Counter-Currents
1,435 words
Hugo Simbert, The Wounded Angel, 1903
Once I saw an interview with a woman whose child had cystic fibrosis. The child was forced to endure long medical treatments every day just to stay alive. Tests showed early in the pregnancy that her baby would be afflicted with cystic fibrosis, but the woman decided not to abort because, she said, “I figured that I’d rather have a life with health problems than no life at all.”
Strangely enough, I’d heard this exact same statement once before from another woman who gave birth to a child with a genetic defect. But what does it mean? You and I are conscious beings, and as such, we certainly recoil at the prospect of having no life at all. That would definitely be a loss. But if we had died before we were conscious beings, was there anyone there to suffer “having no life at all”?
I do have a problem with late-term abortions, and I was appalled to learn some of the excuses women give for waiting so long, such as, “I kept meaning to do something about it, but I just kept putting it off.” It seems monstrous to take a viable fetus from a woman’s womb and then kill it, so I am personally sympathetic to the idea that there’s a point at which abortion is no longer an option. The timing is problematic, of course, because the fetus matures very gradually, and it doesn’t achieve viability and consciousness on any particular date.
Numerous embryos develop naturally in the womb and then spontaneously abort (the woman’s period is “late”). In fact, geneticists believe that perhaps the majority of conceptions spontaneously abort. It would be interesting to hear what Pro-Lifers have to say about that. According to their own dubious reasoning, everything that happens “naturally” is God’s will. Wouldn’t this mean that God aborts vast numbers of embryos and fetuses? It’s an inescapable conclusion. And if God commits abortion, then how could it be a terrible sin against God? I see no way out of this contradiction. Embryos and fetuses that spontaneously abort are usually defective, often with chromosomal abnormalities, so maybe this gives us a clue into God’s intention. Maybe God doesn’t want defective fetuses coming to term and becoming defective children. And if God is a eugenicist, would it be so wrong for us to follow God’s lead and only deliver healthy babies?
Suppose a woman learns early in her pregnancy that her potential child, if she carries it to term, will suffer from severe mental retardation. I believe that to knowingly give birth to a baby with any serious defect is cruel, immoral, and a crime against that being. Some pro-lifers are concerned with life to the exclusion of all other considerations – such as quality of life. Do they care at all about suffering? No woman should let herself be frightened or made to feel guilty if she decides to have an abortion in such a situation. She might not want to sacrifice her life in order to spend decades changing the diapers of a severely retarded child, and she surely need not apologize for that. But would she be “righteous” if she carried it to term and became its unpaid, unappreciated, round-the-clock, lifetime slave? No. In my opinion, she’d be a fool. The mother’s life matters plenty, and there are other people to be concerned about, in addition to the mother – such as the father, the other children, and the potential child itself should be considered when there’s little chance it would lead a normal life. What about the potential healthy children that the mother might forego bearing because of the time and expense of taking care of a severely handicapped or retarded child? Often it’s an act of courage and compassion to abort and to try again to have a healthy baby.
Typically, a severely retarded child (or any other child with serious genetic impairment) requires an extraordinary amount of care, more than any one person can provide, and the state (a.k.a. “the taxpayer”) virtually always ends up paying for it. Fairness would seem to require that the state should therefore have some input if it pays the bills, but, of course, it doesn’t. A strong case can be made that parents have no right to impose a huge financial burden on the rest of society if they can possibly avoid it.
If the parents sign a legally-binding contract that they will assume the entire life-time cost of the child themselves, that would be different, but few people have that much money. Parents who knowingly give birth to seriously defective children are also evading their responsibility to the larger society unless they accept full financial responsibility for them.
Some would maintain that evading responsibility in this way is both immoral and un-Christian, and unfortunately, this is the rule rather than the exception. Almost invariably, the larger society is burdened with the enormous expense. It’s my understanding that even parents with very substantial incomes still obtain social services for these children. If all such parents were required to take full responsibility, a few might very well change their minds regarding their total and unconditional opposition to abortion. When taking full responsibility means financial ruin and life-long slavery, my guess is that at least some Pro-Lifers will find their unwavering principles beginning to waver.
