Dakota Beacon

“The end is near! The end is near!” Are these environmental or “The Great Reset” activists protesting American culture? Could be. This group would have us act now to avoid a crucial point of no return. Population growth will out strip food supplies. Americans are destroying the planet. Natural resources including land, water, and food are in short supply.

Instead, another group took to city streets this past week. Sloganeering captured the headlines. “My body; my choice” and “Bans off my body” chanted the crowds. The multitudes could just as easily have chanted “The end [of abortion] is near!”

In the minds of many, abortion will heal what ails us. In reality, abortion becomes a matter of convenience hidden beneath euphemisms. Health care. Birth control. Elimination of poverty. A solution to famines and wars. The list goes on. But -- those who have potential for contributing to society should be exempted from the weeding-out process. Elitism, possibly?

The premier advocate of abortion laid out her case quite clearly. In her 1922 book “The Pivot of Civilization,” Margaret Sanger’s work became the basis of the 1939 Negro Project which later morphed into Planned Parenthood. The idea was to reduce poverty in the South. However, the idea expanded into other areas of social engineering.

H. G. Well’s wrote the words for her “Introduction” capsulizing Sanger’s thinking. “Mrs. Margaret Sanger sets out the case of the new order against the old. There have been several able books published recently upon the question of Birth Control…but I do not think there has been any book as yet…which presents this matter from the point of view of the public good....I am inclined to think that there has hitherto been rather too much personal emotion spent upon this business…and far too little attention given to its broader aspects…[Mrs. Sanger] has lifted this question…to its proper level of a predominantly important human affair. H. G. Wells,… Essex, England.”

Note how Wells compliments Sanger for presenting “…this matter from the point of view of the public good.” A public good indeed!

Sanger speaks. “The great principle of Birth Control offers the means whereby the individual may adapt himself to and even control the forces of environment and heredity. Entirely apart from its Malthusian aspect or that of the population question, Birth Control must be recognized, as the Neo-Malthusians pointed out long ago, not ‘merely as the key of the social position,’ and the only possible and practical method of human generation, but as the very pivot of civilization. Birth Control which has been criticized as negative and destructive, is really the greatest and most truly eugenic method, and its adoption as part of the program of Eugenics would immediately give a concrete and realistic power to that science. As a matter of fact, Birth Control has been accepted by the most clear thinking and far seeing of the Eugenists themselves as the most constructive and necessary of the means to racial health.”

Note the euphemistic conflation of abortion with “birth control” when discussing population control. Note also the words “…the means to racial health.”

Another person a few centuries earlier also proposed a solution to the miseries of overpopulation. In 1729 Jonathan Swift (author of “Gulliver’s Travels”) offered “A Modest Proposal.” In the guise of an economic treatise, he, like Sanger, suggested a way to reduce poverty.

Swift speaks. “There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas, too frequent among us, sacrificing the poor innocent babes I doubt more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast.”

           “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”

           “…[T]hese children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That [a]… hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.”

Compare Swift’s “Proposal” with Margaret Sanger’s solution.

Ghoulish? Goulash? What’s the difference? The difference becomes one of propriety. Swift wrote satire. Sanger wrote in earnest with a deadly motivation. Swift’s “Proposal” comprised an illustrative satire. Sanger wrote a pragmatic application underscoring population control.

In the end, both writers offered a convenience to some – at the expense of others.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).