Amnesty International’s Blind Spot
by Julia Smucker
Julia Smucker
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International is well known for its advocacy on behalf of vulnerable and marginalized people around the world. Amnesty’s goal is a worthy one, and many of its efforts are to be commended. The organization’s laudable work in defense of human rights makes it all the more unfortunate that in recent years it seems to have fallen into an all-too-frequent dichotomy in today’s political climate, one that pits advocacy for a particular category of vulnerable human beings – namely, the preborn – against many others, and perhaps especially women.
In 2015, they launched a petition calling for what they termed a “life-saving abortion,” in response to a situation that was harrowing enough (which I addressed here) even without them suggesting that the mother’s life had been in danger (falsely, as it turned out). Now they’ve issued a similarly reflexive response to a proposed change to abortion laws in Poland. The petition is briefly worded and designed to evoke automatic outrage, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that there are two major flaws in its assumptions.
First, the proposed bill that Amnesty is responding to is one that would remove the “fetal impairment” grounds for abortion as currently allowed under Polish law. It’s unclear how removing these grounds would pose a risk to women’s health as the petition claims. Furthermore, such a leap may easily distract from the implicit prejudice in using impairment as a determining factor in deciding whether someone’s life will have value. The implications, especially in the context of human rights, should be particularly concerning for disability rights advocates.
Second, there’s an implication that legal restrictions of abortion necessarily entail criminal sentences for women who obtain them. Such an approach in fact garners little support, including among pro-life advocates. CL board member Rachel MacNair addressed the question of who should be targeted by laws restricting abortion in a previous post, noting that the moral responsibility for abortion, as with other kinds of large-scale state-sponsored violence such as capital punishment and war, is shared by many.
Aimee Murphy, executive director of member group Rehumanize International, made the case in an October 2017 video for a restorative justice approach to abortion laws, explaining why she favors legal protection for preborn human lives and why this does not mean “punishing women who have abortions”:
Aimee Murphy
I think that our current model of justice, based on retribution and punishment models that see justice as a balance of harms, is actually contrary to human dignity…. If we seek to build a truly human-centered model of justice, a truly personalist model of justice, a truly pro-life model of justice, then our justice system should be restorative. Our justice system should seek to achieve three ends: firstly, to respect the inherent dignity of both the offended and the offender; secondly, to acknowledge the harm done; and thirdly, to make reparation for the harm done. We acknowledge that violence creates a rift between the offender and the offended, between the offender and the community. We should not seek to further disintegrate our human community through the continued harms against the offender for their violence, like the death penalty or incarceration or an eye for an eye. We should seek instead the reintegration of the offender to the community, to make our community as whole as is possible, to respect the dignity of all.
I support restorative justice models across the board, especially because our system of justice has currently led to inhumane and often racist structures of mass incarceration for nonviolent crimes. But I support restorative justice most particularly when faced with the case of abortion. As someone who was told at 16 that if I didn’t get an abortion my rapist would kill me, I understand that abortion coercion is very real on personal, familial, economic and societal levels. Those who have abortions are very rarely the sole guilty party.
When Amnesty calls for “a feminist response, working to … save women rather than harm them,” consistent-lifers can easily agree with this goal on the face of it, precisely because we believe that abortion harms women. To save women and their children (before and after birth) means seeking to repair and prevent harm, to restore wholeness and to respect human dignity, both through outside-the-box approaches to the justice system and by going well beyond laws to support and empower nonviolent choices whatever the circumstance.
Editor’s Note: Back in 2007, the Consistent Life Network ran a petition drive and presented petitions at an Amnesty International conference in hopes of dissuading the leadership from moving away from abortion neutrality and adopting a new stance that abortion is a “human right.” When Rachel MacNair tried to pass out leaflets to conference-goers, she was forbidden to, and when she asked point-blank if she was being censored, the answer was a point-blank “yes.” The previous fall Amnesty had asked the membership to vote on this new stance, but the results of the vote were never released. At the 2007 conference it became clear that the stance had nevertheless already been adopted by the leadership.
Click here for the full story and a list of abortion-neutral human rights organizations as alternatives for donations.
=================================
See the list of all our blog posts, put in categories.
“Is It Too Late?” 1971 Speech of Fannie Lou Hamer
In honor of Black History Month, we offer a speech by civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977).
Fannie Lou Hamer was a leading civil rights activist in the 1960s and 1970s. Among her many accomplishments was co-founding the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the right of the all-white segregationist Democratic Party to be seated at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. She also co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971
Speech archived in the Lillian P. Benbow Room of Special Collections, L. Zenobia Coleman Library, Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, Mississippi
Is It Too Late?
I am here tonight to express my views and to attempt to deal with the question and topic of, “Is it too late?”