Ideally, eugenicists want Western countries to have nation-wide eugenics programs of incentives and disincentives, much like the eugenics program that exists today in Israel. (Isn’t that the very height of irony?) But sadly, we are nowhere near “ideally.” Political oppression has made this impossible for the time being because a tiny ethnic minority controls our world, and they want eugenics for themselves, and dysgenics for everyone else.
While we continue to promote eugenics generally, as we have always done, and work to free ourselves from this oppression, we can also engage politically in ways that advance eugenics without even having to mention the word. In the United States, for example, Republicans have taken control of many state governments recently, and they have dramatically reduced the number of women’s clinics, sometimes cutting the number by more than 50%. Limiting access to contraception and abortion is horribly dysgenic. Smart, responsible women with initiative and drive will find ways to get them, whereas less-capable women often will not, so closing clinics only makes a bad situation worse.
Just to clarify one point: there’s exactly zero chance that we will ever return to the days in which there was no contraception. People already know all about it, clearly they want it, and there are numerous companies that make and sell it. We will never stuff that genie back in the bottle.
Planned Parenthood is a “natural ally” of eugenics. Margaret Sanger (1883-1966) founded Planned Parenthood, she pioneered the use of contraception, and she was an outspoken eugenicist. She’s most frequently quoted as having said, “When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become a new race.” This is why nearly all eugenicists are pro-choice, and support “reproductive rights.” Sometimes I wonder how many of Planned Parenthood’s present-day leaders are “closet eugenicists.”
Recall that the major cause of dysgenics (genetic deterioration) is that low-IQ women have far more accidental pregnancies than higher-IQ women have, and the end result is that they typically have many more children than they intended to have. These children are unplanned, and often unwanted, and they have disadvantages in terms of both heredity and environment. If we could somehow halt that trend, we could eliminate dysgenics. Then at least we would “break even” genetically.
Eugenics is not an “all or nothing” proposition. Rather, every miniscule bit of progress we make helps real people in the immediate future. Regardless of where things stand today – whether we live in a eugenic utopia, or a dysgenic hell hole, or somewhere in between – we can always improve the lives of those who follow us. Even if we can only reduce the severity of dysgenics, that’s a totally worthwhile endeavor because many lives can be improved, and soon. Keeping one more women’s clinic open is worth the fight.
Eugenicists must vigorously oppose all so-called “pro-life” candidates, and the utterly outrageous “personhood” amendments. “Pro-life” is a superficially attractive term that conceals a sinister interior, because what it really means is unequal access to contraception and abortion, which invariably causes genetic deterioration. Just as the idea of Communism sounded appealing in the beginning, the reality was untold misery. It is the same with pro-life.
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40 comments
Interesting and challenging, thank you.
But I find it rather silly to make a fetus-sorting system based on the general health of todays standard woman/man. It is quite frankly appalling. So you get a vast number of physically and mentally degenerates created simply because the parents are physically (& mentally) inept.
If you are to sort out the weed, do it before fertilization! This stupid patchwork in hindsight is making us trying to play God no matter how much we try to suppress the fact.
And strange, is it not, that every time when in a discussion, if I try to argue for a health promoting political regime, people call me a nazi. Sometimes it is hard to comprehend how deeply the programming of self destruction has taken hold of us whites…
I totally agree with this position. God gave us a mind and we should use it wisely.
Regarding pro-lifers (ptui), one of the great tragedies of American racial politics is that the whites who are sensible about abortion are idiots (or avid liars) about race, while the whites who are sensible (or reluctant liars) about race are idiots about abortion.
It’s a sin because God prohibits humans from intentionally killing each other, even though God eventually forces every human to die. You can’t kill fetuses even though they die on their own for the same reason you can’t kill adults even though they get cancer, die from old age, and get eaten by sharks. Death isn’t evil, but humans intentionally killing humans is evil.
I agree with the eugenic position, but the pro-life position isn’t contradicted by fetuses dying in the womb.
Anti-eugenicists recoil in horror no matter how mild the eugenic policy proposed; the mere fact of your eugenic desire alone is enough to set them off. When forced to explain themselves they are keen to remind you of the potential unintended consequences of your “playing God.” This from the same people who have no problem with the state funding hundreds of thousands of (essentially) morons to procreate each year – official dysgenics in everything but name.
