Black Genocide and Planned Parenthood

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Black Genocide and Planned Parenthood

February 1, 2010 by Gerard M. Nadal

The data tell the story. These data from 2007 tell the ugly story about the leading cause of death in the African-American community. Still, there are those who swear there is no genocide occurring. Sanger would be pleased.

55 Responses

on February 1, 2010 at 8:51 AM Bethany

So sad. Amazing how small the AIDS and crime related deaths are in comparison.
on February 1, 2010 at 12:44 PM Mary Catherine

I agree it’s very sad. 13 Million souls who were never born.
Hard to imagine. All the doctors, musicians, teachers, singers, actors, athletes,moms, dads who simply are not. And all the missing children for the next generation…… 😦
on February 1, 2010 at 12:50 PM Barbara C.

I have seen that chart before. My only question is how a comparable chart would look for whites, Hispanics, etc. I think having the other charts would give this one more impact and validity.
on February 1, 2010 at 1:50 PM Siarlys Jenkins

Yes, let’s see the comparable figures for people with congenital melanin deficiency generally, and then a break down for Anglo, Hispanic, Greek, French, Dutch, Italian, Polish, German, Hungarian, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish… and then let’s talk about whether there is genocide going on. As a rough guess, I would expect the rates for east Asians to be the lowest.

Also, what were the rates, relative to over-all population, for violent crime, accidents, etc. before Roe v. Wade?

This is a silly piece of grandstanding. If you believe that abortion is murder, the statistical racial impact doesn’t really add anything to the moral force of that argument. If it is not murder, then disparate impact doesn’t show genocide.
on February 1, 2010 at 3:14 PM saynsumthn

For historical evidence that abortion is Black Genocide watch the stunning 2.5 hour documentary about the history of eugenics, Margaret Sanger, the Civil Rights movement, and Planned Parenthood called: Maafa21. Check it out here: http://www.maafa21.com
on February 1, 2010 at 3:24 PM Mary Catherine

SJ the fact is that PP has specifically targeted the black population in America.
Just because you cannot accept this fact does not make it improbable.
The fact that there is a racial side to abortion which most proaborts prefer not to acknowledge simply makes abortion all the more reprehensible.
Often abortion is promoted worldwide as a way to prevent poverty (especially among people of colour) and to prevent disabilities.

Except that it prevents nothing since the baby is already in existence by the time the “solution” to the so called “problem” is enacted.
This is probably one of the more illogical arguments used to promote the “good” of abortion. 😦
on February 1, 2010 at 6:25 PM BHG

Quotes from famous grandstanders:

The Alan Guttmacher Institute: A black baby is five times more likely to be killed in the womb than a white baby.

Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 7/02/09: Frankly, at the time Roe was decided there wasconcerne about population growth and particularly growth in populations we don’t want to have too many of.

50,000,000 abortions since 1973. 13,000,000 of them obtained by black women. Let’s see, if blacks are 12% of the population that means… we pro-lifers are right

Sure you don’t want to go back to the ole Thesaurus for a better word to describe facts that conflict with your ideology?
on February 1, 2010 at 7:21 PM Siarlys Jenkins

That means 37 million women classified by the quaint demographic term “white” had abortions, and the rate among women classified by the quaint fiction “black” was a little over double their percentage in the general population. That doesn’t make a case for genocide — statistical correlation does not establish causation either — nor is it anywhere near as overwhelming a simple comparison in magnitude as the chart at the top of this post. Doesn’t quite seem to match Guttmacher’s stats either — and since I know you don’t trust Guttmacher, I’ll bet you’ve changed the language of whatever they said a bit, and maybe shifted the meaning in doing so.

Now if 90% of the abortions were performed on “black” women, mostly without their consent, and the total “black” population declined by 60%, while the “white” population doubled, I’d see a case for genocide. I could care less what Margaret Sanger said — she speaks for herself, not for me. I think she was dead by the time Roe v. Wade was decided, but I frankly never paid much attention to her.

I’ve already explicitly stated on this site that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is absolutely clueless about Roe v. Wade. She doesn’t speak for me either. I found her dissent in Gonzalez v. Carhart absolutely hysterical.

http://siarlysjenkins.blogspot.com/2007/04/roe-v-wade-affirmed-again.html

And, if you really want to reduce this discussion to an exchange of trite insults, I have a Thesaurus, and I use it regularly.

Now why don’t you be sensible and stick to your main point, which is that you believe any abortion on a woman of any color at any time for any reason to be the murder of a human being. It is an honest, coherent belief, whether I fully agree with it or not.
on February 1, 2010 at 8:23 PM Bethany

Siarlys, there is nothing dishonest or invalid about having more than one reason for being against something.
on February 1, 2010 at 9:39 PM barboo77

The point is that abortion clinics target poor areas and everyone knows that African-Americans are a disproportionately impoverished compared to the general population. I was only suggesting charts for other races/ethnics groups because flashing a single data chart may not be convincing to some. “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

Siarlys wrote: “Also, what were the rates, relative to over-all population, for violent crime, accidents, etc. before Roe v. Wade?”

I don’t know exactly what point you are making.

And Sanger’s views are relevant because Planned Parenthood, one of the largest pro-choice lobbyists in the country and providers of abortions, looks to her as their founder and hero.
on February 1, 2010 at 10:14 PM Bethany

Facts from Mark Crutcher:

* In America today, almost as many African-American children are aborted as are born.

* Since 1973, abortion has reduced the black population by over 25 percent.

* More African-Americans have died from abortion than have died from AIDS, accidents, violent crimes, cancer and heart disease combined.

* Every four days, more African-Americans are killed by abortion than have been killed by the Ku Klux Klan in its entire 150 year history.

* Planned Parenthood operates the nation’s largest chain of abortion clinics, and almost 80 percent of its facilities are located in minority neighborhoods.

