Racist and Anti-Immigrant Quotes from the Birth Control Review
Exactly Who Are the Racists?
Planned Parenthood often attacks pro-life activists, labeling them "extremist," and claims that any and all restrictions on abortion "hurt poor women" and are therefore "racist."
However, statistics reveal that abortion itself is an incurably racist institution.
The average annual number of abortions among White women is 1,031,500 (66.2% of all abortions), and the average annual number among minority women is 526,500 (33.8%).
During 1980-1996, 25.5% of White women's pregnancies have ended in abortions, while 40.1% of minority women's pregnancies have been aborted. This means a pregnant minority woman is 57 percent more likely to abort her baby than a pregnant White woman [1].
The average 1980-1996 abortion rate among White women of childbearing age was 22.4 abortions per 1,000; the average rate among minority women was 55.8 ) two and a half times higher [1].
Because of the long-term disparities between the abortion rates of White and minority women, pro-life activists maintain that abortionists target minority women. An examination of the number of abortionists in cities with high and low minority populations verifies this allegation.
Human Life International researchers used U.S. Census Bureau and Alan Guttmacher Institute statistics to analyze the 198 U.S. cities with 1992 populations greater than 100,000 with regard to minority populations and number of abortionists. They found that the 11 U.S. cities with more than 70 percent minority populations (averaging 78 percent minority) had an average of 52.74 abortionists per million people, whereas the 11 U.S. cities with less than 10 percent minority populations (averaging 6 percent minority) had only 15.75 abortionists per million [2].
This means high-minority cities have more than three times the number of abortionists per million citizens than low-minority cities.
Abortionists not only target minority women's preborn children, they kill the mothers themselves at a tremendous rate by providing grossly substandard "care" to them.
Kevin Sherlock's compendium of legal abortion deaths, Victims of Choice, documents the case studies of a sample of 126 women who have been killed by so-called "safe and legal" abortion. Sherlock positively identified the races of 72 of these women. The dead included 35 Blacks, 20 Latinas, 2 Asian, and 15 Whites. This means that 79 percent of these legal abortion deaths have occurred among minority women.
By comparison, as noted above, minority women obtain 33.8% of all abortions.
This means that the death rate among minority women who abort is seven times higher than that of White women who abort [3]. This number is underestimated by Planned Parenthood, which still admits that the risks of abortion for Black women are more than three times as high as for White women. Planned Parenthood says that the death rates for second-trimester abortions for Black and White women respectively are 24.8 and 6.8 deaths per 100,000 abortions [4].
Read the Quotes and Decide.
These actual quotes from the Birth Control Review can be used to show exactly who is really "extremist," and are excellent for use in debating, call-in shows, or research papers.
Remember that Planned Parenthood leaders have never denounced the racist statements of Margaret Sanger or the other writers in her magazine. In fact, PP leaders have frequently praised Sanger's work and its goals. At the annual luncheon of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America held in St. Louis, Missouri, on February 5, 1979, then-President Faye Wattleton boasted that "First as you know, as we celebrate the 100th birthday of Margaret Sanger, our outrageous and our courageous leader, we will probably find a number of areas in which we may want to find more about Margaret Sanger than we thought we wanted to know ... we should be very proud of what we are and what our mission is. It is a very grand mission ... abortion is only the tip of the iceberg ... I believe Margaret Sanger would have been proud of us today if she had seen the directions that we have most recently in this organization taken."
Sanger's grandson, Alexander C. Sanger, became President and Chief Executive Officer of Planned Parenthood of New York City in January of 1991. This organization has a budget of $18 million a year and 250 workers. Sanger boasted that "I intend to be out on the front lines of our issues. That is why I'm here ... Right now, we have three clinics in this city and I want ten more. We currently have a small storefront office in central Harlem, and it is my first priority to see if we can transform that into a clinic ... With all her success, my grandmother left some unfinished business, and I intend to finish it." [5]
Any Questions?