If you agree with eugenics, then why give our opponents ammunition? Religionists and pro-lifers (overwhelmingly one and the same) didn’t settle on their position through reason and are unlikely to be swayed by reason alone. That fetuses dying in wombs does not necessarily contradict the pro-life position is unimportant; it’s quite enough that fetuses dying in wombs weakens the emotional hold that pro-life tommyrot has on its victims. Similarly, the argument-from-evil doesn’t necessarily rule out God, but the realization that God refuses to prevent suffering that is within his power to prevent (even when implored to do so) can so deflate the religionist that he sours on the idea of God altogether.
I remember Marian Van Court bringing up this issue in an previous article. I’m glad to see he decided to elaborate on this further and expand it into a article. I couldn’t agree with him more. This is yet another issue that differentiates us from Conservative Christians — or unimaginative reactionaries…or whatever you’d like to call them. Through various conversations — and from asking myself innumerable times: “How can one possibly be against the upward breeding of humanity?” — I’ve come to see the underlying cause of their hostility. At heart, their hostility stems from the interpretive framework which they use to evaluate the idea. The problem is their binary BLACK/WHITE dualism; as opposed to our holistic, hierarchical sense-of-things which immediately recognizes eugenics as a worthy pursuit. Their dualistic “good/evil” division of the world ultimately derives from the metaphysical outlook of Christianity.
I bring this up not in an attempt to create discord; but only to address the root cause of the problem, as I see it. To use a metaphor, the problem’s origin is in the “Operating System” in which the concept of eugenics is interpreted. Inhabiting the universalist Judeo-Christian “Cultural Matrix” the Conservative Christian cannot but interpret eugenics from within his BLACK/WHITE dualism. The idea of eugenics impels him to contemplate a differentiating of things — and he can only differentiate between “good and bad”, “black and white”, “light and dark”. So the concept of eugenics registers in him as the process of placing mentally retarded children into the category of “bad” or “evil”. And inherent to the differentiation process in the dualistic framework is the requirement to malign and persecute the “bad”. Invariably, he almost instantaneously jumps from contemplating our proposition of only keeping pregnancies that will result in healthy offspring to contemplating the eradication of mentally retarded or otherwise malformed people that are already alive today. For him and for the dualistic conception of life this “logically follows.” After all “bad” is “bad” his inner Puritan advises him. For the Conservative Christian the thought of this proves too much and so he turns away in fear, realizing that to pursue such a course would require he become a monster. He back-peddles…he stares at us in disgust and insist that mentally retarded children aren’t bad but GOOD. They go in the white/good box — not the black/bad box! “MONSTERS” — he labels us and the idea! And we are left staring at him in disbelief with our jaw dropping half open.
If we are left staring at him in astonishment, unable to account for his hostility to what, in our eyes, is such a sensible practice it is because we are not cognizant of the fact that his “Operating System” doesn’t support holistic, hierarchical ideas. His behavior is inexplicable to us because we don’t adhere to a life stunting dualistic conception-of-the-world. We don’t categorize the world into “good vs. bad” or “sin vs. righteousness.” Instead the operative antithesis in our conception-of-the-world is the classical antithesis of “noble vs. base.” In the Monotheistic, Judeo-Christian conception-of-the-world “sin” is never permitted…it cannot be, it must be snuffed out and denied…”righteousness” alone is permitted; but in our holistic, hierarchical conception-of-the-world “base” exist and will continue to exist. It exist at the bottom of the pyramid. But the “noble” resides at the apex and its pursuit is a worthy pursuit. We can enter a discussion with a prospective mother who has just received the horrible news, from her Obstetrician, that her child-to-be will be born with down-syndrome and advise her to have an abortion, then conceive again so as to give birth to a healthy offspring. This is an easy line for us to draw. It is our advise for her to pursue excellence — to put her time and energy towards greatness. We are Nietzsche’s great Yes-sayers. But for a Conservative Christian to have an abortion under such circumstances would be a saying of “no”. For him this drawing of a line and saying “no” prompts a revaluation in the boundaries: “If mentally retarded children are bad, then so are the mentally retarded people who are already here. Who else can I cast out into outer darkness while I’m at it?”