* Less than 13 percent of American women are black, but they submit to over 35 percent of abortions.

* In one week, more blacks are killed in American abortion clinics than were killed in the entire seven years of the Vietnam War.

* The most dangerous place for an African-American to be is in the womb of his or her African-American mother.
on February 2, 2010 at 12:15 PM Siarlys Jenkins

One of the points I’ve been making is that I can be pro-choice without endorsing Planned Parenthood, just as there are millions of people who are pro-life but are not Roman Catholic. I can be pro-choice and cheerfully watch the abortion rate drop to zero — as long as it is a voluntary choice made by each individual woman. I have no commitment at all to keeping the number of abortions up, or advocating that there is something positively good about it.

Seeing a sound reason to choose abortion is about on the same moral level as seeing a just reason to go to war. I would have fought in WW II. I would not have fought in Vietnam. I would not have fought in Iraq. I might, at some points, have fought in Afghanistan, but we should have kicked al Qaeda as hard as we could and then gotten out.

One of the more credible points made by people who are among those calling themselves pro-life is that Planned Parenthood seems to be pushing abortion because it is a reliable way to generate revenue. I don’t hesitate to call that obscene.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time playing tit-for-tat games, like who is Mark Crutcher, what is his expertise, where did he get his figures from, because it is true, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, and we all play with statistics. Semantically, I would say there are no African Americans, or white Americans, in the womb, because that is an artificial identity imposed upon us after we emerge. To be consciously absurd, don’t you know that babies are born looking “white”? That is due to the simple fact that melanin, in humans, is all about exposure to sunlight. The womb is literally a place where the sun does not shine. Some skin is more sensitive to sunlight than others, once exposed. Which just goes to show how silly the whole thing of categorizing people by “race” is.

Here is a statistic I found interesting, and on its face, not ideologically weighted, although it does come from the Guttmacher Institute:

From 1996 to 2006, teen pregnancy rates dropped, from around 90 to below 65 per 1000 women ages 15 to 19, then ticked up to a little above 65. During this entire time, abortion rates continued a slow but steady decline, from a little over 25 to a little below 20. Abortion rates did not go sharply up or down when teen pregnancy took a small but marked upturn. Numbers are approximate because I’m reading a graph. )TIME, Feb 3, 2010, p. 12)

One could derive many conclusions from this set of figures, and they raise interesting questions about other, related trends. The drop in teen pregnancy did not result from an increase in abortion. It mostly tracked a modest decrease. The increase in teen pregnancy did not result in either an increase or decrease in the the abortion rate. I’ll leave it there for now.
on February 2, 2010 at 12:52 PM barboo77

“To be consciously absurd, don’t you know that babies are born looking “white”? That is due to the simple fact that melanin, in humans, is all about exposure to sunlight.”

I’m not sure this is completely accurate. I have an acquaintance who was shocked when her baby was born with dark skin (she’s Hispanic; her husband is Asian). Then she remembered just how dark-skinned (as a Hispanic) her father had been.

Of course there is a difference between race and ethnicity. Race is something that can be scientifically identified by genetic and skeletal markers. Certain races are susceptible to certain diseases and health problems, based on genetic issues. Not that race should matter, but it is not just a societal construct. Ethnicity is a societal construct.

Either way, no matter what color skin the baby has at birth once it’s skin darkens it will get the same racial discrimination as its parents. It will be identified as an African-American it’s entire life, just ask Tiger Woods. And in many cases in our nation’s history (and in other countries) race has been determined by ancestry as much as physical appearance.

For a group that was founded on eugenic ideals and targets the poor, like Planned Parenthood, the term genocide would probably apply to what they do (as well as greedy and immoral).

While it’s true that all pro-choice people aren’t racist or don’t support Planned Parenthood, it is a fact that more African-American babies are killed. One of the consequences of legalized abortion is the murder of a disproportionate number of one race. Just like the consequences of China’s “one-child policy” has been the murder of a disproportionate number of one gender, whether that was intended or not.
on February 2, 2010 at 9:57 PM Mary Catherine

race is NOT an artificial identity.

It’s a reality and for some people a reality they don’t like.
In the minds of some people like Margaret Sanger and PP, certain races, are inferior.
Abortion is one way to remedy this problem by eliminating these “inferior breeders”.
on February 3, 2010 at 9:34 AM Bethany

Siarlys,

I agree with what Mary and Barboo77 said.

As for your idea that all black babies are born white in color until they are exposed to the sun, I have no idea where you get this idea!

Here are some pictures of African American newborns:

http://c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I00001S6_wkchh5k/s/650

Surely you aren’t going to tell me that the shades of color happened from hours of sitting in direct sunlight!
on February 3, 2010 at 7:05 PM Mary Catherine

ok now that’s just bizarre……SJ. Really.
on February 3, 2010 at 7:10 PM Bethany

I can be pro-choice and cheerfully watch the abortion rate drop to zero — as long as it is a voluntary choice made by each individual woman. I have no commitment at all to keeping the number of abortions up, or advocating that there is something positively good about it.

But you DO advocate that there is something positively good about abortion, Siarlys. You say that it is irresponsible and cruel NOT to have an abortion if your child has a disability. Therefore, abortion would HAVE to be a “good” thing in your eyes.

You definitely advocate that there is something positively good about taking the life of an unborn child who you deem inferior…so how can you possibly claim that you would be totally happy if everyone chose life?

The truth is that you wouldn’t be. You would be unhappy if every single woman who had a disabled child chose on their own to carry to term.
on February 3, 2010 at 7:16 PM Bethany

One of the more credible points made by people who are among those calling themselves pro-life is that Planned Parenthood seems to be pushing abortion because it is a reliable way to generate revenue. I don’t hesitate to call that obscene.

SJ, out of curiosity, why do you find it obscene that Planned Parenthood would profit from abortions?

