America's History and the "Right to Die"
The drive to end the life of Terri Schiavo and the “right to die” debate brings echoes of America’s past – a shameful time in our history, but unlike today, one where at least people spoke honestly of their intentions.
Not taught in our history books is the leading role America’s elites played in advancing the eugenics movement in the early 20th century. Professors from American universities and eugenics “think-tanks” won awards from German Nazis for advancing theories and methods for “improving the human race” through breeding and elimination of “defectives.”
Much of this American eugenics movement focused on encouraging people of intelligence and means to have children, while discouraging (sometimes by force) more “feeble-minded” or otherwise “defective” or “inferior” people from procreating.
At the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial celebration in 1926, for example, the American Eugenics Society included a display which revealed that “every 48 seconds, a mentally deficient person was born in the United States, and that only every seven and a half minutes did the United States enjoy the birth of a high grade person... who will have the ability to do creative work and be fit for leadership." State Fairs during that era featured “Fitter Family Contests” where human breeding was rewarded with ribbons like those now awarded to the winning steer at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
In Virginia, they took it a step further – passing a eugenics law that sent sheriffs into the hills to round up those, as eugenics leader Harry Laughlin put it, “belong to the shiftless, ignorant and worthless class of anti-social whites in the south.” Those rounded up were forced to undergo sterilization.
Despite this, Dr. Joseph S. DeJarnette thought Virginia was sterilizing too few, and in 1934, urged the legislature to broaden the sterilization law, stating "the Germans are beating us at our own game."
Even the Supreme Court approved. In the case Buck v Bell, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote, “The principle that sustains the compulsory vaccinations is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes.” He then added, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
In addition to preventing births of “undesirables,” hastening (or causing) the death of those who didn’t meet the standard was also central to the eugenics movement. One case that brings to mind the Terri Schiavo situation involved the 1915 starvation of an infant in Chicago, named simply “Baby Bollinger.” This mentally-disabled baby, according to the Chicago American, needed simple esophageal surgery to survive, but said the paper, “This baby will die because the attending surgeon so decrees….he has had the courage to decide that it shall not add its weight to the already large burden of defectives in the world.” The baby was starved to death.
Dr. Haiselden did the same to an infant with similar disabilities nearly a year later, except this time offering a powerful drug to kill the baby quickly. Newspapers reported then a “tremendous outcry in opposition to the practice of euthanasia.” One woman offered to clean the mother’s home so she could care for and provide comfort to the infant. However, as the Chicago American reported, “The baby was taken to a hospital, where a jury of doctors will decide if there’s any hope for the baby to be anything but an idiot.” Dr. Haiselden added, “The world is overcrowded with dangerous defectives.”
Today, well-schooled in political correctness, we engage in the same kind of eugenic thinking and behavior, while couching it compassionate-sounding words. We now permit the killing of more than 75% of all Down’s Syndrome children in the womb because of “choice.” Groups like Planned Parenthood purposely site contraceptive clinics and abortionists in lower-class and minority neighborhoods and achieve the same results they sought in the 1930’s, while avoiding the “master-race” speak of their founder, Margaret Sanger. Reagan Interior Secretary James Watt was drummed out of office for calling a disabled person, “a cripple.” Yet – simply use the right words, and feel free to starve them to death.
Attorneys and activist judges have somehow elevated the “right to die” above the most fundamental right named in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence. We are all “created equal” and endowed with a “Right to Life.” That includes the disabled, the infirm, the smart, the feeble, the Baby Bollingers and the Terri Schiavos.
If not, as eugenicist Amram Scheinfeld wrote in 1939, “we are forced to conclude that the statement of the Founding Fathers was a flight of poetic fancy.” Woe to us all if that becomes our national policy.
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