[waterbadger]

Birth control is also rooted in eugenics. From 1909:

"The Family and the Nation" by Arnold Gessel is published. In it he expresses the intentions of the The American Birth Control League that:

"society need not wait for perfection of the infant science of eugenics before proceeding upon a course which will prevent renewal of defective protoplasm contaminating the stream of life."

He also advocates for "eugenic violence" in dealing with inferiors. According to him, "We must do as with the feebleminded, organize the extinction of the tribe."

[eesmith]

Arnold Gessel wasn't Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood.

Here's what Planned Parenthood says about Margaret Sanger: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/8013/9611/6937/Oppos...

Sanger's views were not that of the mainstream eugenics movement. Eg, she writes "Eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state."

Further, Planned Parenthood writes:

> Planned Parenthood Federation of America finds [the views Sanger shared with 'the "progressives" of her day'] objectionable and outmoded. Nevertheless, anti-family planning activists continue to attack Sanger, who has been dead for nearly 40 years, because she is an easier target than the unassailable reputation of PPFA and the contemporary family planning movement. However, attempts to discredit the family planning movement because its early 20th-century founder was not a perfect model of early 21st-century values is like disavowing the Declaration of Independence because its author, Thomas Jefferson, bought and sold slaves.

This is repudiation of those views of Sanger.

What's the equivalent for the Cato Institute and Charles Koch?

[waterbadger]

Yeah, I wasn’t trying to imply that they are the same. As a Catholic we don’t condone artificial birth control (or believe in divorce!) so it’s very different than the general 20th century perspective on things.

I do think it is important to historically understand where things most people take for granted come from because sometimes it can be pretty eye-opening.

There are many aspects of the modern world (birth control and related issues are just one) that were invented by people with intentions I think 90% of people would strongly disagree with if the they understood them.

[eesmith]

You said "Birth control is also rooted in eugenics." That is a tough argument to make.

Eugenics and birth control have been around for a very long time. Eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_birth_control and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Origin_and_developmen... .

Galton, an early eugenicist, coined the term in 1883. I'll use ~1880 as the start date for that strain of eugenics.

The history of birth control page points out "The Malthusian League was established in 1877 and promoted the education of the public about the importance of family planning and advocated for the elimination of penalties against the promoters of birth control.[38] It was initially founded during the "Knowlton trial" of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh in July 1877"

It also points out how "In the United States, contraception had been legal throughout most of the 19th century, but in the 1870s the Comstock Act and various state Comstock laws outlawed the distribution of information about safe sex and contraception and the use of contraceptives".

Which means birth control, and family planning, predate Galton, so cannot be rooted in eugenics, in the way you likely mean "eugenics" to mean.

Modern statistics was invented by eugenicists and "race scientists", like Galton.

[waterbadger]

Uh, I would consider something called the “Malthusian League” close enough to eugenics from my point of view.

But you are right, birth control itself predates modern era eugenics. What I meant was “modern” birth control.

A lot of the people who have shaped this cultural stuff are just very disturbed. In the past they were pretty open about their perspective before talking about it openly became somewhat taboo. As an example of the “Malthusian mindset” in 1954:

Nuclear scientist Harrison Brown publishes his book "The Challenge of Man’s Future". In the book Brown examines carefully the probability that the human carrying capacity of the planet is between 50 and 200 billion people, before summarizing the reasons this fact is best kept secret:

“If humanity had its way, it would not rest content until the earth is covered completely and to a considerable depth with a writhing mass of human beings, much as a dead cow is covered with a pulsating mass of maggots.”

Here is the papal encyclical “Humanae Vitae” by the way if you are interested in why the Church considers birth control to be harmful:

https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/docume...

[eesmith]

What informs your view? Because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_League doesn't sound anything like the eugenics movement.

Modern birth control started in the mid 20th century with the combined oral contraceptive pill. Rice-Wray, from what I can tell, saw it as a way for poor families to be able to voluntarily plan the number of children they have.

I don't see how that's informed by eugenics.

What do you see as "eugenics"?

What do you see as '"modern" birth control'?

> As an example of the “Malthusian mindset” in 1954

"Malthusian" has multiple meanings. The Malthusian League Wikipedia entry says: "The organisation maintained that it was concerned about the poverty of the British working class and held that over-population was the chief cause of poverty".

This is in accord with what Malthus wrote. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism#Early_history , Mathus' "criticism of the working class's tendency to reproduce rapidly, and his belief that this, rather than the exploitation of their labour by capitalists, led to their poverty, brought widespread criticism of his theory."