First, as a black woman, 54 years of age, a mother and a wife, I know some of the suffering and the pain mothers must feel for their children when they have to face a cruel world both at home and abroad. In the streets of America, my home and land where my fathers died, I have taken a stand for human rights and civil rights not just for my sake but for all mankind.
I was born and raised in a segregated society, beaten for trying to act like all people should have a right to act. Denied access to the ballot until I was 50 years old, but things are a little better now.
God is in the plan; He has sounded the trumpet and have called the march to order. God is on the throne today. He is keeping watch on this nation and marking time.
It’s not too late. There is still time for America to change. God have delayed destruction on this nation to test the hearts and consciousness of us all. Believe me, there is still time.
The war in Vietnam must be ended so our men and boys can come home—so mothers can stop crying, wives can feel secure, and children can learn strength . . .
The methods used to take human life, such as abortion, the pill, the ring, etc., amount to genocide. I believe that legal abortion is legal murder and the use of pills and rings to prevent God’s will is a great sin.
As I take inventory of the past ten years, I see the many tragedies of this nation: Medgar Evers’ death in my state [Mississippi], John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, and more recently Jo Etha Collier in Drew Mississippi, and countless of thousands in Vietnam and the streets of our larger cities and towns. For these sins this country should pray. Because we have been spared a little longer. Miles of paper and film cannot record the many injustices this nation has been guilty of. But there is still time.
Maybe if all the ministers in this nation, black and white, would stand up tonight and say, “Come earth’s people, it is not too late, God have given us time!” Perhaps we can speed up the day when all men can feel as I do. I am not afraid tonight. Freedom is in my soul and love is in my heart.
While here tonight I have a special message to my black brothers and sisters. As we move forward in our quest for progress and success, we must not be guilty of misleading our people. We must not allow our eagerness to participate lead us to accept second class citizenship, and inferior positions in the name of integration. Too many have given their lives to end this evil. . . .
The front of our card on Fannie Lou Hamer; see our full collection of cards.
Also from her life story:
“One day in 1961, Hamer entered the hospital to have ‘a knot on my stomach’—probably a benign uterine fibroid tumor—removed. She then returned to her family’s shack on the plantation to recuperate. But in the big house, ominous tidings circulated. The owner’s wife, Vera Alicia Marlow, was cousin of the surgeon who had treated Hamer. Marlow gossiped to the cook that Hamer had lost more than a tumor while unconscious—the surgeon removed her uterus, rendering Hamer sterile. The cook repeated the news to others, including a woman who happened to be Hamer’s cousin, and thus Hamer was one of the last people on the plantation to learn that she would never have a family of her own.
‘I went to the doctor who did that to me and I asked him, ‘Why? Why had he done that to me?’ He didn’t have to say nothing—and he didn’t. If he was going to give me that sort of operation then he should have told me. I would have loved to have children.’ But a lawsuit was out of the question, Hamer recalled. ‘At that time? Me? Getting a white lawyer against a white doctor? I would have been taking my hands and screwing tacks into my casket.’ ”
Source:
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
by Harriet A. Washington. New York: Doubleday, 2007, pp. 189-190
======================================
A previous post for Black History Month had multiple voices:
Historical Black Voices: Racism Kills
See the list of all our blog posts, put in categories.
Seeking Peaceful Coexistence: The Varied Ways of Supporting a Consistent Life Ethic
by John Whitehead
That consistent ethic of life advocates are at odds with more conventional American political categories—conservative, liberal, libertarian—is well recognized. Less often recognized are the ways different consistent life ethic advocates diverge from each other and the tensions this can cause. People can understand the consistent life ethic in different ways and have different reasons for opposing various threats to human life. Treating this diversity as a source of strength rather than division for the movement is vital.
The Consistent Life Network’s mission statement speaks of the need to defend life against six main threats: abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, poverty, racism, and war. Others might define consistent life ethic concerns more broadly or narrowly, but defending life against these six threats provides broad parameters for a consistent life ethic movement. (I should stress that while I use this statement as a guide, the analysis here is strictly my own.)
Within this consistent life ethic movement, I would identify at least four broad categories or schools of thought:
- Those who hold that killing is inherently wrong in all cases and that the six major threats to human life should be opposed for that simple reason.
In contrast to the absolutists, the other categories of people within the consistent life ethic movement do not necessarily oppose all killing in all cases, although they typically believe all six major threats to life should be ended or dramatically reduced. Moreover, they draw distinctions among the different threats to life, opposing these threats for different reasons and taking an absolutist stance against some of the threats but not others.
- Innocent versus Guilty. People in this category draw a distinction between the killing of people who are “innocent,” in the sense of not harming others, and the killing of people who are “guilty,” in the sense of harming others. The first group would include unborn children targeted by abortion or elderly and disabled people targeted for euthanasia. The second group would include people guilty of murder or other serious crimes who are now targeted by the death penalty and enemy combatants in a war who are targeted by lethal military force. Consistent life ethic advocates who make this “innocent versus guilty” distinction would argue that killing innocents is inherently wrong in principle while killing the guilty is theoretically justified. Nevertheless, these consistent life ethic advocates argue that the death penalty and war should generally not be used because of various practical problems: they too often kill innocents by mistake, they are costly and inefficient, and so on.