If you have any questions regarding this document or the Birth Control Review, or if you would like any further information on Margaret Sanger, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) or the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), call Human Life International (HLI) at (540) 635-7884, or write to HLI, 4 Family Life, Front Royal, VA 22630.
Endnotes.
[1] Stanley K. Henshaw and Jennifer Van Vort. "Abortion Services in the United States, 1991 and 1992." Family Planning Perspectives, May/June 1994, pages 100 to 112, Table 1 (1973-1992 figures). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Surveillance Summaries, September 4, 1992 (1970-1972 figures). 1967-1969 figures allocated and interpolated by state.
[2] City populations and minority population percentages are from U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Reference Data Book and Guide to Sources, Statistical Abstract of the United States. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995. "Cities With 100,000 or More Inhabitants in 1992 ) Population, 1980 to 1992, and Land Area, 1990." Abortionists by city are from Stanley K. Henshaw and Jennifer Van Vort (editors). Abortion Factbook, 1992 Edition: Readings, Trends, and State and Local Data to 1988. New York: Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1992. Table 16, "Number of Abortions, Number of Abortion Providers, Percent of Abortions in Nonhospital Facilities Performing 400 or More Abortions, and Percent of Abortions in Hospitals, by SMSA of Occurrence, 1987 and 1988."
[3] (79%/0.338)/(21%/0.662) = 7.4.
[4] John Benditt. "Special Report: Second-Trimester Abortions in the United States." Family Planning Perspectives, November/December 1979, page 359.
[5] "Another Sanger Leads Planned Parenthood." The New York Times, January 23, 1991, page B2.
1917
"Brownsville is the most thickly populated section of Brooklyn. Here the working people live. Here are the dwelling-places of the very poor, a whole city of Jewish and Italian inhabitants housed in the most assiduously investigated and frequently condemned type of tenement. Block after block, street after street, as far as one can see in every direction, there is an endless stretch of dreary walls bursting with their excess of wretched humanity. Unkempt children swarm the alley ways and fire escapes and you seldom see a woman without her inevitable baby."
Elizabeth Stuyvesant. "The Brownsville Birth Control Clinic." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 3 (March 1917), page 6.
1920
"Polish men are often immoral because they have been born of too young mothers or preceded by many born before."
Rev. T.V. Jakimowitz. "A Priest on Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 3 (March 1920), page 12.
"The black people, however restless and discontented, are comparatively inoffensive and in any case easy to placate, while the American Indians are a small and diminishing race."
Havelock Ellis. "The World's Racial Problem." Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 10 (October 1920), page 15.
"It is the lower elements of the population, the negroid aboriginal tribes and the Pariahs or Outcasts, who are gaining the fastest."
Lothrop Stoddard. "Population Problems in Asia." Birth Control Review, Volume V, Number 12 (December 1921), page 11.
1922
"It is difficult to study the history of India and China and not come to the conclusion that much of the misery of these unhappy countries is the result of centuries of uncontrolled breeding of children. Excessive increase of population means periodic visitation of famine and plague and the horrible custom of infanticide.
"If we can restrict the population of each country of the world to a reasonable limit, we may not end war, but we shall at least remove one of the excuses and causes of international conflict."
Sidney E. Goldstein. "Control of Parenthood as a Moral Problem ) The Case For and Against Birth Control: A Paper Presented at the International Birth Control Conference." Birth Control Review, Volume VI, Number 10 (October 1922), pages 195 to 197 and 206.
1923
"We have no reason to fear that by reducing our population we should be driven to the wall by lower races. Let us take care that our descendants are healthy men and healthy women with vigorous bodies and cultivated minds and our race will never go under even in the presence of the Chinese."
Harold Cox. "Socialism and the Population Question." Birth Control Review, Volume VII, Number 11 (November 1923), pages 298 to 301.
1924
"Even now in China, people live all the year round on boats because there is no room for them on land.
"I offer for your approval the following remedies [for overpopulation]:
"2a. We may solicit the aid of God by prayer and dropping coins into the contribution box ) to hurry along a glacial period. Meanwhile we can beg Him to send down some great pestilence as the Black Death, or a few earthquakes, or a couple of flu epidemics.
