In 2010 Vision Forum Ministries held a national conference entitled ‘“The Baby Conference” which examined past, present, and future trends in eugenics and the battle for the future of childbirth, life, and the family in America. One of the key issues on the table was the ongoing influence of evolutionary thinking and its horrific consequences for life and death, both as to public policy decisions and the decision-making of modern Americans. The legacy of forced sterilization and the vision of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger continues and is reflective in the issues behind the following report from today’s news.
The State of North Carolina is reportedly the first state of the union to offer financial reparations for forcibly sterilizing women, which in the case of the Tar Heel State, consisted of 7,500 individuals, between 1929 and 1979, whom the state deemed too inferior to reproduce.
North Carolina was not the only state to target social undesirables, individuals with disabilities, and racial minorities with the intent of increasing the birth rate among “superior” populations while eliminating populations whom the state thought to be “inferior.” The eugenics movement was widespread in the U.S. throughout the 20th century, with more than 30 states enacting laws allowing surgical sterilization for certain people groups. Being “liberated” from the yoke of Christianity, which had been shrugged off as an outdated superstition, 20th century man embarked on a quest to create a brave new world by following the natural presupposition of evolution: “The survival of the fittest.”
In 1927, a challenge to these sterilization laws reached the United States Supreme Court in the case of Buck v. Bell. The high court upheld the constitutionality of the sterilization laws. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, still considered a hero among secular humanists today, argued this in the court’s decision:
It would be strange if it [the State] could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices . . . in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
It’s important to note that while the Supreme Court’s ruling in Buck v. Bell has been questioned, to this day it has not been overturned. Nonetheless, North Carolina’s attempt to address the abuses resulting from the state’s relentless dedication to the religious presuppositions of evolution, though insufficient, is the first of a kind, and it reminds us that ideas have consequences.
To learn more about how to understand and refute the modern eugenic worldview, pick up our conference album for The Baby Conference here or download the messages from bluebehemoth.com.