3. Forced versus Chosen. People in this category draw a distinction between killing other people against their will and killing in which the person being killed agrees to having her or his life ended. This distinction separates euthanasia or assisted suicide from the other five threats to life, as euthanasia is the only threat in which the target theoretically consents. Consistent life ethic advocates who make this distinction would argue that the other threats to life are inherently wrong in principle but euthanasia is theoretically justified as it respects the targeted person’s wishes and personal freedom. Nevertheless, these consistent life ethic advocates argue that euthanasia should generally be opposed because of practical problems: subtle coercion and discrimination against elderly or disabled people can too often creep into the practice of euthanasia.
4. Oppressor versus Oppressed. People in this category draw a distinction between killing carried out by a powerful group in society as part of larger systemic oppression and killing that is carried out by a far less powerful group that is the target of oppression. This distinction separates abortion, which is generally done at the request of an oppressed group, women, from threats to life such as the death penalty, poverty, and racism, which can be seen as supporting oppression by powerful groups such as men, corporations, or a racist criminal justice system. (Euthanasia or sometimes war could also be classified as killing done by oppressed groups, although I see people in this category making this argument less often.) The distinction drawn here is less clear-cut than those in the other categories. Advocates of this understanding of the consistent life ethic do not argue that abortion can be theoretically justified but instead generally oppose abortion because it takes human life. Rather, their attitude toward abortion differs from that toward the other threats to life because they argue that the women who seek abortions are targets of a larger oppressive system and deserve sympathy and support that those responsible for poverty, the death penalty, or other threats to life do not.
The differences among these categories can lead to tension and conflict. This friction is partly the result of the real philosophical differences among the four groups. The latter three groups can criticize each other for not properly understanding the moral significance of the different threats to life while the first group, the absolutists, can criticize the other three for qualifying or making exceptions to the prohibition on taking life.
Friction among different types of consistent life ethic advocates also results from differences in emphasis and rhetoric. People tend to focus on the threats they view as unambiguously wrong and will condemn them in the strongest language while being more careful and muted in their criticisms of other threats. Those in the “Innocent vs. Guilty” group may well talk about abortion more and condemn it more fiercely than the death penalty or war while those in the “Oppressed vs. Oppressor” group will do the reverse.
Such differences can even lead to a kind of “Is the glass full or half empty?” split: one group will frame their concern as “Too often people who say they are concerned about peace and social justice ignore the lives of the unborn” while the other group will frame their concern as “Too often people who say they are concerned with human life ignore people’s needs after they are born.” Such characterizations are not inherently contradictory but can irritate people on the other side.
If consistent life ethic advocates are to form an effective movement, we need to manage these different approaches to the ethic. We need to recognize these differences and agree to disagree. This means not trying to convert or expel those with different understandings. This also means not being excessively concerned with emphasis and rhetoric. Different emphases and rhetoric are a strength of the movement. They allow different types of consistent life ethic advocates to engage outside audiences who are with us on some but not all issues.
In spite of our differences, these four categories of consistent life ethic advocates can find a great deal of common ground. We can all agree that the six threats to life are serious problems that should be ended or at least dramatically reduced and probably even can agree on some steps to end them. As long as we have those points in common, we can accept and even benefit from differences
John Whitehead is President of the Consistent Life Network
Reconstruction of a Nation: Resilience in the Face of Terror
Aneeza Pervez
by Aneeza Pervez
Research Associate – Department of Psychology, Government College University Lahore, Pakistan
The resounding echo of gunshots created a symphony of chaos on the cold and dreary December morning. A nation stood still in their steps while a cold deeper than dropping temperatures penetrated their bodies, wreaking havoc in their hearts and minds. December 16, 2014 is a day Pakistanis are unlikely to forget. The brutality and viciousness of humans reached unknown peaks as six heavily armed gunmen entered and attacked the students of Army Public School Peshawar.
The country held its breath as news of the attack and its components reached the ears of the public. As the toll of the martyred and injured rose, the hopes of a staggering nation fell. The over 150 victims ranged from nursery children all the way to high schoolers and staff members. The gruesome manner of the attack and the dauntless bravery displayed by the victims were unheard of in Pakistan.
Unfortunately, this horrendous scenario was one of many Pakistan has been facing since 2007. According to the Global Terrorism Database developed and updated by researchers at the University of Maryland, US, beginning in 2007 until 2016 a total of 870 terrorist attacks have been aimed at educational institutions in Pakistan. These attacks have resulted in the death of over 400 students and staff members with over 800 injuries.
