Tuesday, December 2, 2008

The American Baby Code

Published in 1934 in American Weekly Magazine by Margaret Sanger (the founder of Planned Parenthood), it gives insight into her thinking. Makes me wonder if PP will disavow Margarat Sanger, but I doubt it. Special thanks to our friends over at Les Femmes - The Truth.

Article 1. The purpose of the American Baby Code shall be to provide for a better distribution of babies. To assist couples who wish to prevent overproduction of offspring and thus to reduce the burden of charity and taxation for public relief and to protect society against the propagation and increase of the unfit.

Article 2. Birth control clinics shall be permitted to function as services of government health departments or under the support of charity, or as non-profit, self-sustaining agencies subject to inspection and control by public authorities.

Article 3. A marriage license shall in itself give husband and wife only the right to a common household and not the right to parenthood.

Article 4. No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child, no man shall have the right to become a father, without a permit for parenthood.

Article 5. Permits for parenthood shall be issued by government authorities to married couples upon application, providing the parents are financially able to support the expected child, have the qualifications needed for proper rearing of the child, have no transmissible diseases, and on the woman’s part no indication that maternity is likely to result in death or permanent injury to health.

Article 6. No permit for parenthood shall be valid for more than one birth.Article

7. Every county shall be assisted administratively by the states in the effort to maintain a direct ratio between county birth rate and its index of child welfare. When the county records show an unfavorable variation from this ratio the county shall be taxed by the State…. The revenues thus obtained shall be expended by the State within the given county in giving financial support to birth control…..

Article 8. Feeble-minded persons, habitual congenital criminals, those afflicted with inheritable diseases, and others found biologically unfit should be sterilized or in cases of doubt should be isolated as to prevent the perpetuation of their afflictions by breeding.

7 comments:

Robert Simms said...

Thanks for posting this.

Karie, the Regular Guy's Extraordinary Wife said...

I think I am going to be ill. If it weren't so freakingly laughable...

Rachel said...

Wow. Laughable and evil at the same time.

Mary Catherine said...

It would be laughable if people didn't still say it. I take classes with people who talk about how people should have to have a license to procreate. I'm not laughing.

Katherine said...

Margaret Sanger was (at best) a nut. Her only virtue is that she was against abortion. PP abandoned her only sound principle.

A WASHINGTONDC CATHOLIC said...

Then you really don't know her as well as you think you do Katherine (our Catholic for Obama visitor).

Katherine said...

Sanger in Chapter II of "Women's Struggle for Freedom"
It is apparent that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide.

Chapter X of the same book is an extended defense of birth control as a way to prevent abortion. Sanger opens with "While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization."

In her autobiography, Sanger writes:

...we explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way — no matter how early it was performed it was taking a life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way — it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun.

Let me be clear, I am no fan of Margaret Sanger. She did seem to understand the evil of abortion, while promoting a host of other evils.