"2b. We can always start a war.
"2c. We must get rid of the inferior colored races ) the Blacks, the Yellow and the Red races must be exterminated ) of course you must convert them first to religion because their souls are very valuable.
"2d. The white race then may proceed as follows: Let the Christians exterminate all Jews and Moslems, then the Protestants kill all Catholics, then let the Ku-Klux-Klan kill everybody except the one-hundred-per-cent; then let the Nordic race with blond hair and blue eyes kill off all the dark complexioned ..."
Bernard Sacks, M.D. "Overpopulation." Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 9 (September 1924), pages 252 and 270.
[***] "Only the inconceivable eventuality of an alliance of all the other races of the world against the white race could seriously threaten white civilization, and by the time the colored races reach the stage where this would be possible, they will long since have been forced to adopt birth control themselves.
"The white will practice voluntary restriction of their numbers while "uncivilized" races remain prolific, with the ultimate result of the extermination of white civilization by a `rising tide of color.'"
)Malcolm H. Bissell. Review of J.B.S. Haldane's book Daedalus or Icarus: Is Science to Be Man's Servant or His Master? Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 10 (October 1924), pages 277 and 279.
1925
"... Considering the fact that the average Russian sympathizer with the Tzarist regime, has, after seven years of Bolshevism, already become as sterile and emasculated, socially and intellectually, as the average Southerner in America (barring myself as a notable exception) it is important to record that many of them practice Birth Control in one form or another.
"... the Japanese government was bitterly opposed to the teaching of Birth Control because the Imperialists knew that in increasing the population was an argument for aggression and an extension of territory."
"Emigration and the Birth Rate." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 1 (January 1925), page 8.
"No nation wants the dregs drained from the bottom of the vat. Those of Italy are not less welcome than those of any other nation, but they are not welcome. We know Italy's greatness, her Galileos, her Leonardos, her Michelangelos. Does she send us these, even in humble imitations? She does not. Look over "Who's Who in America" for Italian names. They are conspicuous by their absence. Look at the army intelligence test records. They are low, so unconscionably low that they are a reproach and a shame to Italy's greatness. She is as well rid of them as an individual would be well rid of a cancerous tumor. I yield to none in my appreciation of Italian art, architecture, literature and science. Our culture here would be immensely improved we could import and make our own some of the creative geniuses comparable to those who built so grandly in the Renaissance. Have we the slightest chance of obtaining them? Again I say no. The Grade A men of Lombardy and Tuscany are not squeezed out by economic pressure. Such people take care of themselves. Furthermore, these northerners are men of brains, thoughtful and foresighted. They are not producing Italy's excess. The excess comes from below Rome, people of a different race, people where Grade A men are negligible in quantity, where Grades D and E predominate. The incompetents from Italy's population curve are the ones the astute Senator asks us to receive. And he is so complacent in his absurd proposal. We don't need these people, that is all. We produce enough of that quality ourselves."
Edward M. East. "The Fascisti on Birth Control; An Italian Problem: Reply to Count Cippico." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 9 (September 1925), pages 245 and 246.
"Children are not born fully equipped for productive work; they have to be supported and educated for 18 to 20 years before they become productive, so that they are actually a drain on the resources of the community until they are mature. The foreign workers are already fully fledged producers, and are in most cases unmarried, so that they actually help to support the French population."
G. Hardy. "The Truth About France." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 11 (November 1925), pages 309 and 310.
"And none need hesitate to heartily take up a fully Eugenic attitude towards life through fear that it will perhaps mean a departure from our ancient Aryan civilization."
"Eugenics for India." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 11 (November 1925), page 316.
[***] "I am hoping that your influence will be felt among the masses of three races in particular, the Hebrew, the Italian, and the Negro. From casual observation it seems to me that these races are less observant of Birth Control than any others."
"The Correspondents Column." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 12 (December 1925), page 357.
1926
"Some people believe that the Chinese and Japanese want an unlimited number of children ... What we need to avoid the so-called `yellow-peril' is some real missionary work that will put into the hands of these people the power to so order their own lives that the number of children they have may be adequately cared for."