Due to escalating threats and fear amongst people, in the summer of 2016 the Government of Punjab shut down all educational institutions for a period of 3 months. Students were prohibited from entering the premises, whilst teachers and researchers were asked to report as per schedule. Every institute in Punjab, whether it was public or private, was instructed to vamp their security by elongating school and university walls and installing emergency sirens around the campus.
I can still remember the day as if it were yesterday. I was sitting in my office working on the upcoming issue of the Pakistan Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology when I heard the screeching and terrifying sound of the emergency siren going off. I have never felt such fear in my life. For the first time ever, I found myself in a state of complete panic. In the sixty seconds it took for the department’s clerical staff to come and inform us of the drill, my mind had come up with a million scenarios. From visualizing an agonizing death to summing up the space in my office to seek shelter in, my mind was in complete chaos.
Despite the scare, despite the fear and despite the continuing reports of terrorist activities in Pakistan, I found myself in the following days getting up at 6 am every day to perform my job as a researcher and educationist. It was not just me. The University had over 100 staff members coming in everyday, risking their wellbeing in the hope of helping our country prosper. Regardless of the occurrence of these horrid attacks, the people of Pakistan, especially educationists and students, have remained steadfast in their pursuit of knowledge.
The image of Pakistan a foreign individual holds is that Pakistan is a country riddled with lies, corruption and terrorism. Quite recently the country was blamed for fostering and promoting terrorism. What I would like to convey in my post is that irrespective of the power-hungry agendas of politicians, the people of Pakistan have paid a great price in the war against terrorism. We have lost family members and loved ones, and have been scared emotionally and physically. However, we still stand strong in our commitment to promote the betterment of a global world.
sisters Naila Alam and Yasmeen Durrani
The average Pakistani’s resilience and strength against these negative forces can be seen in the achievement of people such as Dr Anam Najam, Rafia Qaseem Baig, sisters Naila Alam and Yasmeen Durrani, , and Ali Moeen Nawazish. Despite the adversities and negative press Pakistan seems to have faced, the country has excelled in the fields of technology, education, social welfare, etc.
We have people like Aitezaz Ahsan (a school boy who sacrificed his life to help his peers live), Muhammad Wali Khan, (a survivor of the Army Public School Attack in Peshawar), and Malala Yousaf Zai, (a Nobel peace prize winner and survivor of a terrorist attack), to help us realize that no matter how great pain and fear are, we will rise above them. We will not only survive, but live a life dedicated to wellbeing and betterment of those around us.
On a lighter note, if you ever find yourself visiting the country, let me warn you, the hospitality of the Pakistani people is second to none. Not only will we embrace you as our own, we will treat you like royalty!
Aneeza Pervez and Rachel MacNair in Lahore, Pakistan, December 4, 2017
Note from Rachel MacNair: I can confirm the last paragraph from personal experience. See my story on my visit.
Healing for the Perpetrators: The Psychological Damage from Different Types of Killing
Sarah Terzo
by Sarah Terzo
Violence harms not only its victims but in some cases also harms its perpetrators. Consistent Life Network Vice President Rachel MacNair has written extensively on how those who kill (in war, in abortion clinics, in execution chambers) are psychologically damaged by their actions, a situation she calls “Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress (PITS).” Recent accounts by a woman involved in abortions and men who killed people with drone strikes offer further—and noticeably similar—examples of the psychological harm caused by killing.
The pro-life group Live Action ran an article about a former Planned Parenthood worker who left the abortion industry. The woman, identified only as Gail, gave a heartbreaking account of what she witnessed at Planned Parenthood.
After describing how the fetal remains from abortions were put in little dishes to be examined, she says:
I would look at that dish, and the little arms and legs…and I always wondered who they would have grown up to be. I would pray for them, and try not to vomit because it smelled bad and was so gross. Then, all the abortion products of the day went into a biohazard bag all clumped together, and into a deep freezer. It would be collected, and I think sent off to be incinerated.
Gail was traumatized by the tiny body parts she saw. But she was also troubled by the fact that other workers at the clinic did not seem to share her feelings of horror—specifically her concerns about when the unborn babies could feel pain: “One doctor said, ‘I don’t know why its [sic] a big deal. It’s good money!’ Another doctor would pump her breast milk for her newborn baby in between killing other peoples’ babies. I never knew how she could do that!”
Finally, one day, she had had enough: “Once, I saw tiny fully developed hands in the little pyrex dish. Tiny, tiny hands perfectly formed…that was one of the last straws for me…I gave up my whole belief system for money. I was paid $70,000 and they offered more when I quit!”
Despite Planned Parenthood offering her more money, Gail left the clinic. Later, she described the emotional toll assisting in abortions took on her:
I used to be really happy, loved life, saw beauty everywhere before I started working there. Then, I started working at Planned Parenthood, and I was always sad, always tired, and really depressed. …How I felt coming home each day from the abortion center was like a soldier who had come back from war. The emptiness. That’s how I felt. Empty. I don’t believe we were created to see so much death.