“Wait a moment…” he says to himself. Then he remembers that he is very fat, or very skinny, or has a wonky eye. What if the line gets pushed so far that he falls into the “not good enough” category. Seized by fear he calls the whole line-drawing business off. His degraded ears can only hear “eugenics” in such a way. Whereas for us when we hear the word we think how great it would be to be born in a better body with greater potential! And how we can give this to our children!
(P.S. – Please excuse my reliance on capitalization for emphasis. I’ve yet to figure out how to italicized words in comments here. Can anyone advise me on how to do so?)
@ Matt S.
That is a perceptive critique of the Christian simplistic dualistic “good/evil” worldview! And that worldview is all-pervasive, operative not only in questions of abortion.
Take for example the subject of “sin”. Either you are a “sinner” or you are “virtuous”.
“Sinners” go to eternal hell, the “virtuous” go to eternal heaven. No shades of grey here, as if not most people are mixtures of sin and virtue, though in different proportions. You can find a good example of this simplistic dualistic thinking in Matthew 25 : 31-46 where the “Son of man” sits upon the throne to judge the nations, who will be separated into “sheep” and “goats”, the former destined for eternal heaven, the latter for eternal hell.
It is the same with “orthodoxy”, either you have the right dogma, which comes from God, or you have the wrong dogma, which therefore can only come from Satan.
Christians are structurally incapable of thinking in gradations.
I don’t think the argument that “God causes spontaneous abortions, ergo we can abort.” holds water. In the Bible, God does all kinds of things forbidden to mortals. Not that I disagree with your positions on eugenic abortion. Burdening productive Whites with deformed children is monstrously cruel.
Some good points but is Planned Parenthood good? Abortion is big business and they want all the abortions they can convince women to have. And in the process, they don’t discriminate between healthy and unhealthy unborn babies. Nor do most of the women who have abortions. If having a terribly defective baby is wrong (and I agree that it is), surely aborting a healthy baby is equally wrong – or more wrong.
Many women who succumb to the culture of casual abortions of Convenience (a new god), deeply regret it and mourn their dead baby for years after, usually around the time of year the abortion was done or the time when it would have been born. Also Planned Parenthood minimizes the real physical risks. Abortion is not a minor procedure.
We can’t sort out the weed before conception yet as far as I know. There can be the threat of passing something along. It is only after conception, that it can be detected. So that is the risk now for not everything is passed on. But, if you know from tests and ultra sounds that something is terribly wrong, why would anyone with half a heart want that child to be born? Its cruel to bring someone into life that is going to be helpless and mocked and scorned for the rest of his life, no matter how you try to politically correct the masses
I have found that pro-lifers are anti- abortion, but usually pro death-penalty. Now go figure.
They even put retarded people to death for murder. Think George Bush in Texas.
I have also found that people who have severely damaged children get burned out very fast and require services from the state and then will upon maturity get those kids into some kind of institution. Well, if you know this before, why don’t these religious people create those institutions, instead of the state? They don’t. They just want to preach to others and feel sanctimonious.
Two different questions. The convicted criminal is guilty by definition. The unborn baby is not. Just so, Christianity is not pacifism. War is not murder. Same with Buddhism. Buddha taught pacifism for monks, not laymen. The Liberals are shocked that the Burmese are defending themselves against the Muslims. If they understood Buddhism more they wouldn’t be.
A retarded person who kills someone is no more guilty than a child. They are incapable of discerning right and wrong.
Well most places don’t do that. Most retarded killers are incarcerated for the duration I believe. In any case: my point stands. The unborn are innocent and most murderers are not. There is no contradiction here in Christian ethics, though I agree there may be elsewhere.
From another angle: we practice the morality we can afford. Hunter Gatherers sometimes expose healthy infants if they are starving and the mother has no milk for them. What else are they going to do? Just so, incarcerating people is expensive. If you can’t afford to take care of a retarded murderer, then you have to execute him, whether he’s responsible or not. Of course individualized atomized women claim the same thing in regards to abortion when there are all kinds of other options open for them. They just don’t want to bother. They want to get on with their life – and lets face it, nothing is more ruthless than a woman who wants to get on with her life as so many men find out to their cost.
Well, if you are a Christian, you have a lot to learn about ethics. Rationalizing behaviour is so typical of those who call themselves Christian because it is expedient. It is not just women who want to get on with their lives. A lot of men who don’t want children intimidate their girl friends to get an abortion. Therein I can see the guilt a woman would have.