Would you also find it obscene that a doctor would make a profit from performing a hysterectomy to save a life, or delivering a baby by cesarean section? Or performing plastic surgery on a burn victim?

I am not disagreeing with you about Planned Parenthood, of course – I think that Planned Parenthood profiting from abortions IS obscene, but I think I have a clearer reason as to why I believe it is obscene.

I just wonder what your reasoning is to think that it is obscene to profit from abortions, which you seem to think is a legitimate medical procedure which helps women.
on February 3, 2010 at 8:01 PM Gerard M. Nadal

SJ,

You’re chopping like mad now, but I don’t see any chips flying. Unsupported statistics get deleted from this site. Nobody comes here and leaves their mess in my living room, so we can dispense with the suspicion regarding stats.

“Seeing a sound reason to choose abortion is about on the same moral level as seeing a just reason to go to war.”

So in one incredible statement, you see an unborn child as meeting the same threat level as an unjust aggressor. That’s the most breathtaking statement I’ve ever seen.

Baby=Hitler
Baby=Tojo
Baby=Pol Pot
Baby=Mussolini
Baby=Bin Laden

Really SJ? Really??? Same moral level? What exactly justifies taking a nation to war? And that exists on the same moral level as the decision to hack a baby to pieces?

Sorry buddy, but even assuming your paradigm:

Napalm, which is jellied gasoline, which is used to burn the enemy to death has been banned internationally. We still allow saline abortions which chemically burn the baby to death.

Bullets must be copper-jacketed so they don’t inflict undue pain. We still grasp babies with forceps and rip them apart, limb-by-limb while they are alive.

Sadaam and his sons would feed their victims into big plastic shredders and this was roundly condemned by every human rights group on the planet, yet we suck babies to pieces with suction cannulas whose force is 16x greater than a vacuum cleaner.

Prisoners of war who are shot in the head are deemed to have been murdered under the Geneva Conventions. We deliver a 5 1/2 baby, leaving just the crown of the head in the mother’s vagina and jab scissors into the back of its skull and then suck its brains out.

So just what have these little ones done that is so heinous that you deem the war against them to be of the same moral stripe as WWII? Even enemy combatants and POW’s get far more humane treatment than your fetal aggressors.

Good God, what on earth were you thinking?!
on February 3, 2010 at 8:04 PM Bethany

Well said, Gerard!! I could not agree more.
on February 3, 2010 at 8:06 PM Bethany

Abortion is cruel and unusual punishment – especially when the crime is simply existing!
on February 3, 2010 at 10:28 PM Tom O'Toole

Gerard — Your blog is very good ammunition to the new PP “Counter-Tebow” ad that I featured.

http://tiny.cc/q8Hjs
on February 3, 2010 at 10:39 PM Siarlys Jenkins

Gerard, I’ve always said that analogies are dangerous things, and I handed you one you could run away with. Now that I’ve used the concept of just war to identify that abortion is not a morally indifferent question, but one to ponder carefully, you give the analogy a gentle twist and suggest that I favor war on fetuses. I could point out that it is easy to declare war on Hitler, but much more difficult to realize that in fighting Hitler, or the Kaiser, or French Imperialism (viewed from the German side) you have killed Jacques the Printer. (Reference is from All Quiet on the Western Front, and I may have got the printer’s name wrong.) Of course you would then ask how I sort out which fetus is Hitler and which fetus is Jacques. Really, there is no “enemy” in the abortion equation, however fraught with serious moral considerations it may be.

But MY point, as distinct from the one you took the opportunity to make, is, just because the option is available, does not mean it is the right thing to do. There are times it is necessary, times it is the best option available, times when it is the wrong choice. There are women who tearfully opt for a late third trimester abortion of a baby they really wanted, when it turns out that their abdomen would be ripped and they would hemmorhage to death if they proceeded with delivery. I’m not familiar with the medical details of why a Caesarian section wouldn’t make it all safe, but I am informed by medical doctors that, rarely, there are such cases. There are women who choose to abort, then regret it for all kinds of reasons. Now, you’ve all provided a long list of comments, so I’m going to have to take some time responding to each one.

Obviously you all have limited experience with families who have actually had African American babies. A friend of mine told me they actually come out dark brown behind the ears, and in the case of boys, on the penis, but really, it is a commonly known experience. Read Nelson Peery’s Black Fire: The Making of an American Revolutionary. His family was the ONLY black family in Wabasha MN when he was growing up, and every time his mother had a baby, once it got to the nursery, the nurse ran screaming for the doctor to come save the baby because it was turning black. A friend of mine’s daughter read that book one summer when I was doing some reading and math tutoring, and her sister asked, matter-of factly, “Why are babies born white?” She already knew they did. Black families know all about it. Of course shortly after birth it begins to darken. I’ve taken baby pictures too, and by the time I took the picture, of course they were dark.

But I miss no opportunity to point out that race is a totally artificial division. It can be very implacably imposed upon an individual by culture and social attitudes, but it has no basis in reality. Skin color is all about exposure to sunlight. Some people’s ancestors, until recent times, lived in latitudes where heatstroke and sunstroke were common killers, while others migrated to latitudes where Vitamin D deficiency was more hazardous. For the last five centuries, various cultures have lent this simple biological attribute all kinds of significance it never had. To make things worse, our literature attributes such racial attitudes to past generations in ways that never existed. In the eighth century, slaves were cute blonde-haired blue-eyed Anglo boys for sale in Rome. Romans were originally kind of tan. Probably Denzel Washington was the most realistic portrayal of Julius Caesar ever, but we are so used to seeing British actors playing Romans in movies.

Mary Catherine, I generally respect your moral integrity, in the sense that you are consistent and preach what you practice, but I am shocked by the depravity of lending a semblance of reality to the destructive notion of race. If race has no meaning, then neither Margaret Sanger nor anyone else can offer to destroy or eliminate a “race.” Instead, we would all have to deal with each individual human being as a unique individual. I guess you find race such a convenient card to play that you can’t give it up. That puts you on the same moral level as Ms. Sanger.

