles Darwins son, who went on to lobby the government to arrest people deemed as unfit,' then segregate them in colonies or sterilise them.

Those early Eugenics-inspired practices still prevail in care systems today. In her 30-year campaign to end institutionalisation, Mulheir has encountered many women with disabilities who were sterilised against their will while they were children living in institutions. The simplest way to control people with disabilities was through institutionalisation, Mulheir asserts. Across Europe and in the United States, at various points in the 20th Century, enforced sterilisation of children and adults with disabilities in institutions was commonplace.

At the same time as the UK Eugenics movement grew in strength, Germany was already going one step further, with medics and lawyers joining forces to argue for the extermination of people with disabilities. The 1920 essay, Permitting the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life is seen by many as a blueprint for the Nazis future crimes against humanity. Dr Ewald Melzer, who directed an institution for children and adults with disabilities, reacted against the claims that disabled lives were unworthy. He believed it was societys Christian duty to care for people with disabilities, but he also saw institutionalising them as ideal for carrying out experiments.

In his survey of the attitudes of parents of disabled children, many apparently said that though they loved their children, they would be willing to have the children killed, so long as they were not aware it had happened. These results were cited by the Nazi regime as a basis for Aktion T4. Through this programme, institutions for children and adults with disabilities were transformed into killing centres, starting with newborn babies. The government compelled midwives to report all babies born with disabilities, then coerced parents to place their children in institutions. Visits were discouraged or forbidden. Quickly, medical personnel transformed a programme of institutionalisation into extermination.

Children with disabilities were the earliest victims of Hitlers programme of mass murder, disguised as mercy killing. Mulheir says, institutions, allegedly set up to provide expert care, killed children first by deliberate starvation, then by lethal injection, with nurses trained to preserve life lovingly cradling babies in their arms as the poison was administered. Later, gas chambers were developed to improve efficiency. More than 5,000 children were killed in the network of institutions for children with disabilities, followed by more than 200,000 disabled adults. And the medical and administrative teams who developed the first mass extermination programme were transferred together with their killing technology to set up and manage the death camps of Treblinka and Sobibor.

The Monetary Value of a Life and the Crisis in Social Care

In Nazi Germany, the killing of children with disabilities was also justified economically. A propaganda campaign demonstrated to the general public the huge expense of keeping disabled children in institutions suggesting that money could and should instead be spent on healthy children. This, despite the fact that most of the children were institutionalised compulsorily and the expenditure, was therefore unnecessary.

Whilst the Eugenics movement in the UK did not result in extermination camps, its impact still resonates today. In February 2021, University College London (UCL) issued an apology for its role in promoting the pseudo-science of Eugenics. As the first University in the world to set up a Eugenics Department, it provided academic cover, legitimising theories of race and disability that directly affected policy and practice globally.

As a result of the horrors of the holocaust, the popularity of Eugenics began to wane in the 1940s, but John Maynard Keynes still claimed that Eugenic theories were fundamental to planning the economics of the Welfare State. According to Georgette Mulheir, this partly explains why our social services still, stubbornly, focus on the failed policy of excluding and institutionalising older people and those with disabilities, rather than including them in our homes, families and communities.

Today in the UK, debates around the crisis in social care focus on the high cost of looking after older people and disabled people. And those costs predominantly relate to institutionalisation. Georgette Mulheir has carried out extensive research on the costs of various kinds of care across the world. She said, across low, medium and high-income countries, it is always more expensive to care for a child with disabilities in a poor-quality institution that harms their health and development than to support them to live in family care, where their health outcomes, happiness and life chances are greatly improved.

Right now, bodies representing UK care homes are asking the government for more financial assistance. Due to the pandemic, they are only running at 70% occupancy and because they receive their funding per resident, their income is down considerably, whilst costs have increased. Mulheir suggests that before the government automatically uses tax-payers' money to bail out a profit-making care system, some fundamental questions should be answered. Firstly, why are they running at low capacity? It is partially because so many people have died. But also, precisely because of the high rates of preventable deaths, many families are now reluctant to place their relatives in care homes. If the industry has failed so spectacularly, why should we bail it out?

The problem, though, according to Georgette Mulheir, is that we have no alternative. As a country, we have underfunded home-based care and support systems for families and communities. We have allowed a harmful institutionalised system to flourish and grow, without questioning whether it is fit for purpose. The government, local authorities and families simply have nowhere else to turn for help for people with increasing support needs.

There is no denying that institutionalising people is big business, with the UK spending more than 20 billion annually. We imagine our modern social work systems have nothing in common with the eugenicists vision from more than a century ago, but, in the context of a society where lives are valued according to economic output, many older and disabled people are still segregated, excluded and warehoused in institutions. And what happens when resources, already stretched thin, reach breaking point? According to Mulheir, the economic imperative takes over and the rights, needs and wishes of individuals become secondary, with terrifying results.

Blanket DNARs The Logical Next Step

Throughout the pandemic, disturbing reports appeared in the UK press that led to an official investigation into blanket Do Not Attempt Resuscitation orders (DNARs) in care homes for older people.

Within weeks of UCLs public apology for its role in promoting Eugenic theories, the Care Quality Commission issued its damning report. It was indeed the case that, in some care homes, DNARs were entered into the notes of all residents, without consulting the person or their family.

According to the report, in at least one case, a family doctor sent letters to families, stating, Dear [care home resident relative] adding that after looking at medical notes and using a computer algorithm, I realise there is less than one percent chance of resuscitation being successful. For this reason, I have signed a do not resuscitate order in their nursing notes.

It appears a similar approach has been taken to people with learning disabilities. According to Mencap, Throughout the pandemic, many people with a learning disability have faced shocking discrimination and obstacles to accessing healthcare, with inappropriate Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (DNACPR) notices put on their files and cuts made to their social care support.

As yet, there is no clear analysis of Covid deaths in care homes. But some over-stretched medics and civil servants appear to be using economic arguments and pseudo-science this time in the shape of a computer algorithm to decide who lives and who dies. How far these approaches have resulted in preventable deaths is, as yet, unknown. But it is certainly the case, says Mulheir, that if we expect older and disabled people in institutions to die, we rarely ask questions when it occurs. In this context, a public inquiry into Covid deaths must open the doors of residential institutions and find out what really happens inside.