Percy Clark, Ph.D. "Sowing the Seed in the West." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 10 (October 1926), page 300.
"Over 70 per cent of the recent immigrants are from southern and southeastern Europe, and these particular immigrants by means of a very high (it may even be called luxurious) birth rate are increasing their stocks in the United States many times faster than the native born of native parents. Were these recent immigrants of superior quality there would be no rational objection, but according to Dr. Laughlin's report in regard to all forms of social inadequacy, the foreign-born and their children, who make up about 34 per cent of our population, are even inferior to our native negro population not long released from slavery."
"Book Reviews." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 11 (November 1926), page 345.
1927
"There are too many Americans, both native-born and immigrant, who are quite definitely and demonstrably no good. Improvement ought to begin at home. The worst immigrants that anybody could be induced to admit would compare quite favorably with considerable elements of our present population."
E.E. Free in the February 1926 The Scientific American. Birth Control Review, Volume XI, Number 1 (January 1927), page 23.
1928
"In county after county in China you will not find a rood of land reserved for recreation or pleasure. No village greens, no lawns, no flower-beds or ornamental shrubbery, no parks, and very few shade-trees. Children are employed as early as possible, and few have much opportunity for play if their services can be used. There are no outdoor games in China, or indeed any games except in a gambling sense. Absolute dullness and dreariness seems to prevail everywhere. As these two demons drive the Caucasian to drink so they drove the Chinese to opium."
Edward Alsworth Ross. "Ten Good Reasons for Birth Control ) The Preservation of Civilization." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 12 (December 1928), page 335.
1930
"According to the charts of Thompson and Whelphton, the Negro population in this country will decrease from 10 per cent to 9 per cent between 1929 and 1975, and the foreign white will decrease from 13 per cent to 6 per cent.
"While there may not be a rapid increase of people to buy goods in the future, those who are here will have more money to spend, and for a greater variety of goods. When all of the different factors are carefully considered, the changes that are now taking place in the composition of the population would seem to be of advantage both biologically and economically to future civilization."
Guy Irving Burch, Executive Secretary, Population Reference Bureau. "Population Section." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 5 (May 1930), page 152.
"One might perhaps question whether there were too many farmers or not. He might affirm that there were simply not enough other people to buy farm products. This would follow the theory of the colored boy who said there could not be too much water-melon, the difficulty was with the smallness of the stomach."
Thomas Nixon Carver. "Occupational Congestion." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 7 (July 1930), page 198.
" ... when defense is made that racial progress is involved, that racial betterment is furthered, and that Birth Control adds to the upward march of all mankind, attack is difficult ... No more convincing evidence can be obtained than these essays written by the leading Anglo-Saxon scientists ..."
Book reviews of Francis Mason's Creation by Evolution and David Starr Jordan and Sarah L. Kimball's Your Family Tree. Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 7 (July 1930), page 211.
"From this discussion it appear that the social and biological worth of the individual is determined by his inheritance; that the different races are radically unequal in mental endowment, and that civilization in America is threatened with deterioration through overpopulation, the unrestricted reproduction of persons of bad heredity and inferior racial constitution. The remedy is tersely given, ) Birth Control, although the detailed application of the corrective is not elaborated. Thus man, recognizing the problems which beset him as a social animal, has at his hand the instrument through which his newly won possibility of control may be realized."
Review of E.M. East's book Heredity and Human Affairs, by L.C. Dunn. Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 11 (November 1930), page 326.
"COLORADO: Dr. Albert Van Dusen, Professor of Sociology at the University of Syracuse, New York, spoke at Pueblo on October 13th, on "Race Problems and Birth Control." He made a plea for the support of Birth Control and for information for those who need it."
"News Notes." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 11 (November 1930), page 330.
"What is Dr. Marie Stopes' address? Does she have an organization for Birth Control?
"Dr. Stopes is President of the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress, 108 Whitfield St., London W1, England."
"The Answer Box." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 11 (November 1930), page 332.