Bethany, you have made the point several times that women are coerced into having abortions. I don’t object to a doctor getting paid for what they do, whether it is an appendectomy, or neurosurgery, a physical check-up, vaccination, setting broken bones, or performing an abortion. When a non-profit starts to act like a business, when the business has a plan which is premised on creating a rapidly growing market for abortion, that’s a whole other matter.

Ideally, every woman would have a regular gynecologist and obstetrician, and if an abortion became necessary, their regular OB or GYN would take care of it, in the ordinary course of their practice. (Of course those doctors who are morally opposed to abortion wouldn’t learn it, would advertise to patient that they don’t perform it, and would have primarily patients who would never ask for one.) There would be no clinics specializing in the procedure, or offering it en masse.

If a non-profit clinic offers various services, and is indifferent to which services a woman chooses to use, I don’t have a problem. I have a problem with increasing the number of abortions because it generates revenue for a business. The natural course of pregnancy is to bear a child. There should be a very individual specific reason to terminate that process. I don’t support mass production, or induction, any more than I support unilateral prohibition.

As to the situations where I personally believe an abortion would be justified, it is never my ultimate decision. I’ve always said, if I were married, and if my wife were pregnant, if there were some reason abortion were even an issue (I’d prefer that it wasn’t of course), I would offer my wife my advice on what I thought best, but it would ultimately be HER decision. If I said, don’t abort, she would have to do the nine months of labor, not me. If I said, I want you to abort, SHE would face all the risks of depression and remorse — by comparison, mine would be secondary. The 93% rate of abortion for positive trisomy-21 tests, which I’ve seen a number of people refer to, reflect decisions made by women who never had any advice from me. If you can convince them, without coercion, to make the opposite decision, the criteria of Roe v. Wade are satisfied. It is their choice, either way. I do support the decision they have made. I think it is the right choice. But, I respect the right of those who decided otherwise to make that choice. It is theirs, not mine.

OK, I think that’s enough for one round. Anything I missed that you really want me to sound off about, just remind me what it is.
on February 3, 2010 at 10:48 PM Bethany

There are women who tearfully opt for a late third trimester abortion of a baby they really wanted, when it turns out that their abdomen would be ripped and they would hemmorhage to death if they proceeded with delivery. I’m not familiar with the medical details of why a Caesarian section wouldn’t make it all safe, but I am informed by medical doctors that, rarely, there are such cases. There are women who choose to abort, then regret it for all kinds of reasons. Now, you’ve all provided a long list of comments, so I’m going to have to take some time responding to each one.

Siarlys, do you know how third trimester abortions are performed and how long they take?

How in the WORLD would it possibly be safer for a woman to go to an abortion clinic for a 3 day induced labor process which kills her baby, than to go to a hospital and have her labor induced or a c-section to remove the baby safely?

How would she hemmorage to death by having an induced labor in the hospital, but would be perfectly fine having her body go through labor in an abortion clinic?

That makes NO sense.

And in the second and third trimesters, there is NO MEDICAL CONDITION whatsoever in which the only way to save the mother is to kill the baby. Not a single one.
on February 3, 2010 at 10:54 PM Bethany

but I am informed by medical doctors that, rarely, there are such cases.

By medical doctors, do you mean abortionists?
on February 3, 2010 at 11:08 PM Bethany

Siarlys, I know you respect Guttmacher’s stats, so I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret – most late abortions are done NOT because the baby has a disability or because the mother’s life is in jeopardy… but for purely elective reasons!

A 1988 Guttmacher survey, of abortions taking place after 16 weeks, listed these reasons for why an abortion was happening late in the gestational cycle:

* 71% — Woman didn’t recognize she was pregnant or misjudged gestation
* 48% — Woman found it hard to make arrangements for abortion
* 33% — Woman was afraid to tell her partner or parents
* 24% — Woman took time to decide to have an abortion
* 8% — Woman waited for her relationship to change
* 8% — Someone pressured woman not to have abortion
* 6% — Something changed after woman became pregnant
* 6% — Woman didn’t know timing is important
* 5% — Woman didn’t know she could get an abortion
* 2% — A fetal problem was diagnosed late in pregnancy
* 11% — Other
on February 3, 2010 at 11:16 PM Bethany

Mary Catherine, I generally respect your moral integrity, in the sense that you are consistent and preach what you practice, but I am shocked by the depravity of lending a semblance of reality to the destructive notion of race. If race has no meaning, then neither Margaret Sanger nor anyone else can offer to destroy or eliminate a “race.” Instead, we would all have to deal with each individual human being as a unique individual. I guess you find race such a convenient card to play that you can’t give it up. That puts you on the same moral level as Ms. Sanger.

I just don’t get it. How do you come up to these kinds of conclusions…. honestly?!

Recognizing and being aware of the very obvious fact that there are different individuals of different races on this earth is NOT in any way, shape, or form, the same as wanting to KILL others because they are of a different race! Sheesh!
on February 3, 2010 at 11:24 PM Bethany

I am shocked by the depravity of lending a semblance of reality to the destructive notion of race.

So why aren’t you at all bothered by the destructive notion of the “inferior” or the “unfit”?

“Race” is the only destructive notion?
on February 3, 2010 at 11:54 PM Gerard M. Nadal

SJ,

Perhaps I’m just dense, but I find this whole diversion about race to be just that, a diversion. I couldn’t give a rip if African American babies came out striped like zebras. I fail to see how this is germane.

Race is a biological reality, written into the genetic code. There are three biological races on the planet:

Asian
African
Caucasian

Everyone else, not being a pure breed (To use genetic terminology) is some combination from among those three.

So race is a biological, sociological, anthropological reality. That’s not opinion. Those are well-known facts.