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Georgette Mulheir Explains the Scandal of DNRs, Covid-19, and a Broken Care System - HealthTechZone

The Morton Cranial Collection, assembled by the 19th-century physician and anatomist Samuel George Morton, is one of the more complicated holdings of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Consisting of some 1,300 skulls gathered around the world, it provided the foundation for Mortons influential racist theories of differences in intelligence among races, which helped establish the now-discredited race science that contributed to 20th century eugenics. In recent years, part of the collection was prominently displayed in a museum classroom, a ghoulish object lesson in an infamous chapter of scientific history.

Last summer, after student activists highlighted the fact that some 50 skulls had come from enslaved Africans in Cuba, the museum moved the displayed skulls into storage with the rest of the collection. And last week, shortly after the release of outside research indicating roughly 14 other skulls had come from Black Philadelphians taken from paupers graves, the museum announced that the entire collection would be opened up for potential repatriation or reburial of ancestors, as a step toward atonement and repair for past racist and colonialist practices.

The announcement was the latest development in a highly charged conversation about African-American remains in museum collections, especially those of the enslaved. In January, the president of Harvard University issued a letter to alumni and affiliates acknowledging that the 22,000 human remains in its collections included 15 from people of African descent who may have been enslaved in the United States, and pledging to review its policies of ethical stewardship.

And now, that conversation may be set to explode. In recent weeks, the Smithsonian Institution, whose National Museum of Natural History houses the nations largest collection of human remains, has been debating a proposed statement on its own African-American remains.

Those discussions, according to portions of an internal summary obtained by The New York Times, have involved people who have long prioritized repatriation efforts as well as those who take a more traditional view of the museums mission to collect, preserve and study artifacts, and who view repatriations as potential losses to science.

In an interview last week, Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian, declined to characterize the deliberations but confirmed the museum was developing new guidance, which he said would be undergirded by a clear imperative: to honor and remember.

Slavery is in many ways the last great unmentionable in American discourse, he said. Anything we can do to both help the public understand the impact of slavery, and find ways to honor the enslaved, is at the top of my list.

Any new policy, Dr. Bunch said, would build on existing programs for Native American remains. It could involve not just the return of remains to direct descendants, but possibly to communities, or even reburial in a national African-American burial ground. And the museum, he said, would also strive to tell fuller stories of individuals whose remains stay in the collection.

It used to be that scholarship trumped community, he said. Now, its about finding the right tension between community and scholarship.

The quantity of enslaved and other African-American remains in museums may be modest compared with the estimated 500,000 Native American remains in U.S. collections, which were scooped up from burial grounds and 19th-century battlefields on what Samuel J. Redman, an associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, termed an industrial scale.

But Dr. Redman, the author of Bone Rooms, a history of remains collecting by museums, said the moves by Harvard, Penn and especially the Smithsonian could represent a historical tipping point.

It puts into shocking relief our need to address the problem of the historical exploitation of people of color in the collecting of their objects, their stories and their bodies, he said.

The complexities around African-American remains who might claim them? how do you determine enslaved status? are enormous. Even just counting them is a challenge. According to an internal Smithsonian survey that has not previously been made public, the 33,000 remains in its storerooms include those from roughly 1,700 African-Americans, including an estimated several hundred who were born before 1865, and so may have been enslaved.

Some remains come from archaeological excavations. But the majority are from individuals who died in state-funded institutions for the poor, whose unclaimed bodies ended up in anatomical collections that were later acquired by the Smithsonian.

In addition to the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires museums to return remains to tribes or lineal descendants that request them, the Smithsonian allows remains from named individuals of any race to be claimed by descendants. While many African-American individuals in the anatomical collections are named, none have ever been reclaimed, according to the natural history museum.

Kirk Johnson, the museums director, said that the anatomical collections, while disproportionately gathered from the poor and marginalized, included a cross-section of society in terms of age, sex, race, ethnicity and cause of death, which had made them extremely useful for forensic anthropologists and other researchers.

But when it comes to African-American remains, a broader approach to repatriation including a more expansive notion of ancestor and descendant may be justified.

Weve all had a season of becoming more enlightened about structural racism and anti-Black racism, he said. At the end of the day, he added, its a matter of respect.

Dr. Bunch, the Smithsonians first Black secretary, said he hoped its actions would provide a model for institutions across the country. Some who have studied the history of the trade in Black bodies say such guidance is sorely needed.

It would be wonderful to have an African-American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, said Daina Ramey Berry, a professor of history at the University of Texas and author of The Price for Their Pound of Flesh, a study of the commodification of enslaved bodies from birth to death.

Were finding evidence of enslaved bodies used at medical schools throughout the nation, she said. Some are still on display at universities. They need to be returned.

Penns Morton collection vividly embodies both the sordid side of the enterprise, and the way the meanings of collections change.

Morton, a successful doctor who was an active member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, has sometimes been called the founder of American physical anthropology. He was a proponent of the theory of polygenesis, which held that some races were separate species, with separate origins. In books like the lavishly illustrated Crania Americana, from 1839, he drew on skull measurements to outline a proposed hierarchy of human intelligence, with Europeans on top and Africans in the United States at the bottom.

Mortons skull collection was said to be the first scholarly anatomical collection in the United States and, at the time, the largest. But after his death in 1851, it fell into obscurity, even as his racist ideas about differences in intelligence remained influential.

In 1966, the collection was relocated to the Penn Museum, from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. And it quickly became a useful tool for all sorts of scientific research including studies aimed at debunking the racist ideas it had helped create.

In a famous 1978 paper (later adapted for his book The Mismeasure of Man), the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould argued that Mortons racist assumptions had led him to make incorrect measurements thus turning Morton into a symbol not just of racist ideas, but of how bias can affect the seemingly objective procedures of science.

Goulds analysis of Mortons measurements has itself been hotly disputed. But in recent years, the appropriateness of possessing the skulls at all has been sharply questioned by campus and local activists, particularly after student researchers connected with the Penn & Slavery Project drew attention to the remains of the enslaved Cubans.

Christopher Woods, who became the museums director earlier this month, said the new repatriation policy (which was recommended by a committee) would not change the collections status as an active research source.

Although there has been no access to the actual skulls since last summer, legitimate researchers can examine 3-D scans of the entire collection, including those of 126 Native Americans that have already been repatriated.

The collection was put together for nefarious purpose in the 19th century, to reinforce white supremacist racial views, but theres still been good research done on that collection, Dr. Woods said.

