Debate on birth control. Margaret Sanger and Winter Russell — John Shaqi
Debate on birth control. Margaret Sanger and Winter RussellSanger, Margaret
History
Debate on birth control. Margaret Sanger and Winter Russell
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control -- Moral and ethical aspects
That is not the only thing. We have conditions again that are more
disastrous to the race than child labor or infant mortality, and that is
the transmission of the venereal diseases to the race that is to come.
We know that the mothers and fathers of today produce the race of
tomorrow, and know that unless we have a clean child and a clean stream
of blood pouring through that child that the race of tomorrow is a
doomed foregone conclusion. We know, too, that out of this terrible
scourge of disease that we have 90 percent of the insanity in this
country, due to syphilis. Anyone who is dealing with fundamentals would
know that these people should use means to protect themselves against
having children. They should absolutely in due regard to themselves, to
their children and to the race, not allow a child to be born while that
disease is running riot in the system, and then we have that terrible
consequence which is insanity.
We have fifty percent of the still births of this country, in other
words, dead babies, that are dead when they are born—50 percent are due
to this disease. You may think that these things are taken care of, but
if I told you that they are not—syphilitic women today are allowed to
bring forth progeny even in the face of all officialdom, and all the
kind and humane things and other kind of things that are doled out to
women today—that women are bringing forth children when they themselves
are syphilitic.
Not long ago we took a syphilitic woman to 43 hospitals in the city and
every one of them said, “We will cure her disease. Leave her here. We
will do the best we can for her, but don’t ask us to give her the
information to control birth. That is not our office. That is not for
us,” and so that little syphilitic woman went back again to her home and
will become pregnant only to abort again, which was a great kindness.
Nature sometimes brings the syphilitic to birth before their full time,
or brings them dead. In other states of syphilis, that is not so, and we
have feeble-minded as well as insane. We have 400,000 feeble-minded
people in the United States that any authority on the subject would say
to you “Not one of them should have been born.” They never should have
been born and sometimes these parents are perfectly normal, and yet this
taint has gone through the blood and has left this perfectly normal
physical person who arrives at the adult age with all its physical
functions, and yet it has the mentality of a child eight years of age.
The feeble-minded man or woman is of no use to itself or society, and it
would be better if we were living in a real civilization that they
should not have been born. Only 40,000 of this 400,000 are entered in
institutions and the others are living among us, producing and
reproducing their progeny and providing abundant material and
opportunity for the continuance of charities and other institutions for
ages and generations more to come.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account