Races have always looked askance on other races, as well as upon sub-populations within one’s own race. Men have subjugated other men in the name of racial superiority. Men have killed other men in that same name.

I have posted extensively here the historical record of the eugenics movement and how the eugenists have drawn upon bastardized understandings of the biological, anthropological and sociological realities of race to wipe out those whom they deem unfit.

I have built this blog by carefully laying down the foundational material, linking to all primary source material before building the larger arguments. I therefore will call you on such diversions as penile color in babies. It’s not the point.

The point is that a white operation like PP has set up 80% of its abortion chambers in minority neighborhoods. That’s a fact.

Margaret Sanger set up a Negro Project to ‘deal’ with the ‘Negro Problem’. What was her solution? She raised tons of money from foundations and government.

Not for educating Negros
Not for small business loans to Negros
Not for health care for Negros
Not for job training for Negros
Not to help fight for civil rights for Negros
Not to build better quality and more affordable housing for Negros
Not for drug and alcohol treatment for Negros
Not for Clothing for Negros
Not to purchase school supplies for Negros

No, she used her money to aid Negros in contraceiving themselves into oblivion. She detested them. She spit venom at them. She was an evil, vicious , twisted woman who saw death and nonexistence as the solution.

How many quotes did I put up where she bemoaned the spending of public and private money on charitable programs for blacks? She saw such charity as misguided. Go back and read those WHOLE PAGES that I cut and pasted from Pivot of Civilization.

Sanger wanted these people GONE. PERIOD.

I fail to see how your arguments are put forth to do anything but obfuscate this incredibly obvious moral and character defect in a woman who set into motion 1.8 Billion deaths worldwide since 1960.

She has outdone Hitler, Stalin, Tojo, Pol Pot, Mao, Sadaam, Amin, all of the other dictators of the twentieth century 16 Times over!!!

Sanger was beyond any adjective English has to offer. Not even malevolent is adequate enough.
on February 4, 2010 at 10:25 PM Siarlys Jenkins

Dr. Nadal, I was the first to suggest that references to race in this discussion are an obfuscation — because if your position is that any abortion is murder, then race doesn’t even arise as a consideration. Its just a political talking point.

Where do you get the idea that there “are” “three races” in the world? Those are artificial social constructs. Empirical data does not sort out into neat little packages. Assuming Margaret Sanger did want those defined as Negro “gone,” her error was thinking that people with darker skin coloration were somehow non-human or sub-human, or even that these were, for any reason other than man-made legal constructs and social attitudes, “different” in any significant way. (Sanger didn’t think much of Poles, Italians, Hungarians, Russians, Jews, or poor white trash either, did she?) Indians, Chinese, Australian aborigines, Iranians, Arabs are all of a single “racial” category? Definable in objective terms? Native Africans have a wider variety of skin coloration than any other continent on earth, about what one would expect from the continent we all emerged from.

There are at least five different gene sites which influence skin coloration. The gene pattern for Australian aborigines is not even the same as for West Africans. That is one reason “mixed” marriages have such wildly variable outcomes. Its not a simple little pairing like eye color. There are few characteristics that track perfectly for any “racial” designation. E.g., some people think that Africans all have lactose intolerance. The truth is, any human culture that depended on cattle and developed a dairy culture — some were in Africa, developed a lactose tolerance which lasted beyond the six months characteristic of most mammals. Cultures which did not develop dairy foods remained lactose intolerance. That forms a fascinating pattern all over the world.

Likewise, sickle cell anemia has nothing to do with skin color. It has to do with ancestry in areas exposed to malaria. Even one sickle cell gene gives some resistance to malaria, but doesn’t cause the anemia, while two such genes do cause anemia, and no such genes leaves a person highly vulnerable to malaria. So, most adults who live long enough to marry are likely to have one of each gene, statistically, if they have eight children. two will die of malaria, two will die of sickle cell, four will live to marry and have children. That overlaps a good deal, but not exclusively, with dark skin color, because malaria is common in tropical climates, not because these are uniform “racial” characteristics.

Historically, people have resented the people from the village six miles away, much less people from half way around the world who looked different or ate strange foods. What’s wrong with racism is not that “black people are just as good as white people,” but that the distinction is a stupid and artificial one. We are one species. We have a variety of characteristics. We can all intermarry. You want a good definition of a white person? II Kings 5:27. If that’s not you, don’t call yourself white.
on February 4, 2010 at 10:34 PM Bethany

Assuming Margaret Sanger did want those defined as Negro “gone,” her error was thinking that people with darker skin coloration were somehow non-human or sub-human, or even that these were, for any reason other than man-made legal constructs and social attitudes, “different” in any significant way.

Sounds kind of familiar. Something like the error of thinking that people who are smaller, or less able to defend themselves, are somehow non-human or sub-human, or even those that are, for any reason other than man made constructs and social attitudes, are “different” in any significant way.

The categorizing people as non persons based on race is every bit as arbitrary and meaningless as categorizig people as non persons based on their size or location (womb).
on February 4, 2010 at 10:35 PM Bethany

(Oh. And evil.)
on February 4, 2010 at 10:46 PM Bethany

Siarlys, you are so offended by people being categorized by race, but you don’t seem to have a problem with people being categorized by a disease or disability that they have.

Why is that? We are all people, regardless of our color, nationality, looks, shape, size, or health. But you seem to think that categorizing people as more worthy or less worthy of life based on disabilities.

You look at people who are different than you in their health, and in your arrogance, you say, “That person shouldn’t be born!”

How are you any different than Margaret Sanger?
on February 5, 2010 at 7:59 PM Siarlys Jenkins

Bethany, I don’t categorize PEOPLE who have a disease or disability. I seek to avoid people having to struggle with disease or disability in the first place. That is a lot easier for us to all agree on when the disease comes from outside the person. If it is a polio virus that invades the person, we all agree it is right to ramp up the immune system, developing an unnatural, but very welcome ability to fight off the virus. If it is a bacterial infection, we all agree on prescribing antibiotics to kill the invading pathogen.