When it comes to repatriation, he said, the moral imperative is clear, even if the specific course of action may not be. For the skulls of Black Philadelphians taken from paupers graves (a major source for cadavers of all races at the time), he said the hope is they can be reburied in a local African-American cemetery.

The enslaved remains from Cuba, however, would require future research and possibly testing, as well as a search for an appropriate repatriation site, possibly in Cuba or West Africa, where most of the individuals were likely born.

The Black remains may have become a particularly urgent issue, he said. But repatriation requests for any skulls would be considered.

This is an ethical question, he said. We need to consider the wishes of the communities from whence these people came.

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What Should Museums Do With the Bones of the Enslaved? - The New York Times

When I was first diagnosed, I promised that I would never have biological children. Ive since changed my mind.

Though I was the first person to be officially diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome in my family, you can track the lineage through photos, through body horror stories around campfires.

Hyperextended elbows, legs above heads, wrists resting in splints. These are common images in our living room albums. My mom and her brothers talk about side-stepping around my grandmother, whod frequently find a doorframe to lose consciousness for a moment, catch herself, then move about her day.

Oh, dont worry about it, the kids would say to their friends, bending down to help their mother off the floor. This happens all the time. And the next minute, my grandmother would have cookies ready and another batch in the oven, all dizziness pushed aside for now.

When I was diagnosed, it all clicked for my family members on my mothers side, too. My great-grandmothers blood pressure spells, my grandmothers chronic pain, my moms bad knees, all the aunts and cousins with constant stomach aches or other strange medical mysteries.

My connective tissue disorder (and all of the complications and co-occurring disorders that come with it) is genetic. I got it from my mom, who got it from her mom, and so on. Passed on like dimples or hazel eyes.

This line will more than likely continue when I have children. This means that my kids will more than likely be disabled. And my partner and I are OK with that.

Do you have a genetic disorder? Do you want children? These are the only two questions you need to answer. They do not need to connect.

Now, I want to say that its a simple choice (because I feel it should be), but its not. I experience pain every single day. I have had surgeries, and medical traumas, and moments where I wasnt sure if I would survive. How could I risk passing that on to my future kids?

When I was first diagnosed, I promised that I would never have biological children, even though this is something Ive personally always wanted. My mom apologized to me over and over again for giving this to me for not knowing, for causing the pain.

It took us a while to learn that, even though this is genetic, my mother did not sit down with a chart of genes and say, Hm, I think well mix some gastrointestinal problems in with the dysautonomia and just loosen these connective tissues a bit more

I think any of us who want children obviously want them to have wonderful, painless, healthy lives. We want them to be able to give them the resources they need to thrive. We want them to be happy.

My question is: why does disability negate all of these goals? And why does disability or any health concerns mean less than?

As a disclaimer, we are going to dive into a general overview of the eugenics movement, which explores ableist, racist, and other discriminatory ideologies and practices. This also speaks about the forced sterilization of disabled people in America. Please continue at your own discretion.

The foundation to eugenics is built through an examination of superior human beings people who are (according to these problematic ideals) overall stronger, healthier, more beautiful, more intelligent, and more traditionally successful in society than other people.

By other, this means neurodiverse, chronically ill, disabled people. Additionally, the practice of eugenics sought to discriminate against a vast majority of marginalized communities. People of color, indigenous communities, and immigrants were also specifically targeted.

In implementing the science of eugenics involving health alone, one would essentially be selecting to breed out specific genes that cause disability, illness, and other undesirable traits.

As a result, disabled people in America (and all over the world) were forced to undergo medical trials, treatments, and procedures to biologically halt them from having children.

This movement in America influenced Nazi practices of killing disabled people to eradicate weakness to create the superior human (read: white, able-bodied, neurotypical).

This was mass sterilization and mass murder on a global level.

In Germany during this movement, approximately 275,000 disabled people were murdered. Research at the University of Vermont shows that American doctors and others who believed in the eugenics movement physically forced the sterilization of at least 60,000 disabled people from around the decade of the 1930s and into the 1970s. Some experts believe that eugenic sterilization (let alone the core beliefs behind this movement) has never truly stopped.

The supposed logic behind this line of thinking is that disabled people are in constant suffering. All the health complications, the pain. How else should they eradicate the struggles of disabled people besides stopping more disabled people from being born?

The core beliefs behind eugenics are the ones that fuel our own guilt when it comes to passing down hereditary disabilities or illnesses. Dont let your child suffer. Dont give them a life of pain.

Through this harmful rhetoric, we are only furthering the idea that disabled people are inferior, weaker, less human.

As a disabled person, I can attest to the fact that pain is not pleasant. Keeping track of daily medications and appointments. Being immunocompromised during a pandemic. Not necessarily the most enjoyable parts of my weekly routine.

However, describing our lives as disabled people as though we are suffering all the time is undervaluing the other vibrant, complex pieces of our lives. Yes, our health, our disabilities, are a huge part of who we are, and we dont want to deny that.

The difference is that disability is treated like the end of something: our health, our happiness. Disability is a piece. The real challenge is that our world is made to push out disabled people because of ableist ideas and well-intended microaggressions that stem from eugenics from the idea that standardized ability (physical, emotional, cognitive, etc.) is everything.

Take running out of gas on the highway, for example. Lots of us have been there, usually when we are late for something important. What do we do? Well, we find a way to get gas. We scrape pennies together from under the car seats. We call for assistance. Get a tow. Ask our neighbors to find mile mark 523.

Imagine telling somebody who has run out of gas on the highway that they shouldnt have children.

Then your children and their children are going to run out of gas on the highway these characteristics are passed on, you know!

Listen. My children are going to run out of gas on the highway because Ive run out of gas on the highway. Well tell stories around campfires about how we were just so close to that gas exit and if only we couldve made it. Theyll do it again even after they swear theyll always fill up at a quarter to empty. And Im going to make sure that they have the resources they need to navigate that situation.

My future kids are probably going to have episodes of chronic pain. They are going to struggle with fatigue. They are going to have scrapes and bruises from the playground and from the swinging metal legs of wheelchairs.

I dont want them to have to worry about waiting for roadside help under the setting sun on an unknown street. I dont want them to place ice packs to their bones and wish they could just make the throbbing stop for a minute or two.

But Im going to make sure they have what they need to navigate whatever situation they end up in. Ill have that extra gas canister for them, that spare tire. Ill advocate for them to have every single accommodation they need.