Well you have a point about men being often being complicit as well, both as boyfriends and as doctors. My point is that by the very nature of our reproductive system, woman are called to greater selflessness in that they must host the unborn baby for nine months inside their own body. And for this they have been honored by traditional society. And thus the “My body my decision” mentality is seen as such an egregious betrayal of both Society, Culture, Nature, and the Divine Order. And the frosting on the cake is when the same people deny men the right to choose NOT to be fathers.
Also you do have a point about the insufficiency of Christian ethics in regards to hopelessly defective babies. Pop spirituality now comes to the aid and people start raving that God has a special plan for that Baby. Traditional cultures would say it was a curse or an affliction. Buddhists might say that it was a karmic debt that must be paid. I like what Stronza says, it’s the misuse of technology, a technology that Religious Ethics (including Christian) haven’t caught up with yet.
Its cruel to bring someone into life that is going to be helpless and mocked and scorned for the rest of his life.
The vast majority of babies who are born seriously defective die soon after birth if high tech, expensive treatment is withheld. Lack of abortion is not the problem; doctors playing God and parents refusing to recognize the necessity of natural death of a defective child are the problem. Abortion is inherently repulsive no matter what. The point is to let nature take its course.
So I guess you are all for putting them on a rock in the wilderness then and let nature take its course. Where do you come from? People try to keep alive what is living. How is it different playing God by keeping someone alive or performing an abortion? You contradict yourself.
No need to expose the defective babies to the elements. You just give them water, keep them comfy, and withhold treatment. This happens in hospitals when the child is really in bad shape at birth. A damn sight better than vacuuming them apart. But the medical industry is moving the line separating “absolutely hopeless” and “hey, let’s try everything on this kid” and believe me, kind friend, it isn’t to make the parents happy. It’s to keep their own professions “necessary”.
I know of a Christard couple (the father is my friend’s brother) whose baby was born with an enzyme missing. There is some inbreeding in this ethnic group. As the months went by, she was kept alive by interventions that would curl your toes. She died, anyway, a few months later, after costing, who knows – hundreds of thousands of dollars. And don’t tell me these medical shysters thought there was a chance. No baby with that particular condition lives for long and when lifespan is extended somewhat, it is full of pain and debility.
These kinds of ultra-pricey, pain-inducing interventions are the product of a prosperous, liberal, technology-pooisoned society. And I doubt it’s going to last much longer. And while I’m here – abortion of any kind, at any stage, is very, very unhealthy for the woman. Abortion cannot be made okay. The storm of pregnancy hormones suddenly cut short is just the beginning.
Nice try. No cigar. There is no proof that abortions are unhealthy. It is Christians imposing their guilt upon her. I could agree that some doctors have god complexes, and keep people alive longer than they should, but at the same time they take a oath to preserve life. The whole question as to when a fetus is viable is a whole different ball game and I figure if you know what is there it is better at the beginning to end it than bring it to life and let it die.
Sure, but why not go a step further and sweeten the deal with a cash payment? The only way to abuse the system would be to intentionally create a fetus with Down’s but it’s hard to see how anyone could rig that. The point would not only be to increase the likelihood of abortion, but also to accustom society to funding its genetic future, ie starting with some as simple and obvious* as paying for Down’s abortions and expanding it to… well, the sky’s the limit.
*Simple and obvious to those who prefer to think rather emote, that is. For the Matt Parrot’s of the world, however, aborting undesirables is precisely the wrong the thing to do, Instead you want to increase the number of retards and no-hopers and have society pay through the nose for the privilege. Making one’s society dumber, weaker and poorer is the key to good living as he sees it – all the while engaged in a breeding war with the third world.
Here’s an essay I wrote on abortion which I think sheds some light on why Christians have pro-life tendencies: https://cognitiveparfait.wordpress.com/category/abortion/
The time is not right for eugenics.
Silver,
Can you honestly look around today at our current circumstances and conclude that our collective lack of intelligence or the expense of assisting our less fortunate folks number among the major problems afflicting us? I clearly explained in my response article that I take genetic fitness seriously, and clearly spelled out how that can continue to be achieved without resorting to abortion.