"There is, first, the mere question of quantity of population, quantity of Americans in the world versus the quantity of Englishmen, versus the quantity of Africans, versus the quantity of Chinese. That obviously is a question of the utmost importance. If you have one race whose population is going down and another whose population is going up, there is always the possibility of race suicide ..."
Julian Huxley. "Towards a Higher Civilization." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 12 (December 1930), pages 342 to 345.
1931
"In discussing what we can hope from eugenics and eugenic measures for decreasing the dependent and delinquent groups, Professor Jennings mentions among other methods suggested "that the present ban on the dissemination of knowledge as to how to decrease the number of offspring produced be removed, so that such knowledge may become available to the less efficient or intelligent groups," but he warns us that such measures are slow improvers so far as changing the general drift or tendency of man's racial heredity is concerned.
Some of the most thought-provoking chapters deal with biological fallacies and human affairs, the relative importance of heredity (genes) and environment, the biological basis of marriage and the family, race mixture and its consequences ..."
Orland White. Review of H.S. Jennings' book The Biological Basis of Human Nature. Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 3 (March 1931), page 86.
"Furthermore, it is debatable whether the Italian race is any more fertile than any other race, or that the Italian race glorifies family life any more than any other race. Some people may be inclined to believe that these statements of Dr. Dublin are merely an apology for reckless breeding. We fear that such statements as these and those of Dr. Warren S. Thompson that Italy and Japan are merely in the swarming stage, are not very popular, if true. In any event, it would seem that these countries picked out a rather unfortunate time to begin swarming."
Guy Irving Burch. "Population Pressure and War." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 6 (June 1931), page 178.
[***] "Too many Negroes are born, too many are sick and too many die each year, for these vital processes consume energy that might otherwise be accumulated for advancement. So the Negro's program should include the conservation of vital energy. The best way and perhaps the only practical way is to control the birth rate. Birth control propaganda and techniques should be disseminated till no more Negro babies are born than can be properly cared for and prepared for efficient citizenship. The great bulk of Negroes everywhere are overburdening themselves with progeny to whom they can give only half a chance in the world. Thus they keep themselves impoverished and their race down. They give hostages to the white man by making themselves dependent upon his charity whereas by prudent breeding they might be independent. Dependency of any kind is weakness. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the responsible white community looks upon the average Negro as being irresponsible, without pride or self-respect when he supplies more than his quota of dependents and delinquents? Birth control should be urged as a step toward independence and greater power."
Newell Sims. "A New Technique in Race Relations." Opportunity, April 1931. Quoted in Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 6 (June 1931), pages 187 and 188.
[***] "I wish to reiterate that all objections to birth control can be met unanswerably except one ) that the human race will degenerate if the superior races and the superior classes among civilized races will curtail the number of their offspring while inferior races and the inferior strata in civilized countries will continue their high birthrate. This must be prevented by all means, and it can be if we go about it earnestly and zealously, and if the civilized governments give us their cooperation."
Editorial in The Critic and Guide, July 1931, quoted in "In the Magazines." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 9 (September 1931), page 268.
"The present essay was awarded first prize in the W.P. Draper Contest for essays on the "Relative Birth-Rates of Nordic and Non-Nordic Peoples."
Joseph J. Spengler's review of J. Sander's book Comparative Birth-Rate Movements Among European Nations. Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 10 (October 1931), page 290.
1932
"In the meanwhile, it should not be forgotten that we do not use the quota against the nations of this hemisphere. This is a most curious discrimination, because Europe unquestionably is sending more desirable immigrants than we are receiving from Mexico. A very great proportion of these Mexicans are in large part of Indian blood and of a low cultural and economic level. There is also an immigration from Brazil and the West Indies which is in part negro. It is obvious that the quota plan, so long as we have it, should be extended to all the world."
"In conclusion, any country has available a very rapid, cheap, and effective tool in a eugenic program by the very simple device of making its own median (or higher level) in mental tests the basis of its immigration control."
Roswell H. Johnson. "Population Control by Immigration." Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 2 (February 1932), page 58.