Ill put warm rags on their shins at night like my mom did for me and her mom did for her and say, Im sorry you are in pain. Lets do what we can to help.

My future kids will probably be disabled. I hope they are.

Aryanna Falkner is a disabled writer from Buffalo, New York. Shes an MFA candidate in fiction at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where she lives with her fianc and their fluffy black cat. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Blanket Sea and Tule Review. Find her and pictures of her cat on Twitter.

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My Kids Will Probably Be Disabled And I'm OK with That - Healthline

Babies of black women are significantly more likely to be aborted when compared to other groups, recent US figures have shown.

According to data released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), abortion rates among black women are over three times higher than those among white women.

While only 13.4 per cent of the US population identify their race as black, black women account for 33.6 per cent of all reported abortions. The CDC looked at data provided by 30 states, plus Washington DC.

Alexandra Desanctis, writing in the American magazine National Review, said the abortion industry was perpetuating Margaret Sangers racist legacy. Sanger was the founder of what became the abortion giant Planned Parenthood.

Desanctis observed: Nearly 80 percent of Planned Parenthoods clinics are located within walking distance of neighborhoods occupied predominantly by black and Hispanic residents.

In 2017, Planned Parenthood was severely criticised for advocating that black women were better off having an abortion than giving birth.

The abortion giant said in a Twitter post: If youre a Black woman in America, its statistically safer to have an abortion than to carry a pregnancy to term.

In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, babies of white women were aborted at the lowest rate, with 6.3 abortions taking place per 1,000 women.

By comparison, for the same period, babies of black women were aborted at the highest rate, with 21.2 abortions per 1,000 women.

The CDC, which uses the terms non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White in its data collection, said that similar differences had been observed in other US-based research.

US Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas has stated that abortion is an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation.

Charting the historical connection between eugenics and race Thomas said: Sanger herself campaigned for birth control in black communities.

In 1930, she opened a birth-control clinic in Harlem. Then, in 1939, Sanger initiated the Negro Project, an effort to promote birth control in poor, Southern black communities.

The judge concluded: Eight decades after Sangers Negro Project, abortion in the United States is also marked by a considerable racial disparity.

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Arkansas acts to defend the unborn from abortion

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Abortion of black babies in US disproportionately high - The Christian Institute

As reported last weekend, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona, perhaps the two most right-wing members of Congress,were planning to create an"America First" caucus in the House. This is similar to the way neo-Nazis,Ku Klux Klan members, and other members of explicitly white supremacist organizations beginning in the 1970s and '80s rebranded themselves as "white nationalists," with the goal of appearing more "respectable" and "mainstream."To counterthat subterfuge, Greene's group could be more accurately described as the "White Power Caucus" or the "House Republican Klavern."

Punchbowl News obtained access to a seven-page statement of purpose and goals from the proposed America First Caucus, which includes such standard white supremacist talking points as: "America is a nation with a border, and a culture strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions."

In a particularly strange tangent, thedocument also argued that the U.S. shouldembrace"the progeny of European architecture, whereby public infrastructure must be utilitarian as well as stunningly, classically beautiful, befitting a world power and source of freedom."

On immigration, the America First caucus appeared to draw itsinspiration from America's long history of eugenics and "race science": "Societal trust and political unity are threatened when foreign citizens are imported en-masse into a country, particularly without institutional support for assimilation and an expansive welfare state to bail them out should they fail to contribute positively to the country."

Unsurprisingly, the America First Caucusalso pledgedits loyalty to Donald Trump and his Big Lie about the 2020 election. In total, the notional caucus' policy platform went well beyond racist "dog whistles,"and was more like a white supremacist air raid siren.

Even the name of Greene and her cabal's hate caucus signaledto some of the most shameful chapters of America's history of white supremacy and racial terror.

In a 2018 article forThe Nation, historian Kevin Kruse explained the broader context of Donald Trump and his movement's invocationof the term"America First":

As the United States drifted into the First World War, nativists increasingly became concerned over the "hyphenates" in their midst: those who called themselves German-American, Irish-American, Italian-American, and the like. It was time, Wilson insisted in 1915, for every immigrant "to declare himself, where he stands. Is it America first or is it not?" Less than a decade later, the United States embraced drastic restrictions on immigration through the National Origins Act of 1924. As a Republican supporter in Congress explained, the policy simply reflected "the doctrine of America first for Americans."

Not surprisingly, the Ku Klux Klan employed "America First" in much the same way, using it to demand nothing less than "100% Americanism" which for the group meant 100 percent white Americanism. In 1921, a circular listed the "ABCs" of the KKK: "America first, benevolence, clannishness." While the Klan was often called the "American Fascisti" during this era, the same arguments were advanced by more openly fascist organizations like William Pelley's Silver Shirts, an American counterpart to Mussolini's blackshirts and Hitler's brownshirts. "The various colored shirt orders the whole haberdashery brigade who play upon sectional prejudice are sowing the seeds of fascism," the writer James Waterman Wise warned. "It may come wrapped in a flag or a Hearst newspaper," he added, with "America First" on the masthead.

The Guardian's editorial board summarizes this moment: "If anyone wondered what American fascism might look like then they could start with theproposedcongressional "America First Caucus", which emergedthis weekendfrom the office of extremist Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene."

It is no coincidence that Donald Trump's white supremacist advisor, professional hate-mongerand Fox Newspersonality Stephen Miller traffics in the same language, public policiesand ideas as Greene and her proposed caucus.

After Punchbowl News shared details about Greene's proposedwhite power caucus,it was met with outrage and condemnation by the commentariat and political chattering class. She denied ever having seen the document, and responded with contradictory claims that no such group wouldbe formed.

Greene of course argued that she wasa "victim" of a smear campaign by the "liberal news media,"and in a striking display of cowardice evenblamed a staff member for misrepresenting the nature of the caucus and releasing a rough draft of its founding document.

In all likelihood, Greene and her cabal were testing norms and boundaries. She and her allies temporarily retreated in order to reassess their larger strategy of how toweaponize white supremacy as a way to maximize their power within the Republican Party. Testing norms and boundaries and then recalibrating is a common strategy among political extremists.