We get into a moral quandary when the root of the disease is in the genetic make-up of the person — in a sense the disease is part of who they are. I haven’t advocated killing off people who have a disease. I have advocated trying to avoid letting the gene that carries the disease be part of the next baby to be born. I haven’t heard anyone object, in theory, to sorting out the egg and the sperm to make sure that the specific cells that unite to form a zygote carry healthy genes. But, once conception has occurred, you consider this a new human being, entitled to the same protection as a new-born baby found to have a genetic disease. I think it is a good idea to try to make sure any baby born is as free of the plague of such diseases as we can. Once born, I would treat the baby born with a genetic disease the same as an adult who had a stroke.

And of course, I don’t see an embryo as a small defenseless person. I see it as the building blocks from which a person can be grown. Obviously that is a huge gulf between us.
on February 7, 2010 at 9:18 AM Bethany

Siarlys, you yourself have claimed that you would advocate killing a baby like Faith Hope (anencephaly), who was a full term baby, because of the fact that you deem her a non-person for having little brain matter.

Please don’t tell me that you’re only talking about preventing disease or that you are not categorizing people into groups, because you have and you are.
on February 8, 2010 at 7:32 PM Siarlys Jenkins

You can cut and paste exactly what I said about Baby Faith if you can find anything to back up that interpretation. What I believe about Baby Faith is

1) If my wife had a fetus growing within her, and it was determined to be anancephalic, I would advise her that I thought it would be appropriate to abort. As always, the final decision would be hers, and I would respect it.

2) If an anancephalic baby had already been born, and it was my baby, I would take care of her, feed her, change her diapers, hold her, but I would not approve of any surgical intervention to prolong her life.

I don’t believe I have ever said I would kill her. I may have said that if there were no brain at all, or no cerebrum or cerebellum, I would accept a third-trimester abortion. In any case, once she’s born, she’s born.

On the other hand, if you have an anancephalic baby, and you feel differently, which you obviously do, it is none of my business to tell you that you should follow my example.

This is reminding me of an earlier discussion that went off on a tangent, and I can’t find it anymore. We were discussing eugenics, which is a distinct issue from abortion. One can accept abortion while rejecting eugenics, or believe in eugenics while eschewing abortion as a means to that end. We had all agree that coercive laws to advance a policy of eugenics are unacceptable — although you have been assiduously pretending that we disagree on that point. I had suggested that it would be gracious and beneficial for any individual who KNOWS they carry a gene which would inflict a debilitating genetic disease on a future generation to refrain from conception. You refused, or failed, to recognize any distinction between such a voluntary personal sacrifice and coercive eugenic laws.

In an effort to clarify my thinking, I offered the analogy, what if you had a hypodermic needle with which you could inject a healthy baby with that debilitating disease. In responding to that analogy, you agreed that it would be a horrible crime for you to plunge that needle into that baby. Then you jumped directly into, what if you shot the baby because it had cancer — which in your thinking is of course no different than abortion, since you consider a zygote, or any later stage of development, the same thing morally as a baby.

The hypodermic analogy was not about abortion. It was about refraining from conception. There is a huge difference. In fact, since you and Dr. Nadal both consider the union of a sperm and a zygote to form 23 complete pairs of chromosomes to be the defining moment, since you consider it OK that hundreds of eggs and millions of sperm will die, but inconceivable to destroy a fertilized zygote, the distinction is almost infinite.

Back to eugenics: individuals who KNOW they carry genes for a debilitating disease should VOLUNTARILY refrain from passing it on to future generations, most particularly to their own children.
on February 8, 2010 at 7:58 PM Bethany

You can cut and paste exactly what I said about Baby Faith if you can find anything to back up that interpretation. What I believe about Baby Faith is
1) If my wife had a fetus growing within her, and it was determined to be anancephalic, I would advise her that I thought it would be appropriate to abort. As always, the final decision would be hers, and I would respect it.
2) If an anancephalic baby had already been born, and it was my baby, I would take care of her, feed her, change her diapers, hold her, but I would not approve of any surgical intervention to prolong her life.
I don’t believe I have ever said I would kill her. I may have said that if there were no brain at all, or no cerebrum or cerebellum, I would accept a third-trimester abortion. In any case, once she’s born, she’s born.

Siarlys, have you really already forgotten what you said- this was a month ago!

No, you were not talking about unborn babies, you did say you would kill or “put to sleep” an anencephalic BORN baby.

“There are rare occasions where a baby is born literally with no brain. I would have no moral compunction about putting such a brainless body to sleep.”

Click here for the post where you said this:
https://gerardnadal.com/2010/01/07/mother-accused-of-murdering-brain-damaged-son-looked-up-euthanasia-on-internet/
on February 9, 2010 at 10:10 AM Bethany

Then you jumped directly into, what if you shot the baby because it had cancer — which in your thinking is of course no different than abortion, since you consider a zygote, or any later stage of development, the same thing morally as a baby.

You constantly reframe the discussion, Siarlys. You are supportive of killing babies in the third trimester for deformities, yet you yourself have said that you believe they become human beings sometime around the end of the second trimester. Now, correct me if i’m wrong, but a second trimester to third trimester baby is not a zygote anymore, is it?

In light of this, how is my analogy about shooting a boy with cancer irrelevent?
on February 10, 2010 at 5:53 PM Siarlys Jenkins

On Baby Faith, OK, I recognize the words. If there is literally no brain function, its true, I’m not sure there is a moral issue just because the body is otherwise complete. I do have a sense that with no mind at all (not a diminished mind, not an unusually shaped mind, but NO mind at all), there may well be no human life at all. On the other hand, if there were a small partial medula, I probably wouldn’t take chances. And being born without any brain at all is an extreme case.