The Malthusianism page goes on to quote: "Though Malthusianism has since come to be identified with the issue of general over-population, the original Malthusian concern was more specifically with the fear of over-population by the dependent poor"

You quoting someone in 1954 doesn't mean it's the same as the goals of the Malthusian League some 80 years previous.

I have so many disagreements with the position of the Catholic church - sex outside of marriage, sex by teens, abortion, the role of women in the church, gay marriage, co-habitation, and so much more - that I don't see the point of trying to understand its official views of birth control.

[waterbadger]

If you get into the history of the late 19th century through the mid 20th century there is a pretty clear thread you can draw through:

- industrialization

- racial theories about immigrants

- birth control

- the birth of compulsory education (i.e. you must send your children to school to be “Americanized” or the police will arrest you)

- eugenics

- wealthy industrialists trying to consolidate their hold on power politically and economically through developing ways to control “the lower classes” through the “scientific management” of society.

Much of this involved domestic propaganda campaigns beginning in the early 20th century that the instigators were very open about at the time. Many prominent figures were also very explicit about using compulsory education as a tool to form a stratified society that would prevent “the poor” from being a threat to the utopian and “racially pure” world they wanted to build.

For example in 1901 Edward Ross published his book "Social Control" in which he states:

“Plans are underway to replace community, family, and church with propaganda, education, and mass media.. ..the State shakes loose from Church, reaches out to School.... People are only little plastic lumps of human dough.”

Or in 1919 Arthur Calhoun published his "Social History of the Family" in which he describes how the child was passing from its family "into the custody of community experts." He also predicted that in time we could expect to see public education "designed to check the mating of the unfit."

Where did the idea of eugenics come from? What other ideas were popular at the time that made it appealing to so many people?

From what I’ve studied about the time period, all this stuff, including eugenics and birth control, came from a literally racist and fairly deranged view of the world. They are all symptoms of the same mindset.

Large families are a powerful safety net for its members. When those families break down what happens? You have isolated and economically vulnerable individuals that are much easier to exploit and manipulate.

I understand that a random person on the internet probably isn’t going to change your mind about the Catholic church for many potential reasons.

That being said, I would argue that the Catholic church safeguards literally the only rationally consistent and ethically sound perspective of reality that we have.

There are teachings of the Church that are difficult to follow but, for the most part, that is because our modern world has organized itself around hedonism instead of loving God, serving God, and cultivating virtue.

As most people understood for thousands of years: cultivating virtue is actually the only path to the true freedom in life most people are looking for. Without pursuit of virtue the only alternative is to grow in slavery to a variety of hedonistic appetites.

To paraphrase St. Augustine:

The virtuous man is free even if he is a slave, the unvirtuous man is a slave even if he is a king.

[eesmith]

I think you have learned this incorrect statement from 'An Underground History Of American Education' by John Taylor Gatto.

What you described matches what's published at https://archive.org/details/AnUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEd... .

However, 1) Arnold Gessel did not write "The Family and the Nation". That 1909 book was written by Whetham and Whetham - https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.22800/page/n7/... .

2) That book does not mention the American Birth Control League, though it is definitely in favor of eugenics.

3) Gessel's eugenics quote comes from "The Village of a Thousand Souls" in The American Magazine, October 1913, at https://archive.org/details/american-magazine/American%20mag... .

> ... there is a real possibility that the State will soon make a systematic attempt to secure a registration of the unfit and prevent the mating of the unfit. Only the rankest pessimists and believers in noninterference will condone the increase of feeble-mindedness and insanity which is occurring everywhere in the villages of the land. We need not wait for the perfection of the infant science of eugenics before proceeding upon a course of supervision and segregation which will prevent the horrible renewal of this defective protoplasm that is contaminating the stream of village life.

The entire article is a call for state-controlled eugenics, and proposing that what is now called "negative eugenics" should start soon, without waiting until the field of eugenics is fully fleshed out.

See also "ARNOLD GESELL’S PROGRESSIVE VISION: Child Hygiene, Socialism and Eugenics", August 2011, History of Psychology 14(3):311-34 at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ben-Harris-6/publicatio... for a biography, historical context, the effect of the publication, and the distortions Gesell made in his telling.

4) That article does not mention the American Birth Control League.

5) Because it couldn't ... Sanger didn't found the American Birth Control League until 1921. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Birth_Control_League How could a 1909 book or 1913 article refer to something that wouldn't happen for years?

6) Sanger was against the state-imposed negative eugenics advocated by Gesell.

This makes your source highly suspect, and strongly suggests you do not know much about the history beyond that source.

[waterbadger]

Yup, I did get a lot of this info from Underground History of American Education.

Thank you for the citations! I appreciate your research into the topic.