Gail compared herself to a soldier on the battlefield. And, indeed, there are some striking similarities between her story and one of a drone operator who left the military.
Former drone operator Brandon Bryant describes the horror of his first kill:
So we’re looking at this thing, these people, and it was like almost instantaneous that someone was like, “Confirmed weapons. Here’s the nine line. You’re cleared. You’re cleared hot.” And we fire the missile. And the safety observer is counting down. He counts down to zero, and he says, “Splash!”
And I watched this man bleed out. The missile had taken off one of his legs right above the knee. And I watched him bleed out of his femoral artery. And he’s rolling on the ground, and I can—I imagined his last moments.
I didn’t know what to feel. I just knew that I had ended something that I had no right to end….It was like my image of myself was cracking and breaking apart.
And the safety observer laughs, and he slaps me on the back, and he says, “You should have seen how you jumped when I said, ‘Splash.’”
Bryant too saw the graphic aftermath of violence against a human being. He saw the violence and knew that he was one of the perpetrators. Bryant recalls the terrible damage the missile inflicted on his target, with part of the man’s leg blown away. This description echoes Gail’s words about dismembered body parts. Both the killings Bryant carried out and the abortions Gail participated in were bloody and gruesome. Neither Gail nor Bryant could deny the fact that they had killed (or helped kill) human beings.
Another parallel between the two accounts is the presence of other perpetrators who seemed immune to the horror. In Gail’s case, it was the two doctors, one of whom casually pumped breast milk for her own child in between killing other people’s children. For Bryant, it was another member of the military who turned the drone strike into a joke. Both these people were so hardened by the violence they were inflicting on others that they horrified Gail and Bryant. The abortionists and the safety observer may have repressed their consciences to the point where they no longer had normal human feelings. Gail and Bryant had not yet reached that stage. To Bryant and Gail, the killing hadn’t yet become normalized. When they saw the hard-heartedness of the people they worked with, they glimpsed what would happen to them if they continued killing.
Seeing the carnage inflicted on their victims led to terrible feelings of guilt and trauma in Gail and Bryant, and this prompted them to quit. Perhaps seeing the complete lack of remorse and human feeling in their colleagues was another factor in their decision to leave.
The emotional trauma of another drone operator provides another parallel with Gail’s experience. Former drone operator Stephen Lewis, who quit after one kill, says:
It makes any kind of relationship difficult. I can’t—I can’t communicate properly with my friends. I have to preface it with “I’m sorry, guys. I can’t hang out with you tonight. There’s too much going on right now.” It’s, in effect, killed every single relationship that I’ve had afterwards.
Unfortunately, Lewis does not appear to find the Department of Veterans Affairs to be a source of help for his psychological distress:
I’ve been to the VA, but it seems useless. It seems useless for me. It’s been six months. They’ve said, “Hey, you need an MRI.” It’s been six months without an MRI. It’s “Hey, you need medication to manage this pain.” It’s been six months without medication to manage pain. If they’re not going to take care of you, then why should you even go?
One can only hope that Lewis is able to find help for his emotional trauma.
Abby Johnson
There is a place former abortion workers can go for support after they leave the industry. Former Planned Parenthood manager Abby Johnson set up the organization And Then There Were None which holds healing retreats for abortion workers who have left the industry. They are able to find healing and a sense of camaraderie that would otherwise be elusive. One former clinic worker, Shelley Guillory, RN, describes why And Then There Were None is so important to her:
A lot of people tend to look at us as bad guys. We’re not bad guys. We’re human. We’re doing a job. For a lot of us to come out of the industry, we’re embarrassed. We don’t feel comfortable or safe speaking to anybody. It puts us in a very, very dark place. For a lot of us, we go into deep depressions. You’d be very surprised [at] the suicide rate that is very prevalent among abortion workers once they come out because sometimes you feel alienated. But with [And Then There Were None], we don’t have that feeling. We are loved even when we don’t love ourselves.
Former Planned Parenthood manager Sue Thayer also says:
I would say my favorite thing about [being involved with And Then There Were None] really, is just being able to be with other people who have had similar experiences and you can say anything, really, and they’re not shocked. Whereas some of the stuff that we did, or said to clients, if we say that out in public, you know, people either wouldn’t believe it or really think you’re a horrible person. But when all of us are together, it’s like “yup, we all did that.” So that’s really the only place that I’ve ever been that you can really be open about our experiences.
Those of us who value life and seek to relieve human suffering need to advocate for the victims of violence, but we also must promote healing for the perpetrators who change their minds. Compassion for all who are hurt by violence, whether guilty or innocent, is part of the Consistent Life Ethic.