Leading Republicans and other "sensible" voices on the right condemned Greene and her theoretical caucus as a way of demonstrating their false anti-racistbonafides. Such voices claimed that the America First group's statedbeliefs in the superiority of "Anglo-Saxoncivilization,"and its related desireto keep America a majority-white country by shutting downnonwhite immigration, represent a betrayal of the country's best traditions and values. More "traditional" Republicans also took the opportunity to denounce Greene and her cabal as a way ofsuperficially distancingthemselves and their party from the enduring stain of Trumpism.

Too much of the mainstream news media cannot conceal itshunger for a return to normalcy and its quest for "reasonable," "decent" and"traditional" Republicans. In breathless reporting, the mainstream news media and its hope peddlers, professional centrists and stenographers of current events proclaimed that Republicans were "outraged" and "disgusted" at Greene and the America First caucus. The Republican Party was once again described as descending intochaos and disarray because of Greene's latest white supremacist stunt.

But thereal story of the AmericaFirst Caucus is one of style versus substance: Today's Jim Crow Republican Party largely agrees with the nativist and white supremacist policies of Greene's proposed caucus. The fake outrageis really a function of public relations, reflecting how boldly such ideas and policies are being presented.

Make no mistake:Today's Republican Party is America's and the world's largest white supremacist organization. Its slide into open embrace of white supremacy with the rise of Trump and his neofascist movement did not occur overnight. That outcome took several decades, from the infamous Southern strategy of Richard Nixon's time to Reaganism, the white backlash of the Tea Party against Barack Obamaand a Republican Party that is so extreme that is has more in common with neofascist political organizations in Hungary and Poland than withmainstream democratic political parties in other parts of the West.

Donald Trump's presidency and movement were and are based on white racial resentment, anxiety about a loss of white privilege and control over American societyand, for many of Trump's supporters and followers, an embrace of overt white supremacy and a desire to hurt nonwhite people.

The Republican Party, its leadershipand elected officials fully embraced and consistently supported Trump's policy agenda no matter what degree of deflection or prevarication they may wish to offer. Loyalty to Trump was so extreme that the 2020 Republicanplatform was nonexistent: The party would dowhatever Trump wanted. The so-called reasonableand traditionalRepublicans in Congress voted for almost every one of Trump's proposals, however racist, cruel, fascisticand anti-democraticthey have been. Even "good Republicans" such as Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who twice voted to convict Trump for his crimes against democracy, still supported almost all of his legislation and policy positions.

Although he is no longer president, Donald Trump remains more popular among Republican voters and his followers than the party itself. Public opinion polls and other social science research has repeatedly shown that the"economic anxiety" among the "white working class" that led to the Age of Trump was primarily a function ofracism, white supremacyand what experts have described as "ethnic antagonism" and fear of "displacement" by nonwhites.

On Jan. 6, Trump's followers launched a lethal coup attack on the U.S. Capitol. That act of treason was fundamentally an attack on the legitimacy of America's multiracial democracy. As shown by public opinion polls and other research, a majority of Republicans, then and now, support the Capitol attack or seek to blame it on others.

In numerous states, the Republican Partyhas publicly criticized or formally censured the relatively small number of elected Republicans who dared to condemn Trump's coup attack, resist his false claims of election fraud or supporthis impeachment.

Other research shows that Republicans, and Trump followers specifically, reject the very idea of American democracy if white people are no longer to beits dominant group.

Experimental research shows that when white participants are exposed to information suggesting that the white proportion of the populationis declining, they exhibit not just social-status anxiety but fears about the literal extermination of the "white race."Such fears then lead to racial biasand greater support for right-wing extremist policies.

By refusing to accept the basic fact that today's Republican Party is a white supremacist terror organization, themainstream news media is repeating exactly the same mistakes that led to the Age of Trump and the coup attempt ofJan. 6.

Greene and her America First Caucus are not an aberration. They are notsomething strange or alien tothe Republican Party. In many ways, she and her proposed group are the Republican Party's heart, passions and unrestrained id. This is a dangerous truth that the mainstream news media is afraid to speak publicly and forcefully.

In effect, the media's desperate search for "reasonable Republicans" is an attempt to normalize the abominable. That only servesto enable neofascism. This is not a bad habit, an involuntary compulsionor a "lack of journalistic imagination." It is a perilously irresponsible choice that maylead to the demise of American democracy.

Read more:

How is Marjorie Taylor Greene's failed "America First" caucus any different from the GOP? - Salon

As the pandemic slammed the Black community and amplified the conversation around racism in America, the economics profession grappled with an uncomfortable truth: that its historical roots and practices today are mired in systemic racial bias.

Last summer, the shock of George Floyds death and other instances of police brutality ignited a national debate about inequality. Topics like the racial wealth gap became part of everyday discourse.

But at the heart of the problem is not just the prosperity separating White Americans from minorities -- often the Black Americans whose ancestors helped build the economy through enslaved labor -- but also that the very discipline that is a key conduit for improvement remains rife with racial bias.

My view of how economics has to inherently address structural racism starts with economics recognizing the role of institutions and power and politics in shaping economic outcomes, said Joelle Gamble, special assistant to President Joe Biden for economic policy. We are trying to practice this differently and say how are we actually driving towards economic growth in a way that is helping more and more people who have been permanently left out?

Part of the challenge is that few Black Americans have joined the profession: Just 13 received a doctorate in economics in 2019 among the 464 awarded to U.S. citizens, according to a report published in December by the American Economic Association. Of those, four were Black women.

Black Americans have about one-seventh the wealth of Whites

Source: Federal Reserve

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In a sign of the heightened focus on the issue at the highest ranks in the field, the Federal Reserve -- the nations foremost economic institution and the largest employer of doctorate-level economists -- hosted a conference on racism in economics on Tuesday.

Its a roll-up-your-sleeves moment in our profession, San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said in remarks during the event. Were going to talk about how the practice of economics, the very way in which we conduct our research, may in fact contribute to, perpetuate, some of the things weve seen that horrify us.

Two weeks after Floyds death, economist William Spriggs published an open letter to his peers, explaining how many economists perpetuate inequality by ignoring race, and the impact of racism, in their research. Spriggs, a professor of economics at the historically Black Howard University and the chief economist of the AFL-CIO labor federation, participates in the Feds Tuesday conference.

Read More: Labor Wants Biden to Put Cook or Spriggs on Fed, Trumka Says

The U.S. economys problems today are monumental. Some 22 million jobs were lost at the onset of the pandemic, and while a good amount of them have been recovered, the Black unemployment rate remains at 9.6%, almost double the White rate.