"I'm afraid there's no question but that it's unpatriotic not to believe in limiting our population ... Birth control is essential for the slums, anyway."
John Galsworthy. Maid in Waiting. Quoted in Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 3 (March 1932), page 87.
"The extent to which persecution must have affected European races is easily measured by a few well-known statistical facts. Thus, as regards martyrdom and imprisonment, the Spanish nation was drained of freethinkers at a rate of 1,000 persons annually for the three centuries between 1471 and 1781; an average of 100 persons having been executed and 900 imprisoned every year during that period. The actual data during those 300 years are 32,000 burnt, 17,000 burnt in effigy (I presume they died in prison or escaped from Spain) and 291,000 condemned to various terms of imprisonment and other penalties. It is impossible that any nation could stand a policy like this without paying a heavy penalty in the deterioration of its breed, as has notably been the result in the formation of the superstitious, unintelligent Spanish race of the present day."
Quote by Francis Galton, from Leon F. Whitney. "Religion and the Birthrate." Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 4 (April 1932), page 103.
"The Negro problem is one of the most complicated and important confronting America ... Whatever the ultimate answer may be, such an attitude brings to light the function of birth control as a necessary agency in its solution. The present submerged condition of the Negro is due in large part to the high fertility of the race under disastrously adverse circumstances ...
Thus the question arises to what extent birth control has had a eugenic effect upon the Negro race ..."
Editorial. Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 6 (June 1932, the "Negro Number"), pages 164 and 165.
"There is no great opposition to birth control among the twelve million brown Americans ... Negroes are perhaps more receptive to this information than white folk. Despite their vaunted superiority, the white brethren have a full quota of illusions and, one might say, hypocrisies, especially about anything dealing with sex ...
"After all, a woman is biologically a child factory, as a cow is a milk factory an a hen an egg factory. Certain ingredients of a certain quality are necessary to produce a healthy child under proper conditions of rest and security. If these are absent, the child will usually be an inferior product."
George Schuyler. "Quality or Quantity." Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 6 (June 1932, the "Negro Number"), page 166.
[***] "Basing their prognostications on the Negro's mortality rate as compared with that of the white population, they have seen the solution of the vexatious Negro problem achieved by the mere passing of time. And not a few anthropologists and sociologists have valiantly maintained that the difference in Negro and white mortality rates is conclusive evidence of the innate inferiority of the Negro.
" ... Negros who by virtue of their education and capacity are best able to rear children shrink from that responsibility and the Negro who, in addition to the handicaps of race and color, is shackled by mental and social incompetence serenely goes on his way bringing into the world children whose chances of mere existence are apparently becoming more and more hazardous.
"The probabilities are that the race problem in America is infinitely aggravated by the presence of too many unhappily born, sub-normals, morons, and imbeciles of both ["negro" and white] races ... For at present the practice [of birth control] is confined to those whose offspring would be best fitted to carry the lance of racial progress."
Elmer A. Carter. "Eugenics For The Negro." Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 6 (June 1932, the "Negro Number"), page 169.
"Recently I made a public address, in which I touched the subject lightly, somewhat as an experiment, and suggested that it is time for some colored woman to become the Margaret Sanger of her race ...
"If birth control is to progress rapidly among colored people, it is important that colored physicians, especially women practitioners, and colored nurses and social workers be thoroughly initiated. This is one of the vital considerations to which the proponents of the movement have not given sufficient consideration."
M.O. Bousfield, M.D. "Negro Public Health Work Needs Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 6 (June 1932, the "Negro Number"), pages 170 and 171.
"Many of the colored citizens are fine specimens of humanity. A good share of them, however, constitute a large percentage of Kalamazoo's human scrap-pile ...
"As among the whites, there are cases of degenerate Negroes whose propagation will be checked only by sterilization or institutionalization, but the practice of birth control among the majority of colored people would probably be more eugenic than among their white compatriots. the dissemination of the information of birth control should have begun with this class rather than with the upper social and economic classes of white citizens."