It’s like you imagine that our Planned Parenthood clinics are rocky cliffs where stoic elders carry defective infants to die of exposure for the good of the warrior society, rather than a pathetic and dreary place where young women of every race, intelligence level, degree of “fitness”, or whatever calmly file in to act on their selfish materialist and anti-natalist priorities.
I used to be anti-abortion until I learned that in the US, more than 1 in 3 non-white pregnancies end in abortion. Beyond that, there is a high likelihood that white women who avail themselves of abortions are carrying a disproportionate number of non-white babies, whether due to rape or simply stupidity — but then they wake up when they get pregnant and realize that Rufus is not likely to be much of a provider. Were it not for legal abortion, whites would probably be a minority in this country already.
In a sensible society, of course, abortion would not be a matter of personal choice. For some it would be obligatory. For others it would be forbidden. But in no cases would it simply be a choice of the mother. Why? Because abortion is killing a human being, and one cannot kill human beings without good reasons. But there are good reasons to kill some people, and aborting racially mixed or severely handicapped children is a good enough reason.
Good point. I think most people here are arguing from the abstract point of view, that of universal ethics. And isn’t that just what we are against here? Perhaps the Jews have it right: abortion is good for the out group but not for the in group, be they either Jews or in our case, Whites. And especially good if you (the in group) get to make money doing the abortions.
Your vision for our own Society is rational – inhumanly so. Could we realize it without become more than human? I fear a intrusive State Tyranny would develop in order to enforce it otherwise. What are your checks and balances in regards to State power?
Most abortionists do not regard fetuses as human beings so they do not believe they are killing human beings. The point at which a fetus becomes a human is always going to be arbitrary but we can see that the distinction is valid because abortionists who feel completely at ease destroying fetuses are outraged by killing actual human beings and no amount of pro-life verbiage will change those feelings.
I think it’s best to liken the period between conception and birth to an engagement to marry. If all goes well you’ll end up married, but you can fairly back out at any point before then. Similarly, if all is well you’ll end up bringing a human being into the world, but you can fairly back out at any point before actual birth.
What I would like to know is why Christians are such sadists. One is supposed to alleviate suffering, not compound it. Matthew 25: 40 Truly I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me. Let’s put it in the positive frame. If you do not help the least, you are not helping me. Why would a Christian who knew a woman was carrying a child that was going go die anyway, want that woman to carry that child for nine months knowing it will die anyway. Just as I thought most Christians like to see others suffer so they can feel superior and think they did the will of God without really thinking about it. SADISTS, and the woman who agrees with this is none other than a masochist.
Knowing that a child will die [soon after birth] is a product of a twisted, demented civilization, that is, mis-use of technology.
In the past, this is how it went: you had a baby; it was sickly; you gave it simple normal care; it died. You mourned and you maybe went on to make more babies (or not). In certain parts of the world, you exposed the child to the elements but in Christian society we don’t do that.
Today:
Situation #1: you got pregnant; you went for diagnostic tests; you were told your baby was seriously defective; you had an abortion, or in the case of serious Christians, refused an abortion. In the latter situation, you had the baby, it died in your arms, and you believed with all your heart that it was now in the arms of Christ.
Situation #2: you got pregnant; you may or may not have had diagnosis of a weak but not mortally defective fetus; you birthed the child; you, likely with the financial input of state, pull out all the technological stops to keep it going. “It” was made superficially healthy enough to go on to reproduce itself and the rest is our history.
It is all about technology being applied where it should not. Every day I hope and pray for a collapse of our civilization, and soon, even if it takes me along – maybe especially if I go down with the ship. I can’t look at the hubris of what are supposed to be “my” people much longer.
Well said. And actually the Church has never demanded that extraordinary efforts be made to prolong life in the case of a terminal illness. So why would they insist that extraordinary efforts be made to prolong life that wasn’t viable? Do they? I’m not sure.
Read your Bible Stronza. I am so grateful for Martin Luther.
Abortion is the killing of a defenceless Baby.
Yes, so one better have a good reason.
I’m more concerned about the destination that is set and the direction being travelled. A successful society must choose the right destination and take the correct path to arrive there. Intentionally or unintentionally increasing the number of defectives and incompetents is both the wrong destination as well as the wrong path to the right destination.
I’m afraid all I saw was mushy idealism and little reason to think it would work as intended. I see the following problems with your position.
