Pro-Infanticide Quotes from the Birth Control Review

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Pro-Infanticide Quotes from the Birth Control Review
1917

"A portion of infant and child mortality represents, no doubt, the lingering and wasteful removal from this world of beings with inherent defects, beings who for the most part ought never to have been born and need not have been born under conditions of greater foresight.

"The plain and simple truth is that they [children] are born needlessly. There are still far too many births for our civilization to look after adequately; we are still unfit to be trusted with a rising birth rate.

"Our civilization at present has neither the courage to kill them [children] outright quickly, cleanly and painlessly, nor the heart and courage and ability to give them what they need."

H.G. Wells, Mankind in the Making. "Needless Waste of Little Lives." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 2 (February 1917), page 13.


"In the early history of the race, so-called "natural law" reigned undisturbed. Under its pitiless and unsympathetic iron rule, only the strongest, most courageous could live and become progenitors of the race. The weak died early or were killed. Today, however, civilization has brought sympathy, pity, tenderness and other lofty and worthy sentiments, which interfere with the law of natural selection. We are now in a state where our charities, our compensation acts, our pensions, hospitals, and even our drainage and sanitary equipment all tend to keep alive the sickly and the weak, who are allowed to propagate and in turn produce a race of degenerates.

Margaret Sanger. "Birth Control and Women's Health." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 12 (December 1917), page 7.


1920

"... the people with the less searching and relentless elimination of the weaker infants is at a disadvantage. The proper moral to draw from this is not to relax our efforts to prolong life, but to apply the principles of eugenics to reproduction."

Edward A. Ross. "The Growth of Population." Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 3 (March 1920), page 5.


"The old Greeks and Romans put to death the babies they did not want as soon as they were born. We of the present day are inclined to feel superior because we are guilty of no such inhuman practice. But, let us be honest and look facts in the face ) is our method which makes it a crime to destroy the new born babe, but permits it to be exposed to malnutrition, disease and the drudgery of our factory system more humane or less? Which is to be preferred, a quick death at birth or slow torture through a life time? Which is easier for the child? For the mother? Neither method is desirable; but if I had to choose between the two, I should have no hesitancy in choosing the ancient system."

Ellen A. Kennan. "Drab Monotony." Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 8 (August 1920), page 7.


"Perhaps they thought there was less suffering involved in doing away with unlikely specimens early in life rather than allowing then to drag out a maimed and marred existence."

)Mary Knoblauch. "In the Bishop Museum, Honolulu." Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 8 (August 1920), page 16.


"These poor creatures [children of poor parents] arouse so much pity that there is nothing one can wish them, ) in their own interests be it understood ) but a speedy death."

Dr. Barthelemy, Physician at St. Lazare, Medical Chronicle, July 1903, quoted in "Some Serious Observations Submitted to the Legislators for Meditation." Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 9 (September 1920), page 6.


1921

"I visited hospitals in this city, and found them lacking in the simple and most ordinary article of decency. No soap ) no cod-liver oil, no rubber sheets to protect the beds no linen to give clean bedding as required ) and even the babies must be all day in wet napkins, because of the inadequate supply for the proper change. This has given rise to skin trouble, and the poor little waifs are a sad, miserable lot. It would be a great kindness to let them die outright, I believe."

Margaret Sanger. "Women in Germany." Birth Control Review, Volume V, Number 1 (January 1921), page 9.


1925

"Far the most conservative of the propositions to regulate the stream of life at its source is Birth Control. Sterilization of the unfit is actually law in many places. And now Denmark proposes euthanasia and has introduced into its parliament, according to press dispatches, a bill which would provide that the attending physician shall have power to put painlessly to death an infant which is hopelessly deformed physically or mentally."

"Periodical Notes." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 6 (June 1925), pages 183 and 184.


"... they struggle and cry for food, for air, for the right to develop; and our civilization at present has neither the courage to kill them outright quickly, cleanly, and painlessly, nor the heart and courage and ability to give them what they need."

Keikichi Ishimoto. "Japan and America." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 10 (October 1925), page 289.


1926

"To be killed suddenly and then eaten, which was the fate of the Aztecs' victims, is a far less degree of suffering than is inflicted upon a child born in miserable surroundings and then tainted with venereal disease."

Bertrand Russell in "Our Contemporaries." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 7 (July 1926), page 233.


"When Birth Control fails to produce the kind of son desired, the next step is to give him a high-powered car and let nature correct the fault."

Lexington (Kentucky) Herald in Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 11 (November 1926), page 344.


1933

[***] "Abortion, infanticide, and the exposure of infants were the methods accepted not only as necessary but morally justifiable. We refuse now to exert selection at so late a stage. And we have invented all sorts of moral reasons to excuse or justify our refusal."

Havelock Ellis. "Today ) An Interpretation." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 2 (New Series, November 1933), page 2.


1936

[***] "Chicago, March 14 ) Execution of hopelessly feebleminded children was opposed today by sociologists in many parts of the nation. The majority of the 13 experts who commented on the suggestion of Dr. S.B. Laughlin, of Williamette University, that mentally defective youngsters who constitute hopeless cases be chloroformed, expressed unqualified opposition. Five suggested birth control as a method of coping with the problem ...

"Dr. Earl E. Eubank of the University of Cincinnati commented: "The much more important question is to prevent such births by rational birth control."

"Death would probably be a good thing on the whole," said Dr. William F. Ogburn of the University of Chicago. "I guess it will be done some time in the next 100 years. The big thing is to keep them from reproducing."

Associated Press dispatch, quoted in the Birth Control Review, Volume III, Number 8 (New Series, April 1936), page 8.