Walter Terpenning. "God's Chillun." Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 6 (June 1932, the "Negro Number"), pages 171 and 172.
"For some time our Negro population will have to contend against the odds of a relatively high death rate in its struggle for numerical superiority with the whites. We may expect that the birth rate will continue to be high in the rural South, which has heretofore been the great breeding ground of our colored population."
S.J. Holmes. "The Negro Birth Rate." Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 6 (June 1932, the "Negro Number"), page 172.
[***] "He [the Negro] would seem to stand a far better chance to gain by limiting his progeny. This gain would be immediate from the energy to be conserved by lower birth and death rates. As it is, too many Negroes are born, too many are sick, and too many die each year for the good of the race. The vital process, like every other one in the social order, is costly, and the Negro indulges it far beyond what he can afford.
"... So much for the immediate benefits from Birth Control. There are other more remote but equally important gains. One is the enhanced respect to be had from the dominant white race. That the Negro must acquire if he is to enjoy the rights and prerogatives he covets. But acquire it he cannot and will not so long as he remains the thriftless, childlike irresponsible dependent that he is, for such behavior does not command respect.
"In virtually every community where Negroes dwell one finds them in fat times and lean alike contributing a disproportionate number to the rolls of the dependents and delinquents. They make excessive demands on the white man's charity and overtax his patience with their delinquencies. Recent data from several towns and cities indicate that the Negro is furnishing a quota in the fields mentioned, four or five times in excess of his portion of the population. Whatever the explanation, one thing is certain: too many Negro parents have made themselves and their offspring public dependents by having a too numerous progeny.
"It is this sort of behavior that the white man is coming to resent. Time was when the dominant race was over indulgent, but that is rapidly passing. The Negro can no longer ask indulgence, he must command respect. If he will learn to control his fecundity, he will not have to give hostages to the white man till the white man despises him for his weakness and counts him a social menace."
Newell L. Sims. "Hostages to the White Man." Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Numbers 7 and 8 (July-August, 1932), pages 214 and 215.
1933
[***] "The fact that this is the best work on the subject of human heredity which has yet appeared emphasized only the more strongly the need for more extensive and intensive research and for more scientific methods of reasoning in this vitally important field.
"The book begins with an exposition of the general principles of heredity by Professor Erwin Baur, the leading geneticist of Europe engaged in active work at the present time. Despite the points of disagreement noted below, we would commend this section of the book highly, along with everything else that has issued from Baur's pen.
""Great women" endowed with "greatness" in the sense of outstanding creative faculty are practically unknown ... a person whose mental hereditary equipment is a good one can be recognized with great probability when his forehead, his nose, etc., are of a particular shape ...
Criminals often exhibit characters which remind us of Neanderthal man or of other primitive races ... Average specimens of the mongoloid races greatly excel the average Negro in mental equipment ... [But] brilliant thinkers inventors, and investigators ) men of genius as we know genius in Europe ) can hardly be said to have existed among the Mongols ... It is indisputable that the population of southern Europe is less well equipped mentally than that of northern Europe, and the population of eastern Europe than that of western Europe ... both by temperament and character, and also in respect of rational endowment, the Mediterranean occupies an intermediate position between the Nordic and the Negro ... The near Eastern race has been selected to excel, not so much in the control and exploitation of man ... On the whole ... it is indisputable that in the domain of mental life, too, they [the Jews] are more prominent as intermediaries and interpreters than in the primary work of production ... I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that in respect of mental gifts the Nordic race marches in the van[guard] of mankind."
"As to the crossing of human races, it may sometimes be harmless, especially if the races are closely allied, but "injury to the constitution may also result from hybridization" (Fischer), and "the crossing of Teutons and Jews, is likely, as a rule, to have an unfavorable effect (Lenz)."
"Indeed, Hitler is said to have studied the Baur-Fischer-Lenz book very seriously, and to have been won over to it, while Lenz has recently written an article favoring Hitlerism.
"Hence, Lenz settles down into the position that "degeneration is the central problem of racial hygiene, and the prevention and the overcoming of degeneration are its main objects."
