I recently read a post by someone claiming that Clinton supported genocide on people who were handicapped. I naturally thought…What the fuck is he talking about?

Killing someone because they’re handicapped is not genocide. It’s Eugenics. There’s a difference. And no, Clinton, for all her flaws (fatal ones and not) has not supported Eugenics.

She has said that she admired Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who was a known eugenicist when that theory was POPULAR. Sanger, like so many others of the period did believe in using birth control and abortion to better the genetic structure of the human race in general.

However, here’s a shocker… SO DID A LARGE NUMBER OF PEOPLE FROM ALL SPECTRUMS OF SOCIETY!

The eugenics movement in America, in the early 20th Century was not only popular; it was legal, with a Supreme Court Case found in favor of sterilization of the mentally “deficient.” The first forced sterilization laws came into effect in 1908. By 1931, 28 states had them. By 1927 the Supreme Court had weighed in, in favor of the eugenicists.

“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind….Three generations of imbeciles is enough” (Black 2003, Buck v. Bell; 274 U.S. 200). Oh, that decision was 8-1 with only Justice Butler dissenting. SO NOT a Liberal/Conservative split.

California’s program was so robust that the Nazis turned to California for advice in perfecting their own efforts. Hitler proudly admitted to following the laws of several American states that allowed for the prevention of reproduction of the “unfit.” Hitler also used Harry Laughlin’s Model Law as a framework, so much so that the Third Reich awarded Laughlin an Honorary Doctorate from Heidelberg University. In fact, Nazi Doctors used Laughlin’s law as a defense at the Nuremberg Trials.

64,000 people were forcibly sterilized. Some whose only crime was …poverty and the darkness of their skin.

In the 1920-1930s, there were even “Fit Family” and “Better Baby” competitions at fairs and exhibitions. American fiction of the period treated Eugenicists as heroes (I.e. Black Stork, 1917).

It took WWII and the crimes of NAZI Germany to finally put a nail in the Eugenics movement’s coffin….to, abort it, if you will. But, Ya’ll know what the best part of this is…the ultimate decision in Buck v. Bell, that a woman can be forcibly sterilized for her own good…has been upheld as late as 2001 in Vaughn v. Ruoff, 253 F.3d 1124, 1129 (8th Cir 2001).

SO, if we’re going to criticize someone for supporting a eugenicist, then you damned well better learn your history. Because a LOT of your heroes did too, including

President Taft (He was one of the Justices on Buck v. Bell).
Theodore Roosevelt (one of my personal heroes!)
Hellen FUCKING Keller – think about THAT for a moment.
H.G. Wells
George Bernard Shaw
Winston Churchill
Alexander Graham Bell
Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel
Charles Lindbergh
and the list goes on and on and on….