Firstly, as the economic truism teaches us, you get what you pay for. If you expand welfare to take even greater care of defectives and incompetents you will end up with more defectives and incompetents. You say this isn’t a problem because defectives and incompetents can be sterilized, so there’s no need to abort them. This ignores the fact that funds diverted to caring for them are funds that cannot be used for other, more worthwhile, purposes. Abortion is very clearly the more affordable option.
Secondly, the existence of defectives and incompetents ensures that they will perpetually command attention, with bleeding hearts forever insisting that more should be done for them and critiquing society for failing to, which again diverts resources and mental energy away from more worthwhile endeavors. Abortion, on the other hand, provides a more definite solution: once it’s done the problem is out of sight and out of mind.
Thirdly, although I agree that sterilization should be expanded, there will always be some who should have been sterilized who go onto procreate anyway. Abortion in these cases affords society a last chance reprieve.
Fourthly, you claim that a more caring society would so strengthen the bonds between people that it would automatically become more eugenic. However the only mechanism you propose is that high IQ individuals would feel more inspired to procreate. This is assumption is far too speculative to form the basis of social policy. Even if they were to procreate at a higher rate, would this rate be high enough to offset the rate at which incompetents breed? It’s difficult to think so, and anyway the inspiration argument does not in itself obviate the case for abortion.
As I see it, when all is said and done, it comes back to you being “first and finally opposed to abortion for dogmatic religious reasons.” Call me callous but I can’t interpret that any other way than: God wants society to be dumber, weaker, and poorer.
Far too speculative? There’s nothing speculative about what’s going on in the Amish, FLDS, and “quiverfull” movements which are overwhelmingly White and all producing rather impressive broods in terms of both quantity and quality. The Amish case of identifying a genetic issue in their community and arriving at successful practical solutions to improve the eugenic fitness of their future generations is pretty much the final nail in the false dichotomy between favoring eugenics and fostering a morality and culture which sacralizes pregnancy and human life.
Quantity is straightforward enough to measure, but I’m afraid anyone with a serious interest in eugenics is going to require more than Matt Parrott’s assurances about quality.
false dichotomy between favoring eugenics and fostering a morality and culture which sacralizes pregnancy and human life.
One can sacralize human life without sacralizing pregnancy. I hold the phenomenon of human life to be sacred, not the means of its creation. Should there come a time when human life can be created via an artificial womb I would feel no differently about the resulting human than I would about a human created via traditional means.
I would not feel differently – beyond initial surprise and ongoing fascination – if it emerged that a friend or a loved one had been brought into the world via such means, nor would I feel differently about myself if I learned that I had been so created. I’d certainly be very excited by the discovery, but I wouldn’t feel ‘funny’ or ‘wrong’ or ‘less than’ as a human entity.
I do however wonder if, rather like the ‘replicants’ in Blade Runner, I wouldn’t feel aggrieved by some inadequacy that had been ‘programmed’ into me. After all, my creation would have had a degree of intentionality behind it considerably greater than that typically intended by traditional parents and perhaps I’d always wonder if there wasn’t something more my creators, in their wisdom, could have done. This is admittedly perplexing, but is it any worse than believing that you – and all your inadequacies – are the result of God’s ‘special plan’?
The reason I’ve veered off into these questions is to make the contrast clear between what your ‘traditionalist’ school of thought wants for people and what my vision of eugenics offers them. When you get down to it, you wish to once again bind society to the dictates of a pettifogging Hebrew tribal deity. If you speak glowingly of FLDS I have no recourse but to treat your eugenics-talk as mere window-dressing designed to draw in gullible fools.
That said, I recognize that spiritual inspiration is important. Therefore I suggest we leave behind fairy tales of being ‘God’s children’ and introduce fairly tales of being scions of the stars, in whose spectacular deaths was formed and dispersed throughout the universe the very stuff of our being – which star died so that I may live? – and among which it is our duty and destiny to one day disperse ourselves. The dispersal itself is inevitable, but the manner in which we are dispersed is in our hands. If we disperse wilfully and intact we will have succeeded; as the ashes of an exploding sun, we will have failed. I mean for us to succeed.