Undoing a crisis whose burden has fallen heaviest on minorities while striving for a more equal economy -- as Biden has said he wants to do -- will be challenging and will likely require new ideas.

Black employment is still down 6.5% from before the pandemic

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Modern-day economics in America was founded in the Progressive Era -- a period at the turn of the 20th century that overhauled the role of government in public life, according to Thomas Leonard, an economist and historian at Princeton University. Progressive lawmakers created the administrative state we know today, including the Fed, the Department of Labor, and other institutions that shape the economy through policy and regulation.

This was a time in U.S. history, some 30 years after the end of the Civil War, when racism and eugenics were commonplace.

Many of the earliest economists, including Irving Fisher, one of the most celebrated of the profession, were staunchly racist and backers of eugenics, the theory that some races are superior to others.

They not only founded economics as a professional, scientific discipline, they founded it as an academic discipline and they made it a politically influential discipline, Leonard said. They kind of invented this idea of the economist as a scientific expert who advises governments, politicians, regulators, on what to do.

But Leonard says the economics profession has made a lot of progress in the past century. While outright racism might no longer be acceptable, and eugenics has been completely discredited, some say economics retains subtler, yet acute biases.

At the root of many economists issues with the failures of modern-day economics is the professions sometimes fervent reliance on neoclassical theory. Neoclassical economics was established by Progressive-Era economists and asserts that supply and demand are the driving forces behind things like the pricing of goods.

So when looking at something like the racial income gap -- in America, Black workers make 60% of their White counterparts wages -- a strict adherent to neoclassical theory might blame the gap on things like disparate education or skills levels, ignoring the impact of race-based discrimination, according to Nina Banks, an associate professor of economics at Bucknell University.

The empirical research that demonstrates that racial and ethnic discrimination explains economic outcomes is often overlooked or dismissed within the profession, Banks said. Even when we have a profession that is more inclusive of historically excluded groups, its not going to resolve the problem of racial biases in economics because the problems of racial bias, those problems are really embedded within our economic theory.

Banks calls stratification economics, which explores inequality by how different groups experience things, one of the most important developments in economics in the past few decades.

Jala Abner, a research assistant at the Chicago Fed, is one of the newer entrants to the field.

As a Black woman I always wondered why there were these differences, and can we necessarily pinpoint the intersections of someones identity for the reason why they have lower wealth, lower income, things like that, Abner said. Just to see that theres proof within these data sets that theres something clearly wrong. It just reaffirms that we have a lot more work to do in general, whether its the Fed or society as a whole.

Abner, 22, graduated from Spelman College last year with a Bachelors degree in economics. She is considering pursuing a graduate degree in the discipline and may focus her research in stratification economics.

Abner is among the few Black economists within the Federal Reserve system. The Board of Governors in Washington, which employs about 400 doctorate-level economists (the 12 reserve banks together employ another 400 or so) had just two Black PhD holders at the end of last year.

While the Biden administration has put Black women in some of the most prominent economic positions -- Cecilia Rouse heads the Council of Economic Advisers and Janelle Jones is the chief economist at the Labor Department -- the profession overall is still starkly male and White.

Just 2.8% of economic doctorate degrees went to Black Americans in 2019

Source: American Economic Association 2020 Report of the Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession

Other science professions do slightly better. About 4% of doctorate degrees given in science, technology, engineering and math subjects went to Black Americans, who make up about 13% of the U.S. population. About 11.7% went to minorities overall.

The Fed has been trying to alter this for the past few years. The Board has changed hiring practices so that interviewers ask job candidates a standard set of questions and evaluate them based on specific criteria. It is working with historically Black colleges and universities to recruit more of their graduates, and created a program at Howard University in 2016 where Fed economists teach students.

To try and improve the pipeline of diverse students into economics, the Fed also sends economists to high schools to give presentations about the discipline and brings students to the Board in Washington to meet with the governors.

Beyond its work to improve diversity within its own ranks, the Fed last year changed the strategy behind how it carries out monetary policy. It will now seek to limit shortfalls from maximum employment, defined as a broad-based and inclusive goal. That means it wont raise rates preemptively to head off inflation as unemployment falls, bringing more people from marginalized communities into the workforce.

With assistance by Matthew Boesler

(Updates with quote by Feds Daly in seventh paragraph.)

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

The rest is here:

Fed Is Taking On a Racist Legacy in the Field of Economics - Bloomberg

One cannot combat the eugenics of the past by using eugenics in the present, which is what critical race theory is doing. To say the racism of the past, that saw the rise of eugenics take hold under former President Wilson, has any merit in todays society is to ignore far more than the bloody end of a war that helped bring about an end to slavery in the United States.

Modern science has proven the science of the past wrong. Biologically, there is no difference between humans regardless of their outward appearance. All people have varying abilities and these abilities do make a difference. No person excels in all areas and there is no shortage of failures of the past and present when attempting something when one does not have the ability.

Race, from a purely scientific standpoint, does not exist. To say racial inequality exists is to give emphasis to what has been proven nonexistent. It is akin to claiming nothing has changed, regardless of the science that has done exactly that.

There was a time in the United States when anti-Semitism did run rampant and was every bit as open as racism. There were places of business denied based on nothing more than the color of ones skin or the religious affiliation that happened to be part of by birth. It did not matter that most Jews were secular in the United States, as is the case today.

The Klan, which had been dying out prior to Wilson, saw a rebirth that he and others encouraged. Movies were made that romanticized the Klan, which were shown in the White House to Wilson. His praising of those movies, along with others of influence, was one of the primary reasons for the rebirth.

Wilson, as one of his first acts as President, segregated the military and fired just about every person who happened to be of, as he believed, a lesser race. That segregation would not end until Truman started the process and Eisenhower gave it teeth. Two World Wars were fought without ever thinking of ending segregation.

The Tuskegee airmen, who were the best bomber escort fighter pilots in WWII, had to face ridiculous hurdles, since Washington, including former President Roosevelt, did not believe black men were capable of flying in combat. It did not matter that the Canadians already had a military made up of combined races, including their Air Force, which did have successful black pilots.

Eugenicists were so focused on race, that any evidence to the contrary had no bearing on anything. Despite what was happening in Europe under the eugenics beliefs of the Nazis, nothing changed in Washington. Roosevelt remained committed to eugenics, which is the reason he never stopped the segregation that most likely prolonged the war.