You’re still missing the point about passing along genes for serious illness. That has nothing to do with abortion, whether of a zygote or a fetus. I said that for me to knowingly pass on a gene I carried, to another generation, which would inherit a painful, debilitating disease, would be unconscionable. I shouldn’t even allow conception to occur, should not contribute sperm to such a conception. That is not abortion. It might be described as eugenics, but its voluntary, specific to an individual characteristic, and I can perfectly well advance this humane position without in the least justifying genocide.
on February 11, 2010 at 9:13 AM Bethany

Siarlys, I have not missed your point. You keep trying to insist that you are only trying to prevent disease (by using the example of avoiding conceiving if you are aware of a disease in your own body), but I am also well aware of the fact that you are more than fine with aborting a third trimester baby because it has Down’s Syndrome, Trisomy 13, Spina Bifida, and a host of other diseases or disabilities.

Why not just be intellectually honest here? You have admitted that you think that a baby is a human being after a certain point in pregnancy (about 18 weeks past conception), however, you do not mind killing a baby who even according to YOUR definitions is a human being, after finding out that he has something abnormal about him or her.

Therefore, I have to conclude that the only reason that you would not kill a BORN baby with the same condition is because it is illegal. If it became legal, you would be perfectly happy with euthanizing babies born with the same diseases or disabilities.

And let’s not forget that you also advocate euthanizing coma patients, even though there has been much to show that even those diagnosed as vegetative actually do have evidence of brain activity and thought.
on February 11, 2010 at 10:09 AM Bethany

And before you ask me for a cut and paste proving that you believe this, you have said it on multiple occasions…but I will show you one example:

“If I were married, and my wife were pregnant, I would want to get the amnio test, but ultimately I would have to respect her choice if she declined. I would fully support her decision to abort if there were clear (not maybe 1%) evidence of Down’s syndrome, or particularly of anancephaly. I don’t think of that as killing a baby. I think of it as removing tissue that will grow into a baby with severe disabilities, or even with no brain at all.”

Okay, you have said that you believe that the fetus begins being human when they are about 18 weeks, or when there is brain activity detectable on an EEG.

Amniocentesis is typically performed at about 15-18 weeks of pregnancy- the results are not usually found until 2-3 weeks later. So most unborn children diagnosed with any of these diseases or disabilities will be past the point at which you call them human beings.

You advocate killing human beings for being different than you. You classify certain people as being more worthy of life than others.

And by the way, you assume that a baby with Down’s has no brain activity when this is so clearly not the case. Your deciding “not to think of it as killing a baby” doesn’t make it not so.
on February 11, 2010 at 10:10 AM Gerard M. Nadal

SJ,

In this mentality of ‘preventing XXX’ people engage in psychological and spiritual suicide.

Nobody wants illness or suffering in their lives. We all pray for that cup to pass us by. But that is an unrealistic prayer. We are biological organisms who will eventually become diseased and one day die.

If we begin from the perspective that we are willing to prevent those from being born who might be ill, we are really saying that we don’t want to be bothered by the suffering of another. It’s not so altruistic as it sounds.

I have an autistic son whose needs have transformed our lives, our marriage, our children’s lives, our extended families’ lives, etc.

Like it or not, our response to the sufferings of others shapes our character for good or ill. It all depends on our response.

In all of this soft-eugenic talk, what you do is conflate the person with the disease. In so doing, you reject both. As a pro-life scientist, I have worked in research to ameliorate disease, while not losing my value for the person who possesses the disease.

Knowing my son as he is, how far we have brought him and how he has taught us to love, were God to give me the option of going back and not having Joseph at all, or having the child He gave us, there is no doubt in my mind that I would do this all over again.

In truth, I don’t even think I could accept a Joseph without autism if that were a do-over option, as his autism has forged who he is, and who we are.

We cannot avoid suffering. Accepting the culture of hard and soft eugenics in such an attempt is a manifestation of the worst of all human suffering. It is a heart that has closed itself to authentic love, which only grows in response to suffering.

The following quote from Fr. Anthony Padavano is worth meditating on:

“The human heart is not built in a day. It takes a lifetime to make a human heart. It takes all: birth and learning how to talk, making wishes, living with hope, dreaming dreams. The human heart is nourished with yearning for tomorrow, with poetry and devotion, with contemplation and the incessant thought of home. The human heart prays, it strives to find a faithful lover; it does not love until it dies in fidelity for the mystery of another life.

“The human heart suffers, or else it does not grow; it exhausts itself or else it is empty; it waits and hopes, at dawn and dusk, in darkness and daylight.

“The human heart is not built in a day nor can it be built alone. The human heart loses its way unless it receives the promises of others and gives its trust in return… The human heart waits or else it does not live and yet it dies waiting. It breathes the air of hope, and is suffocated in despair”
on February 11, 2010 at 11:47 AM Bethany

If we begin from the perspective that we are willing to prevent those from being born who might be ill, we are really saying that we don’t want to be bothered by the suffering of another. It’s not so altruistic as it sounds.

Yes, exactly! Very well put.

Probverbs 26: 24-26
on February 12, 2010 at 3:53 PM Siarlys Jenkins

About a year ago, I read an article at Sojourner’s (one of the “liberal” magazines that is assuredly pro-life) by a man who described that his wife had contracted rubella when pregnant, and they had decided not to abort. It was never even a consideration for them. Their son was born blind, mentally impaired, I think one or two other functions had been destroyed, and the father described what a blessing he had been to their family.

As I’ve said before, I consider that an act of unparalleled cruelty. It may be true that a good number of people don’t want to be bothered caring for people with permanent genetic disabilities, but in this case, it could also be said that this couple brought a blind baby unable to care for himself even as an adult into the world in order to fulfill their own sense of suffering and forbearance. How cruel to use a child like that.