=======================================================
For more blog posts from Sarah Terzo, see:
Abortion Doctor Says: We are the Executioners
See the list of all our blog posts, put in categories.
The Jukes and Kallikaks “Studies”
by John Cavanaugh-O’Keefe
Editor’s note: this is an excerpt from the book The Roots of Racism and Abortion: An Exploration of Eugenics, pp. 52-54
In 1877, Richard Dugdale published a study of a family whom he called the “Jukes” family. He referred to a mother several generations back in the family as “Margaret, the mother of criminals,” and then studied her descendants. He said that in 75 years, her descendants had cost the state of New York over $1.25 million—which, at the end of the 19th century, was a stupendous sum of money. Dugdale’s book became very fashionable, and many other people wrote similar studies.
Henry Goddard, a member of the AES [American Eugenics Society], published a book in 1912, tracing the descendants of a man whom he called Martin Kallikak, a fictitious name for a Revolutionary War soldier. According to Goddard’s account, Martin seduced a feeble-minded girl, and she produced a feeble-minded son, who had 480 descendants (as of 1912). Of the 480, Goddard said, 33 were sexually immoral, 24 were drunkards, three were epileptics, and 143 were feeble-minded. To clarify the case, Goddard claimed that Martin married a young woman of normal intelligence, and they had 496 descendants, with no feeble-minded children at all. Goddard’s study seemed to provide evidence for a link between bad genes, feeblemindedness and immoral behavior.
Among the books in the new literary genre, the Kallikak case history was the most dramatic, and was cited often. The point of all the stories, of course, was that feeble-minded people multiply like hamsters, dragging society down more and more in each generation. Allowing them to breed just makes a bad problem worse.
Writers used Goddard’s study to stir up prejudice against the disabled and to build support for eugenics programs. For example, in her book Woman and the New Race, Margaret Sanger (AES member) wrote: “The offspring of one feebleminded man named Jukes has cost the public in one way and another $1,800,000 in seventy-five years. Do we want more such families?”
Goddard’s work went beyond his effort to link bad genes, weak brains and poor morals. He was one of the pioneers in the effort to measure intelligence. Like [Francis] Galton, he believed that intelligence was an innate ability, rather than a set of abilities that a child develops under supervision and training. Like Galton, he thought that intelligence could be measured on a sliding scale.
Galton’s ideas about measuring intelligence attracted researchers in Europe and America. In France, Alfred Binet (1857-1911) developed tests to measure intelligence, and Lewis Terman (1877-1956) of Stanford University revised them for the United States. Terman was also a member of the Advisory Council of the AES. The Stanford-Binet tests are still used to measure one’s intelligence quotient, or IQ.
Goddard did research at the Training School for Feebleminded Boys and Girls in southern New Jersey, and he invented the word “moron” to describe some of the children there. Moron is the Greek word for fool, and Goddard used it to refer to people with an IQ of 50 to 75.
Goddard was on a committee that developed IQ tests for the Army in World War I. Robert Means Yerkes (AES member) organized IQ testing for 1.7 million US Army recruits in 1919, and summarized his findings in Psychological Examining in the United States Army. This was the report that led to Henry Fairfield Osborn’s nasty remark that World War I was worth the bloodshed because this book came out of it, and showed “once and for all that the negro is not like us.”
=================================
For other excerpts from this book, see:
For more of our blog posts on racism, see:
Historical Black Voices: Racism Kills
The Poor Cry Out for Justice, and We Respond with Legalized Abortion (Graciela Olivarez)
More than Double the Trouble: Another Way of Connecting (intersectionality)
It’s a Wonderful Movement
Now a popular classic movie for the season, It’s a Wonderful Life shows George Bailey standing on a snow-covered bridge, ready to kill himself by jumping into the icy river below. Defining himself by his failures, at the height of his despair, he was visited by an angel who showed him what the world would have been like had he never lived.
Let’s take that same approach with the pro-life and peace movements. What would likely have happened without us?
∞∞∞
In 1991, there were over 2,100 free-standing abortion clinics in the U.S., but now there are only around 500 surgical clinics. Without us, they may well have moved into shopping malls, and into or near public schools and private colleges. Infanticide of disabled newborns could have become commonplace, as the slippery slope from feticide of the disabled would never have been stopped.
AND
As documented in Confronting the Bomb, nuclear weapons were at first considered just the best weapon in the arsenal. Over time, our actions made them taboo for using on people.
∞∞∞
There would be no debate about paying for abortions in U.S. national health care – the government would have been covering them from the start.
AND
The reaction to the September 11 attacks may well have resembled the reaction after the attack on Pearl Harbor – deep trouble for Muslim citizens, and more extensive war.
∞∞∞
There would be no crisis pregnancy network to help those women who don’t want to submit to abortion, and even fewer government programs helping such women who made the “wrong” choice.