When Roosevelt died, he left Truman surrounded by people of a similar mindset to the one he had. Truman faced an internal threat of the entire Cabinet quitting is he welcomed Israel as a new nation. Even after much of the horrors of the Nazis became known, the anti-Semitism continued from those who predated Truman.

Those institutions that had been put in place to prevent people from working or living where they wished were removed over time. The Clan that was on the rise following Wilson, is now little more than a crippled and shattered shell of what it once was. There is no university that prohibits anyone based on race or religion from gaining access to any profession in the United States.

Critical race theory is a continuation of eugenics that continues to put emphasis on race over individual abilities. Included in race are the Jewish people as a whole from an anti-Semitic viewpoint. The universities that have been slowly pushing critical race theory is where the greatest number of anti-Semites can be found today. It is no secret that anti-Semitism has been growing on college and university campuses.

Emily Benedict recently published an article at Tablet Magazine entitled, California Is Cleansing Jews From History, where she points out the more problematic problems with the proposed California curriculum based on critical race theory. In one sample lesson, she saw that a list of historic U.S. social movementsones like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Criminal Justice Reformalso included the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement for Palestine (BDS) BDSs primary goalthe elimination of Israelwas not mentioned. Kaplan also saw that the 1948 Israel War of Independence was only referred to as the Nakbacatastrophe in Arabicand Arabic verses included in the sample lessons were insulting and provocative to Jews.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/california-ethnic-studies-curriculum

Critical race theory, at its heart, is based on race, which makes it divisive by its very nature. It seeks to cast all members of races, as they classify them, merit or demonization based on nothing more than how one appears. Jewish people, regardless of their actual origin, as solely European in nature, which does make them the target of critical race theory.

Critical race theory blames the past for the problems of the present. There is not one thing being spoken about that will solve the current problems as they exist. Not one word about the poor schools with a high dropout rate. Nothing about the illiteracy rate that increases with each generation, which limits the jobs people can do.

There was a time when some states did prohibit educating people of African descent, but that is no longer the case. The public school system, particularly in the inner cities, does have problems that do contribute to the drop out and illiteracy rates. That is never mentioned by those who preach critical race theory.

Anything based on race, including critical race theory, is eugenics. No matter how the package is wrapped, it is still based on a science that has been disproven time and again. Ability knows no color.

Bob Ryan is a science-fiction author and believes the key to understanding the future is to understand the past. As any writer can attest, he spends a great deal of time researching numerous subjects. He is someone who seeks to strip away emotion in search of reason, since emotion clouds judgement.Bob is an American with an MBA in Business Administration. He is a gentile who supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.

See the rest here:

Critical Race Theory is Eugenics | Bob Ryan | The Blogs - The Times of Israel

In the last two weeks, we have taken many steps to improve the lives of Vermonters. Ill take a few moments to focus on several of them.

H.159, among other things, creates the Better Places Program and makes a strong commitment to our Vermont State Colleges (VSC). We allocate $20.5 million to the State College system to be focused on workforce development in the fields of childcare, nursing, accounting, and mental health counseling, as well as scholarships for Vermont students who want to complete their degrees or return home from out-of-state colleges and universities to attend VSC. The Better Places program is allocated $5 million to advance its mission of creating or revitalizing public spaces in our communities through matching grants. To reopen our state to tourists, $2.5 million is dedicated to marketing Vermont in support of our hospitality and tourism industry. H.159 also places an emphasis on supporting businesses owned by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Persons of Color) community members. The bill passed unanimously on roll call and voice votes.

Over the last three months, I have discussed several system weaknesses that COVID-19 has revealed including in broadband and the food supply chain system; another of those is in health care. Our goal is to have equal access to health care for all Vermonters, but data and statistics indicate that that is not the case, especially for those in the BIPOC and LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning) communities. For instance, 20 percent of COVID cases were members of the BIPOC community when they are only 6 percent of our population. This may be because they are less likely to have a personal physician. Statistics also show that non-white Vermonters are more likely to suffer from depression, LGBTQ adults are three times as likely to report seriously considering suicide, and adults with disabilities are more likely to report being in poor mental or physical health.

To try to correct these disparities, address structural racism, and promote equal access and equity in our health care system, we passed H.210. It creates a Health Equity Advisory Commission, which will collect and analyze data and then provide grants to programs that improve health care for members of the BIPOC, LGBTQ, and disability communities.

In recent years, we have witnessed more incidents of people being sexually assaulted on college campuses and elsewhere after being incapacitated, either by drugs or alcohol. H.183 expands the definition of consent, makes clear that those who are incapacitated are unable to consent, and provides added protections for those who are sexually assaulted. It creates the Intercollegiate Sexual Violence Prevention Council in an effort to reduce sexual violence on college campuses. It also asks law enforcement to increase data gathering to better understand sexual assault and violence in Vermont.

March 31 marked the 90th anniversary of the passing of legislation that would be one of Vermonts least stellar moments. On that day in 1931, An Act for Human Betterment by Voluntary Sterilization was signed into law. Based on research and a survey done by UVM professor Henry Perkins, the goal of the eugenics movement was to prevent procreation by people deemed unfit in order to preserve old pioneer stock. This, of course, targeted folks in the BIPOC community, in particular those of Native American and French-Canadian heritage. Also included on the list were those with disabilities, the poor, and people of mixed ethnicity including French-Indians.

Some of the tactics used included forced sterilization, family separation, incarceration, and institutionalization, which led to trauma that is still felt today by some members of our population. Records were kept on Vermonters as Perkins collaborated with municipal and state officials, including the Vermont Department of Welfare and it is believed that at least 253 people were sterilized.

In an attempt to apologize for the harm that was done, we passed J.R.H. 2, which is a formal apology for Vermonts State-Sanctioned Eugenics Movement. In resolutions, perhaps the most important parts are the Resolved clauses. In this case they read, That the General Assembly sincerely apologizes and expresses its sorrow and regret to all individual Vermonters and their families and descendants who were harmed as a result of State-sanctioned eugenics policies and practices, and be it further Resolved: That the General Assembly recognizes that further legislative action should be taken to address the continuing impact of State-sanctioned eugenics policies and related practices of disenfranchisement, ethnocide, and genocide.

