OWL's Asylum

We have a practice in writing for public audiences of giving a warning or a consideration from the author or the editor of written works. Commonly, this has become known as the disclaimer. It tends to work to dispel arguments against the writer or the editor, or publisher of said works. Even in the works of authors such as myself, it is necessary to discuss certain elements of a topic that might arise due to the content of piece. With regards to the discussion of abortion, I feel the need to explain that I have suggested to a woman that she take a a post-coital pill, or emergency contraceptive. In hopes that I don’t become regarded as a hypocrite, I am readily admitting this up front. I might possibly look back and shake my head on these more candid writings one day in the future, however, I do believe it is only fair to the reader that we discuss this in an open manner as opposed to a solely academic one.

The danger of a writer such as myself, that is, one with a robust set of life experiences, is that I do understand the argument from a less than black and white polarization. Or possibly more than, given the nuance of that metaphor. I understand the social considerations that are often neglected in a discussion like this. I also understand the semantic orientation that the argument has been framed.

Firstly, I do believe that a woman should have the choice to have an abortion. I think that in as much as a person has the right to choose to have sex, they have the right over their body to bring forth life. It is a choice that I don’t believe the government should have the ability to regulate. The question of morality doesn’t slip under my radar, however. I do feel the need to state that the social considerations given for such things such as war, capital punishment, and imprisonment for crimes against the state all fall under the same umbrella as abortion in my thinking.

I consider Ma’at, in one aspect, to be the practice of doing that which is best for the most from a past, present and future context. Thusly, I see abortion as one of those practices that deserves to be examined based on the relative concerns of the individuals involved. This examination should be based on their ability to provide a condition that will allow the child to benefit from society, as well as be a benefit to society. This tends to become where my thinking can seem convoluted.

I do see abortion as a form of population control. In a racially stratified country such as the US, I would go so far as to say it is a subtle form of genocide. It is a method to control for a particular human trait, as well as social conditioning. The standard of waiting until you make a certain amount of money or possessing a certain standing in your career promotes a thinking that one group of people is unfit for producing children. In a country where blacks are still toting the notion of the first black this, or that in a particular industry, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch of the imagination to see what group of people are going to be influenced the most to have abortions. Possibly, Hitler had the patience, he would have simply ran a planned parenthood campaign.

We will handle this discussion in a four part series. Here are a few of the quotes that we will be dealing with in an effort to understand the exact nature of “birth control” in this country:

“A part from the relationship to morality –

although the two are intimitately combined, – we

are thus led to the relationship of Birth Control

to eugenics, or to the sound breeding of the race.

Here we touch the highest ground, and are

concerned with out best hopes for the future of

the world. For there can be no doubt that Birth

Control is not only a precious but an

indispensable instrument in moulding[sic] the

coming man to the measure of our developing

ideals. Without it we are powerless in the face of

awful evils which flow from random and reckless

reproduction.”

– “Birth Control in Relation to Morality”,

Havelcok Ellis “Birth Control Review” February

1919 pg. 8

Birth Control in America, The Career of Margaret

Sanger

“…Clarence C. Little, a biologist, for a time

president of the University of Maine, later of the

University of Michigan, and for many years on the

council of the American Birth Control League,

justified birth control in 1926 as an influence

counter to the process of the melting pot…Birth

control, he concluded, by restricting the rate of

growth and the numbers of ‘foreign labor,’ ‘makes

the situation simpler; it magnifies the chance of

survival of this civilization.'”

-pg. 118 – 119

“Birthrates did not drop nearly so dramatically

among the lowere class, struggling to obtain the

means fo subsistence, as they did among the

‘selfish’ middle class, striving to protect and

elevate its economic position. Many reformers

recognized that only when the standard of living

had already improved, when people took on

the complex of attitudes toward self, sex,

society, and status that came with entry into the

amorphous middle class, only then did people

effectively practice contraception. When Mrs.

Sanger urged the poor to achieve prosperity by

limiting the number of their children, she was

engaged, critics charged, in the futile exercise

of putting the cart before the horse.”

pg 123

“Guy Irving Burch, for a time legislative

secretary of the National Committee on Federal

Legislation fo Birth Control, a director of the

American Eugenics Society, and a leader in the

American Coalition of Patriotic Societies, was

even more frankly racist than Little. He supported

birth control, he said, because “my family on both

sides were early colonial and pioneer stock and I

have long worked with the American Coalition of

Patriotic Societies to prevent the American people

from being replaced by alien or Negro stock,

whether it be by immigration or by overly high

birth rates among others in this country.”

pg. 119

“Margaret Sanger and others considered the most

menacing aspect of proliferating unfitness to be

the growth of the custodial welfare state.

‘Protective and paternalistic laws,’ said a

speaker at the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian

and Birth Control Conference in 1925, benefited

“the least desirable elements of society.’ Such

laws, he said, ‘are usually put forward upon moral

or humane or altruistic grounds and in nearly all

cases by professional agitators and stupid

busybodies…What they actually accomplish is the

preservation of the misfit, the degenerate, the

low, the unworthy and the more or less defective

elements at the expense of the strong and

exceptional.’ If practiced by the right people, he

suggested, birth control could wipe out those

evils for which welfare legislation gave at best

merely symptomatic relief.”

pg. 116

“That Spencerian attitude, embracing the familiar

tenets of individualism, elitism, and

antistatism, provided one base for the eugenic

program. In 1922 Mrs. Sanger registered her

acceptance of such ideas when she said that if

society applied to reproduction the techniques of

efficiency employed by “modern stockbreeders,”

there would be no need for measures that were

“fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of

the good.” In the 1930s, Mrs. Sanger found that

argument especially well received among those who

opposed New Deal welfare legislation.
Mrs. Sanger pointed out other dangers

presented by an allegedly degenerate populace. ‘In

a democracy,’ she said,’it is representatives of

this grade of intelligence who may destroy our

liberties, and who may thus be the most

far-reaching peril to the future of civilization.’

She condemned the initiative, the direct primary,

and other progressive majoritarian reforms as

‘pathological worship of mere number.’ She

insisted that only the scientific regulation of

fertility could save democracy from the

threatening hordes of the unfit. Parents, she

suggested, should have to ‘apply’ for babies, just

as immigrants had to apply for visas to enter the

country.”
pg 116 – 117