Clarence Thomas: Abortion for eugenics 'not hypothetical'
Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday bluntly warned the other justices on the U.S. Supreme Court they need to start acting on various abortion law fights that have arisen because of the industry’s threat to become a tool “to achieve eugenic goals.” That, he warned, “is not merely hypothetical.” The case involved a law in Indiana […]
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Clarence Thomas (Official portrait)
Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday bluntly warned the other justices on the U.S. Supreme Court they need to start acting on various abortion law fights that have arisen because of the industry’s threat to become a tool “to achieve eugenic goals.”
That, he warned, “is not merely hypothetical.”
The case involved a law in Indiana that banned abortions based on sex or disability, and required the state to make sure deceased unborn infants are provided a “proper burial.”
A lower just blocked the law, and the Supremes on Tuesday allowed the requirement for “proper burial,” but continued a block on the ban on eugenics in abortions.
“This law and other laws like it promote a state’s compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics,” he wrote.
Social media aggregator Twitchy posted the comments in a headline: “‘Tool of eugenic manipulation.’ Clarence Thomas just dropped the hammer on abortion and Planned Parenthood (WOW)!”
The commentary continued, “Remember when abortion was supposed to be safe, legal, and RARE? Seems our ‘pro-choice’ friends have tried to forget or completely do away with the ‘rare’ portion of the law. They had to know when they went to extremes attempting to legalize abortion up to and including birth the pushback would be monumental.”
WOW. Thomas concurrence today: "Enshrining a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement.” https://t.co/UOK4ejUM8m
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) May 28, 2019
Thomas explained, “The foundations for legalizing abortion in America were laid during the early 20th-century birth-control movement. That movement developed alongside the American eugenics movement. And significantly, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger recognized the eugenic potential of her cause. She emphasized and embraced the notion that birth control ‘opens the way to the eugenist.'”
She advocated reducing the “ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all,” Thomas quoted.
While Sanger was not “directly” referring to abortion, “She recognized the moral difference between ‘contraceptives’ and other, more ‘extreme’ ways for ‘women to limit their families,’ such as ‘the horrors of abortion and infanticide,'” he wrote.
In fact, lawmakers in New York recently adopted an allowance in state law for abortion to up birth, and Virginia Gov. Ralph Wortham notoriously commented about how a baby could be born, and then “made comfortable” while the mother and doctor have a conversation, presumably about its life – or not.
“Sanger’s arguments about the eugenic value of birth control in securing ‘the elimination of the unfit,’ … apply with even greater force to abortion, making it significantly more effective as a tool of eugenics,” Thomas wrote. “Whereas Sanger believed that birth control could prevent ‘unfit’ people from reproducing, abortion can prevent them from being born in the first place.
“Many eugenicists therefore supported legalizing abortion, and abortion advocates – including future Planned Parenthood President Alan Guttmacher – endorsed the use of abortion for eugenic reasons.”
“The court,” he said. “will soon need to confront the constitutionality of laws like Indiana’s.”
Thomas pointed out that leaders in the early American eugenics movement “held prominent positions at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale … and eugenics was taught at 376 universities and colleges.”
He pointed out the popular belief back then was that “the distinction between the fit and the unfit could be drawn along racial lines, a distinction they justified by pointing to anecdotal and statistical evidence of disparities between the races.”
The Supreme Court even endorsed the concept early in the 1900s when Olive Wendell Holmes Jr., wrote, in approving mandatory sterilization of a woman, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
Thomas’ comments, posted online, explained how Sanger herself “campaigned for birth control in black communities,” and even called her work the “Negro Project,” a group whose members she condemned as “the great problem of the South.”
He noted the court’s majority would not take up the arguments now.
But, he said, “Having created the constitutional right to an abortion, this court is dutybound to address its scope.”
The Constitution, he pointed out, “is silent on abortion.”
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