Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by _mdpn 2305 days ago
Margaret Sanger unapologetically supported eugenics and sterilizing 'inferior' people. Does that make Planned Parenthood a bad idea?
2 comments

It makes Planned Parenthood an organization one should judge in modern context separable from its origins, much like freedom of speech and ownership of other people from Greek philosophy.
It should certainly make you stop and think...

Would'nt you be suspicious if Hitler came up with some sort of program?

This kind of reasoning opens you up to the genetic fallacy. If you believe the moral status of the origin of a thing is necessarily transmitted to the thing itself, then you are liable to consider Hitler's pernicious concept of Der Volk and the Volkswagen to be equally evil.