This helps explain something that I have wondered about. In 1985 when I moved back to Windham, my mother-in-law, Cora Cheney Partridge, was close friends with a long-time Windham resident. I had heard that her mother was Native American, and I was intrigued to learn more. She knew many home remedies that I wanted to know more about, but she was very hesitant to talk about it. Im sure that years of hiding her ethnicity for fear of being separated from her family, or worse, was a result of the Eugenics Movement that she had grown up with.

The final bill Ill cover is H.225, which is an act that decriminalizes small amounts of non-prescription buprenorphine, commonly known as bupe. Buprenorphine is an opioid that, among other things, is used before coming into Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) under the care of a doctor. At this point in time, possession of small amounts of buprenorphine, while a misdemeanor, is rarely prosecuted because it is seen as a method to wean people off of serious opioid addiction. This practice of turning a blind eye may not be followed state-wide so H.225 seeks to make clear that possession of 224 milligrams (a one- to two-week supply) or less of non-prescription buprenorphine by those 21 and older is legal.

Debate on H.225 brought fresh to my mind the untimely death of my niece in 2017 due to a fentanyl overdose. I wrote about it in 2020, which you can read if you go to my website at carolynpartridge.com 1.17.2020 Farm to Plate Report and Substance Abuse Disorder. If you havent experienced directly the loss of someone to substance abuse disorder, it may be hard to understand the tragedy it introduces to a family. Families struggle to help their loved one kick a habit that may have been the result of post-operative medication or a chance experimentation with friends that leads to a rapid brain chemistry change. Even after several visits to rehab and seeming to be on a good path, one little slip and reduced tolerance to drugs or alcohol can be lethal.

Aside from the time I served as Majority Leader, in 23 years Ive explained my vote two or three times, but I felt compelled to do so on this bill. The following is what I said, Madam Speaker: Nearly four years ago, my niece died of a fentanyl overdose. Had something less lethal been available to her, she might be alive today. If you have not experienced the loss of a loved one to substance abuse disorder, you are fortunate. It breaks hearts and tears families apart. Today, I cast my vote for Megan Anne and have faith that this bill will save lives. I sincerely hope it does. The pandemic has not slowed the death rate due to opioids; in fact, we have seen a 38 percent increase in overdoses during the last year.

One of the good things the pandemic has brought to us is familiarity with Zoom meetings. My district-mate, Rep. Leslie Goldman is holding monthly Zoom meetings for our constituents in the Windham-3 district, but she assures me that all are welcome. The next meeting is April 24 at 10 a.m. and if you want to join, please register at http://www.lesliegoldmanvt.com. I was able to join last month and really enjoyed it. This month I will not be able to join because I will be participating in a Council of State Governments virtual conference entitled Carbon Sequestration from the Ground Up: Opportunities in Northeastern Farms and Forests but hope to participate again next time.

See original here:

Carolyn Partridge | Notes from Montpelier: Steps to improve the lives of Vermonters - Brattleboro Reformer

In 2020, the world was shocked and stopped by the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States was especially affected by the pandemic, due to the U.S. governments categorization of the disease.

Government officials initially stated the disease was a hoax and overall something that Americans did not have to worry about. This misinformation, miscategorization and misleading was allowed to go unchecked until the American death toll began to drastically rise.

At the point when Americans began to realize that we and our loved ones were in danger, for many people, it was far too late. Our government failed to protect us by not equipping us with the proper knowledge, necessary protocols and vital resources to minimize the harm caused by the disease.

By failing to provide these elements, Americans were caught off guard and as a result, more than 550,000 people lost their lives, according to the CDC. These were fathers, mothers, children, grandparents, cousins, friends and they were all people who deserved more from the U.S. government.

According to the CDC, COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on minority communities. Minority communities have experienced higher rates of infection and death from the disease, as well as greater economic impact.

The African American community has been negatively impacted by discrimination in health care, lack of health care access, reluctance to seek medical care, disproportionate representation in essential work settings, crowded housing conditions and educational, income and wealth gaps. Each of these factors plays a role in the high rates of infection and death among the African American population.

One of the most prominent of these factors is African Americans reluctance to seek medical care. This is based on their distrust in the government and health care systems responsible for inequities in treatment and historical events like the Tuskegee Experiment and eugenics programs.

The Tuskegee Experiment was an ethically unjustified study of untreated syphilis in African American males conducted between 1932-1972 by the United States Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The African American men who participated in the study were promised free health care from the federal government, but this promise was a lie. The study was originally supposed to last for six months but instead lasted for 40 years, even after it lost the funding.

None of the participants were ever treated for syphilis nor did they know they had syphilis. All of the African American men were told they were being treated for bad blood. Although the cure for syphilis (a shot of penicillin) was widely available by 1947, it was never administered to any of the participants. For forty years, participants were forced to suffer through the symptoms of syphilis with 128 of the 600 participants dying.

Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices aimed at improving the genetic quality of the human population, historically advanced by white supremacy. In America, eugenics was utilized to preserve the position of the white race as the dominant group in the population.

Eugenics programs were present across the United States, and their purpose was to sterilize people without their permission. The focus of these programs was to minimize minority populations by limiting their ability to procreate. Both African American men and women, of a variety of ages, were often the targets of these forced sterilizations, although the women often outnumbered the men.

These eugenic programs were overtly racist in their objectives and their implementation across society. Both the Tuskegee Experiment and the Eugenic Programs have led to a valid distrust of the government and health care professionals by African Americans.

Our country has reached a point where multiple COVID-19 vaccines are available, and much of the population is being vaccinated. After a year of being forced to comply with pandemic protocols, a return to normalcy seems to be on the horizon. However, minority populations, especially African Americans, are still not comfortable receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.

The government has a duty to rebuild African Americans trust in medicine, specifically the COVID-19 vaccine. There is a duty to provide African Americans with information on the vaccine, explanations for why the vaccine was created so fast and most importantly why we need to receive it.

Due to the longstanding distrust of the government, there should be commercials advocating for and detailing the facts of the COVID-19 vaccine, reports explaining that millions of dollars and resources were poured into crafting and perfecting the vaccine and press conferences recommending that African Americans get vaccinated due to their disproportionately high risk of infection and death.

The governments actions are what have led us to where we are today, thus, they must right their wrongs and protect African Americans and Americans as a whole.

More here:

US must build trust on the vaccine: Government has duty to African Americans - The Creightonian