The prevention of degeneration is laudable enough in itself, but how weak-kneed, negative, and uninspiring as the major ideal of eugenics!"
H.J. Muller. Review of the book Human Heredity, by Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer and Fritz Lenz. Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 1 (January 1933), page 20.
"Criminologists and eugenists have both studied the subject [sterilization] as a device for the control of the criminal and the mentally defective. They are almost unanimously agreed that it is for the benefit of society as well as for the very protection of the defectives and the insane that these numbers of the race shall not continue to reproduce themselves.
"A forth and most illustrative family of degenerates was the tribe of Ishmael, known as the American Gypsies, generated in 1840 in Marion County by the coming of John Ishmael and his bride, a half-breed woman. Their descendants have been in all our penal institutions, have registered heavily in our alms houses, have borne severely upon township poor relief, and have annoyed peaceful communities by their begging and petty stealing. The tribe is characterized by pauperism, licentiousness and gypsying. Owing to their wanderings their numbers are now beyond fair estimate, but their germ plasm has been traced throughout seven middle western states."
"Human sterilization is distinctly a eugenic and therapeutic agency, intended to improve the quality of the race and the health of the individual.
"Sterilization has an advantage over all other contraceptive methods in that it is certain to be effective.
"Sterilization, when it becomes more popular, will go far to decrease the number of abortions that take place. If a physician were given the right to sterilize a woman who asks for it after she has several children, the larger percentage of criminal abortions would immediately become unnecessary.
"Sterilization can become a tremendous instrument for happiness. As in abortion, the state can make intelligent use of it and surround the act with safeguards and restrictions against abuse.
"Many women (I have found in my years of practice) are willing to forego the pleasure of their sex life because it is surrounded and hemmed in by precautionary details that re repugnant to them emotionally and psychologically."
A.J. Rongy, M.D. "Birth Control and Sterilization." Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 4 (April 1933), page 96.
1935
"In Madison House, a settlement on the lower East Side of New York, the first mothers' health center in the city was established in 1930 by the New York City Committee of the American Birth Control League. The community which Madison House serves is now composed of Italians and Jews with an infiltration of Negroes. It is estimated that about 50% of the families are on relief at the present."
Rita Irwin. "Fifty Underprivileged Women." Birth Control Review, Volume III, Number 3 (New Series, November 1935), page 4.
1936
"The deteriorating intellectual average of the American people, a down hill trend speeded by the continual entrance of immigrants of low intelligence into this country, could be checked by a limitation of family size on the part of the dull, who furnish so largely school retardates, delinquents and criminals. Thus could be salvaged normal intelligence which, after all, is a low standard to seek."
Clairette P. Armstrong, Ph.D. "A Psychological Basis for Population Control." Birth Control Review, Volume III, Number 7 (New Series, March 1936), page 4.
1937
"The authors report, "The foulness of the Puerto Rican peon's existence can hardly be described. He lives literally in chronic starvation, crowding his filthy scarecrow body into a hut where his female counterpart and their numberless wretched children almost always share at least one of his diseases. Beyond this ) his sad body, his hut propped up on its wavering sticks and his unhappy family ) he has nothing of his own, seldom even a bit of earth to grow things."
"The authors in summarizing, however, state "No matter what political or economic destiny is eventually in store for the island, its first need will continue to be healthy regulation of its population.""
"Puerto Rico: Old Woman in a Shoe." Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 5 (New Series, January 1937), page 6.
"The longer I was in the Orient the more I appreciated the tremendous difficulties in the way of launching a scientific measure like birth control. The masses are still in the Middle Ages. Their outlook is mystical, fatalistic, unpractical; they do not relate cause and effect. They still wear charms against disease and sudden death; they still grovel before hideous gods ) fat bellied, elephant headed, always hungry ... Meanwhile, bombs and cholera are mowing down some of the population."
)Eleanor Dwight Jones. "Birth Control in the Orient: Part II." Birth Control Review, Volume XXII, Numbers 3 and 4 (December 1937 - January 1938), page 38.