I wrote this short paper because Henrik Palmgren asked me a question about abortion and eugenics in an interview I did recently for Red Ice Radio. (It will be put up on their website shortly.) I had never even hear of Red Ice before, but I just realized that it’s a great resource, all kinds of fascinating people are interviewed, lots of stuff about the Jews.
Rhondda, I always seem to agree with you on almost everything. Snake and Stubbs both made the excellent point that just because God causes abortions, doesn’t mean that it’s OK for us to do it. Thanks! I’m a little bit embarrassed about my mistake, but I’m mostly glad to be corrected. I can’t figure out how to italicize words, either, but one other way besides all caps might be to put an asterisk on either side of the word.
To italicize words, insert an before the text to be italicized, and insert an after the text to be italicized, minus the hyphens; I’ve inserted hyphens so that these characters are shown and so that the text is not automatically italicized.
Aspects of this comments thread have certainly been amusing, but I’d like to add a note of caution.
I have always been a very strong supporter of eugenics, but we must be careful due to a lack of complete understanding of the consequences. I would suggest that such projects begin with a holistic approach, seeking to enhance the reproduction of overall superior and accomplished specimens, while targeting for decreased reproduction those obviously defective. I’m not sure emphasizing isolated specific traits is prudent at this point.
For example, it may seem like a good idea to focus on increasing intelligence, law-abidedness, altruism, and decreasing anxiety/neuroticism, dark triad sociopathic traits, etc. But we cannot be sure that some of these “negative” traits are not linked to creativity, ambition, leadership, etc. We could overshoot the mark and end up with a race of intelligent but highly pacified Last Men, unable to muster those more “ruthless” traits required for self-defense, expansion, over-coming, self-mastery, and actualization of a high culture. It may be that, at least in the short and medium term, the likes of Ted Bundy and Bill Clinton are the price to pay in order to get a Mozart or a Napoleon (the old Star Trek episode, “The Enemy Within” is instructive as per this concept). All order and no chaos leads to stagnation. I have no problem in saying: the creative genius should have more children and the sickly retardate none. However, highly focused breeding of isolated traits, without an understanding of how all are linked, could be problematical.
So, a hearty yes to eugenics, but a skeptic eye towards those who want to immediately jump in and fine-tune traits in isolation, without knowing the data of how traits are coinherited.
“[My] questions to eugenicists of the second type (above) are, (1) what traits are you going to breed humans for?, (2) who gets to decide that? and (3) How do you know that breeding for these traits will not obliterate other traits essential for life? To use the Jews as an example of successful eugenics is preposterous. Jews have grossly disproportionate incidences of genetic abnormalities, diseases and mental illness.”
First of all, the problems with the Jews are *not* the result of eugenics, they exist because their gene pool is much more homogeneous than ours, so more deleterious recessive genes come together. The following is a cut and paste job from something I wrote earlier:
There’s already a consensus on the fundamental traits we value – for example, what traits would you want to see in your children? Most people want their children to be healthy, intelligent, sane, law-abiding, and conscientious – meaning possessing good character (honest, hard-working, concerned for well-being of others). These are universally valued traits. Have any parents, anywhere, ever said, “We’re hoping our son will grow up to be a psychopath”? Or, “We hope our daughter will be retarded”? These values were exactly the same 100 years ago, and 1000 years ago.
Another way this consensus is expressed is in government expenditures on hospitals, research on diseases and mental illness, prisons, police, etc. We as a society are already very clearly trying to change people, using environmental engineering in a marginally-effective attempt to make people smart, law-abiding, sane, and healthy. Why not do something that really works?
A “right” implies there’s something in it for us, when in reality, there’s nothing in it for us. I believe that we have a responsibility to future generations, and a great and unique opportunity to help them. We already agree on what is good, and what is not. There’s absolutely no doubt about it – we are quite sure that we wouldn’t want to be diseased, retarded, a criminal, a psychopath, or insane – so it’s no great leap of faith to assume people of the future don’t want that, either.
But it’s not as if a “Eugenics Court” will dictate each individual who can and cannot be born! A likely scenario is that legislators, in response to public opinion, will form a new Eugenics Department that will provide attractive incentives for criminals and the mentally deficient to be sterilized, and incentives for bright, healthy couples to have more children, and medical professionals to help prospective parents make decisions on how best to utilize the new reproductive technologies.
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