AND
There would be no conflict resolution skills training in schools, nor would mass nonviolent campaigns have developed to topple dictators and empires.
∞∞∞
We have plenty of work left to do, but in this holiday season, we can also celebrate our achievements. and those of the compassionate people who came before us.
My Trip to Pakistan
by Rachel MacNair
I was invited to speak at the International Conference on Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Challenges and Resolution Strategies, held November 29-30, 2017 in Lahore, Pakistan. While there, I was also asked to give guest lectures at four different universities; I did two on psychological theories of why nonviolence is effective, and two on the trauma of killing.
Rachel with conference organizers. Left to right: Farah Malik, Shameem Fatima, Rachel MacNair, Farzana Ashraf
I was delighted for the opportunity, but then found I had friends and family who thought I was “brave” to go to Pakistan. And when I went to the US State Department’s webpage – just in order to see if there were any recommended medical shots – it told me that I should avoid going to Pakistan if I didn’t have to, because of all the terrorist attacks. It listed those attacks. That list looked remarkably similar to the list of terrorist attacks in the United States in the same time period.
When I mentioned that in one of my lectures, I got a round of applause. They naturally resent the unfair stereotypes, because everybody resents unfair stereotypes against them, especially such harsh ones. They also resent them since they are victims of terrorist attacks every bit as much as everybody else. And they’re every bit as much opposed to those attacks, for the same reasons as everybody else, along with a resentment at the twisting of their own religion by those attackers who claim to be Muslim.
I start by saying this because one of the major obstacles to peace is the fear of that which is not actually realistic to fear. The homicide rate in Lahore is actually one-fourth that in Kansas City, Missouri, where I live. We are all more in danger of dying in a car accident, so if we wish to fear something realistic, we can fear getting into a car. I have a friend who objects to me pointing these facts out, as if my doing so discounts her fears. But I insist, if we don’t have a realistic understanding of where actual danger lies, then peace cannot be attained. Irrational fears lead to irrational actions.
Meanwhile, one presentation in the breakout sessions was on the problem of current American racism, and Black people who are being terrorized by police shootings, among other things.
Keynote Speech
I gave the keynote speech, on the topic of Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress. The speech started: “The first rule of establishing peace is that we want to convince people not to kill each other. Not in war, riots, lynching, executions, or any of the other socially-approved methods. We can make an appeal with ethics. We can explain how it is ineffective for achieving certain goals, or that there are better nonviolent ways of achieving those goals. But one other thing that we need to do is help people understand how the act of killing is traumatic to those who do it.”
While I didn’t mention the consistent life ethic explicitly (I had only one personal conversation about the ethic explicitly, which was a lengthy and highly satisfying one), but I did use examples from the different kinds of killing. Combat, executions, slavery, and abortion. The horrific violence of torture was also included.
It was a different experience from when I’ve used the same material for a US audience. It would commonly be the case in a US peace conference that the audience might show some discomfort when I applied the principle to abortion. Conversely, I might get positive enthusiasm from people who realized I was being consistent across the board. Here, however, abortion was simply taken as a reasonable thing to have on the list.
The biggest danger for anyone in a country other than their own is getting lost. There was never any possibility of that here. Whenever outside my room, I was always surrounded by friendly people who take pride in a well-deserved reputation for hospitality. Rather than move to a hotel after the conference, I was invited to stay in a private home, with delightful children. When I admired a painting on the wall, all of a sudden I found that it was gifted to me, and I now have it hanging up at home.
I was asked once, in jest, if I had met any terrorist there. In fact, I never met a single individual that I could even say was merely impolite, or in any way less than friendly. The constant warmth and welcome ensured that that my time in Pakistan was a wonderful experience.
Symposium, Government College University of Lahore
Could My Experience with Dan Berrigan Shed Light?
by Carol Crossed
Carol Crossed
This November I was pleasantly reconnected with a friend from 1985. Nancy and I had been young mothers together in the neighborhood. Our children ate P B and J sandwiches on the back picnic table and played street hockey until it got dark. That summer we escaped to The Women’s Peace Encampment in Romulus, New York. It was a space of tents adjacent to the Seneca Army Depot where women came from all over the world to oppose the nuclear warheads buried there. That year my husband had bought an old school to convert into housing; Nancy and I had a sale of chalkboards and cafeteria dishes, and raised money to host speakers and provide food for the over 100 women gathered there at any one time.
“Do you want to go hear a reading of Molly’s Hammer?” Nancy called me out of the blue just a few weeks ago in early November. The performance at our local community theater was about Molly Rush, the Plowshares activist. Molly’s character was flanked on either side by a man reading the role of her husband Bill, and on the other by a reader for Dan Berrigan, the Jesuit priest and prophet.
Daniel touched Molly’s soul to its core, shook her, scared her into an even greater depth of commitment to abolish nuclear arms. She planned to take the 5-hour journey in the middle of the night to literally hammer on weapons – figuratively, swords into ploughshares.