I don’t actually insist on making that judgement — I just note it as a logically valid criticism. There are so many degrees of uncertainty, probability, possibility, perspective, that I believe such decisions are best left up to the parents. The fetus is in no position to be consulted. The parents are going to have to live with the consequences of their decision. These parents did a magnificent job of stepping up to the plate and carrying the responsibilities that came with their decision.

Of course you could not imagine your son Joseph any different than he is now, after years of raising him and living with him as he is. If he had been born without autism, you might still have named him Joseph, and your experience with him would have been a different one.

If we are to accept suffering as part of life, perhaps we should also stop vaccinations for polio and diptheria. I’ve read some quack say that a good dose of whooping cough is the perfect preventive for asthma. Suffering is going to happen in any life, but when there is a possibility of preventing it, we generally choose to do so. Most human endeavor has been devoted to that very purpose.

I know that when the disease is in the very structure of a person’s DNA, it can seem like blaming the individual to say we should remove that gene from the gene pool. I have drawn the line many times, that a live, self-aware person should not be “blamed” for their disease. But I recall once again the woman with a relatively mild case of Down’s syndrome, capable of entering into marriage (with a lot of help from match-making mothers) who chose to have her tubes tied because she did not want to inflict what she had suffered through on her own baby. I respect that as a wise, insightful, compassionate sacrifice on her part.
on February 12, 2010 at 8:05 PM Bethany

Suffering is going to happen in any life, but when there is a possibility of preventing it, we generally choose to do so. Most human endeavor has been devoted to that very purpose.

The problem here of course is that you CONSTANTLY equate “preventing” suffering with eugenic abortion!

Abortion does not PREVENT suffering – it eliminates a human being based on a disability or disease. It is no different than taking a born person who develops a disease, and instead of trying to find a way to help, you just kill them.

There is nothing wrong with trying to RELIEVE suffering, but trying to KILL someone who you perceive to be suffering is DIFFERENT.
on February 12, 2010 at 8:06 PM Bethany

I know that when the disease is in the very structure of a person’s DNA, it can seem like blaming the individual to say we should remove that gene from the gene pool.

It “seems like” it because it IS.
on February 14, 2010 at 11:55 PM Siarlys Jenkins

No, it isn’t. If a baby is born with spina bifeda, surgeons will operate in utero, if feasible, to repair it. If there were a way to operate on the zygote, to restore the normal set of 23 chromosome pairs, thereby curing Down’s syndrome, a micro surgeon would do so.

Leaving aside the question of a fetus which has the mis-placed chromosomes that inflict Down’s syndrome, what if it were possible to make sure no zygote formed with such a defect? That would be a no brainer.
on February 15, 2010 at 9:52 AM Bethany

If a baby is born with spina bifeda, surgeons will operate in utero, if feasible, to repair it.

Exactly- he doesn’t immediately think, “Kill it!” He tries to repair it.

If there were a way to operate on the zygote, to restore the normal set of 23 chromosome pairs, thereby curing Down’s syndrome, a micro surgeon would do so.

Whatever, but killing a baby who has Down’s Syndrome, and trying to help find a cure, are TOTALLY separate issues. Punishing a child with death for something they had no control over is maliciously cruel.

Leaving aside the question of a fetus which has the mis-placed chromosomes that inflict Down’s syndrome, what if it were possible to make sure no zygote formed with such a defect? That would be a no brainer.

There is an extremely big difference in preventing conception, and ending a life that has already begun.
on February 15, 2010 at 9:25 PM Siarlys Jenkins

OK, we have something in common. We agree that curing Down’s syndrome, or even preventing conception by a particular egg and sperm which would result in a zygote with Down’s syndrome, in favor of conception by some other egg or sperm which would produce 23 healthy chromosome pairs, would be appropriate medical procedure.

That is a step back from suggesting that there is some special purpose to a certain number of babies being born with Down’s syndrome.

I will not pursue the point further. I know that in your view, once conception has occured, it would be murder of a child to abort because a test shows the cells of a zygote, an embryo, or a fetus, have the extra chromosome pair. I would agree that a new-born baby, a one year old, a five year old, a twenty year old, may not be killed because they suffer from a disease. I know you consider any stage post conception to be exactly the same.
on February 18, 2010 at 10:03 AM Bethany

OK, we have something in common. We agree that curing Down’s syndrome, or even preventing conception by a particular egg and sperm which would result in a zygote with Down’s syndrome, in favor of conception by some other egg or sperm which would produce 23 healthy chromosome pairs, would be appropriate medical procedure.

I never actually said that.

That is a step back from suggesting that there is some special purpose to a certain number of babies being born with Down’s syndrome.

I never actually said that either. I said that the children who have Down’s syndrome have a purpose. God sometimes uses our diseases or disabilities to bring glory to His name. He uses our weaknesses as strengths for His purpose. You seem to think that the disease takes away the purpose for a child with Down’s Syndrome. I don’t.
on February 21, 2010 at 7:23 PM Siarlys Jenkins

Does God have a purpose for smallpox, polio, diptheria, cholera, and malaria?

If we could cure Down’s syndrome in the womb, would that be in any way unacceptable to you?

If we can cure the disease, would we be interfering with God’s purpose?
on February 21, 2010 at 8:35 PM Bethany

Siarlys, we don’t cure diseases by killing people.
on February 22, 2010 at 1:45 PM Siarlys Jenkins

I’m not asking you about killing people. I’m asking, if we could reach into a zygote, perform microsurgery to restore 23 healthy chromosome pairs, and then allow that same zygote to grow into a healthy human baby, would we be interfering with God’s purpose?
on February 22, 2010 at 4:57 PM Bethany

You’re intentionally trying to reframe the argument. The entire discussion is about abortion, Siarlys. Finding cures and trying to prevent disease is one thing- abortion is quite another, and you keep mixing the two. You accept abortion as a “cure” for down’s syndrome. I don’t.
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