Much of the stage reading was a conversation with her husband about the probable cost of the trespass and weapons destruction. Who would take care of their 12 and 14 year old? How could she abandon him and the kids? The time was not right. What time was “right,” she asked? Wasn’t she doing this precisely because the boys were young and had so much of their life ahead of them?
I admired Molly so. Their stage conversation was reminiscent of my own with my husband over simpler commitments. Overnights in the klinker, as my kids would call it. My weekends in a Washington DC jail were child’s play next to Molly’s conversion to redirect her life for the cause of peace.
After the performance was an audience engagement time with three community leaders: a man who worked with inner-city homeless with their healthcare needs, a woman who was head of NOW (National Organization for Women) in Rochester, and an Rochester Institute of Technology professor who was an expert on non-violence. Many of my friends in the peace community were there and were acutely aware of the current contentious situation between the leaders of North Korea and our country. It was a somber conversation. What would Daniel do if he were alive?
A member of the panel referred to me. Could my experience with Berrigan when he was arrested in Rochester shed any light on current tensions?
October 27, 1991, Daniel Berrigan sits in to protest Planned Parenthood abortions
When Berrigan was here in 1989 and 1991, it was in the midst of massive national civil disobedience in front of abortion clinics and nuclear weapons sites. He couldn’t make sense of the “my issue is more important than your issue” mentality. Is that like saying the people you want to protect are more important than the people I want to protect? Nonsense, Daniel would say with a smile.
In his newly released biography on Berrigan, Jim Forest speaks to Dan’s challenge to his peace friends. Nuclear weapons and abortion suction machines were pretty much the same thing.
A recent article titled “Life Affirming?” in the Notre Dame Magazine (Autumn, 2017) by Professor Richard Garnett says there is a need to affirm life on the “right” and on the “left.” He quotes theologian John Cavadini as saying a “culture that allows the powerful to kill the weak just because they are weak is a culture without significant moral substance and all attempts to use the language of morality will be subverted by this fundamental incoherence.”
I commented to the audience about Berrigan’s abortion clinic and army depot arrests on the same day in Rochester. Some youth in the audience were spellbound. But other seasoned followers quietly reflected on how needed Berrigan was now. More than ever, he is needed now.
Plato’s Words about Eugenics
by John Cavanaugh-O’Keefe
Editor’s note: this is an excerpt from the book The Roots of Racism and Abortion: An Exploration of Eugenics, pp. 15-16
Plato was a Greek philosopher who lived from about 427 BC to about 347 BC. His thought had a tremendous impact on all of Western culture. One of his greatest works was the Republic, in which he explored the idea of justice, and how to develop a just society. He favored a system of aristocracy, or rule by the best people.
Plato’s discussion includes military matters, and he talked about a class of people who would be devoted to guarding the society, a kind of warrior class. Soldiers should be fierce when dealing with enemies, but should not be a threat to their own neighbors. Achieving and maintaining this balance is difficult, Plato felt, and so he discussed some ideas for breeding the kind of people he wanted. His ideas about breeding soldiers are shocking, and it is possible that Plato was making fun of someone else’s ideas. But whether Plato took the ideas seriously or not, 19th century eugenicists were fascinated.
Plato noted that dogs are frequently gentle to people they know, but fierce to strangers. Dog owners pay attention to their breeding, selecting only those considered to be the best. If the owner does not pay attention to breeding, the value of the dogs—or birds, horses or other animals—can deteriorate quickly. The question, then, is whether the techniques of animal breeding can be adapted to humans, to raise soldiers. Plato found human breeding plausible, if the rulers of the society were willing and able to be deceptive, manipulating people into accepting the rulers’ plans. Breeding a soldier class requires that the rulers select the best of both sexes, and have them mate as much as possible, while discouraging mating among the inferior.
Plato’s scheme for a perfect society included not only barnyard methods of breeding humans and deception, but also promiscuity and abortion. Men and women considered too old to have healthy children could engage in sexual activity promiscuously, but any child they conceived accidentally was to be aborted.
Not all Greeks favored abortion and infanticide. Hippocrates, the Greek physician who is called the “father of medicine,” lived at about the same time as Plato. His greatest legacy is the charter of conduct he wrote for medical professionals, which was used for ages. It includes unequivocal opposition to euthanasia and abortion: “I will give no deadly drug to anyone, though it be asked of me, nor will I counsel such, and especially I will not aid a woman to procure abortion.”
===============================================
More excerpts from this book:
The Jukes and Kallikaks “Studies”
For more of our blog posts on racism, see:
Historical Black Voices: Racism Kills
The Poor Cry Out for Justice, and We Respond with Legalized Abortion (Graciela Olivarez)
More than Double the Trouble: Another Way of Connecting (intersectionality)