Several years ago, reports began to emerge that trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) has practically disappeared in the country of Iceland. This is good news, ostensibly. But further investigation reveals the sinister cause: abortion. Over this past summer, Justice Clarence Thomas issued a timely and powerful concurring opinion to the Court’s per curiam decision, Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc. (2019), in which he discussed, among other things, the way that contemporary progressives may use abortion for eugenic purposes, not only for disability but also for ethnicity and sex. This article, after reviewing the legislative history of the case, will summarize Thomas’s remarks on eugenics and abortion before concluding with three essential principles of the Christian ethic of life and hope.
Legislative History
The state of Indiana passed a law that “prohibits abortion providers from treating the bodies of aborted children as ‘infectious waste’ and incinerating them alongside used needles, laboratory-animal carcasses, and surgical byproducts.”[1] Additionally, the Indiana legislature passed the Sex-Selective and Disability Abortion Ban, signed into law by then-Governor Mike Pence. This law would preempt abortion providers from providing abortion when they know that it discriminates on the basis of “the child’s race, sex, diagnosis of Down syndrome, disability, or related characteristics.”[2] Planned Parenthood filed suit.
The District Court found that the laws were unconstitutional. On appeal, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. Finally, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s judgment on the first law about fetal remains, finding that it does not violate the Constitution. However, it denied petition on the second, leaving the Seventh Circuit’s holding in place, which permits unjust discrimination in the name of abortion rights. The Supreme Court’s failure to address this second issue prompted a concurring opinion of Justice Thomas, in which he discusses the close connection between eugenics and abortion, as well as how people use abortion for eugenic purposes even in the contemporary United States.
Eugenics
Thomas paints a sobering picture of the eugenics movement. The Englishman Francis Galton coined the term eugenics in 1883 during the heyday of social Darwinism. Literally it means “good birth.” He described the practice of eugenics as “the science of improving stock.”[3] Thus eugenics is essentially an application of the principle of survival of the fittest. For eugenicists the term unfit would refer to people within certain categories, such as disability (physical or mental), ethnicity, and sex, as well as to criminals, orphans, and the poor. American progressives, by the early twentieth century, early adopted the movement and championed its cause, including the leaders of some 376 colleges and universities, with Harvard University leading the way.
Eugenicists developed policies from their beliefs concerning immigration, marriage, and birthrate. For example, they argued that the immigration policy of the United States should not accept as many non-Europeans as it did Europeans. This led to the Immigration Act of 1924, which limited immigration “from outside of Western and Northern Europe.”[4]
In addition, they maintained not only that people of superior races should not mix with people of inferior races, but also that people of inferior races should not reproduce to the same degree as those of superior races. “Eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard argued that the ‘prodigious birth-rate’ of the nonwhite races was bringing the world to a racial tipping point,” recounts Thomas. “Allowing the white race to be overtaken by inferior races, according to Stoddard, would be a tragedy of historic proportions.”[5]
As a result, states began passing sterilization laws, preempting the “unfit” from propagating, with nearly 60% of the nation’s states (28 of 48) adopting sterilization laws by 1931.[6] Incidentally, Indiana passed the first of these laws in 1907; the Sex-Selective and Disability Abortion Ban of 2016 is, among other things, an attempted expression of regret and repentance (but for the Circuit Court’s ruling that it is apparently unconstitutional). Another state to ratify a sterilization bill was Virginia, prompting Buck v. Bell (1927), a case of the Supreme Court concerning a special needs woman that gave constitutional assent to these laws.
“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,” wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in the Court’s majority opinion. “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”[7] Contemporary readers would rightly find such language shocking. What is more, the Supreme Court has never overturned Buck, who, says Thomas, was just “one of more than 60,000 people who were involuntarily sterilized between 1907 and 1983.”[8]
Thomas also reviews the contributions of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood (previously the American Birth Control League). She believed strongly in the power of eugenics to “prevent ‘unfit’ people from reproducing.”[9] Thomas (a black man) denounces her Negro Project, which she initiated in 1939 “to promote birth control in poor, Southern black communities,” as well as her report (co-authored) that identified blacks as “‘the great problem of the South.’”[10]
Abortion
Not only did eugenicists support birth control and sterilization to manage birthrates among the unfit, but they also supported abortion for eugenic purposes. Christians seeking to understand the background of abortion in the United States must understand its close connection to the eugenics movement of the first half of the twentieth century. After World War II, progressives increasingly refrained from using the language of eugenics when it fell out of favor after the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed. Thus the publication Eugenics Quarterly changed its name to Social Biology.
However, progressives continued to make eugenic arguments but now under the guise of abortion, population control, and (still later) human rights for women. “Birth control and abortion are turning out to be great eugenic advances of our time,” stated Social Biology.[11] Although Planned Parenthood uses language such as family planning and reproductive health care, Thomas sees the more menacing reality: the prospect of eugenics. Without laws such as the Sex-Selective and Disability Abortion Ban, eugenicists can easily use abortion as a deadly Trojan horse “to eliminate children with unwanted characteristics,” whether they accord to disability, ethnicity, sex, or any other quality.[12]
Perhaps this truth could be surprising to some, but modern America is not exempt from such realities. Thomas explains, “Abortion has proved to be a disturbingly effective tool for implementing the discriminatory preferences that undergird eugenics.” For example, concerning sex discrimination, he remarks: “Sex-selective abortions of girls are common among certain populations in the United States.”
He also points to race discrimination, “The reported nationwide abortion ratio— the number of abortions per 1,000 live births—among black women is nearly 3.5 times the ratio for white women,” which results partly from the “ghetto approach” that Planned Parenthood pursues in distributing its services: “There are areas of New York City in which black children are more likely to be aborted than they are to be born alive—and are up to eight times more likely to be aborted than white children in the same area. [13]
Thomas concludes with this assessment: “Enshrining a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement.” By not overturning the Circuit Court’s ruling, the Supreme Court effectively rubber-stamps the eugenic and discriminatory potential of abortion. Yet Thomas is a realist: “Although the Court declines to wade into these issues today, we cannot avoid them forever. Having created the constitutional right to an abortion, this Court is dutybound [sic] to address its scope.”[14]
The Christian Ethic of Life and Hope
In consideration of Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion, three thoughts come to mind. First of all, Christians must understand that the Christian ethic is life-affirming, whether at the beginning, the end, or the middle of life. For this reason, it has stood resolutely against abortion since its inception, as evidenced by the writings of Tertullian as well as by the Didache.[15]
The Christian ethic is also hope-affirming amid what Al Mohler has referred to as a “culture of death.”[16] It may recognize certain hard cases (e.g., life of the mother),[17] but it rejects an ethic that determines the value of the human person in accordance to “fitness.” Instead, the Christian ethic sees dignity in all human beings, whatever their biological, ethnic, physiological, psychological, or socio-economic realities. In contrast to eugenicists and abortionists, Christians seek to care for people—all people—rather than to extinguish them. And, just as the Christian ethic is an ethic of hope for the would-be aborted, it is also an ethic of hope for those who have grieved over and repented (or would repent) from past abortions.
Second, Christians should pray and hope and work toward laws and policies and rulings in the United States that accord with God’s purpose for government. Romans 13 explains that God establishes the state to encourage and incentivize good and righteous behavior and to discourage and punish bad and wicked behavior. From this principle, I offer two observations about contemporary political realities in the United States.
To begin, Christians should recognize that the political party most working against their ethic of life and hope is the Democratic Party. Abortion statistics, even if they’re decreasing relative to decades past, are still staggering. Mohler has explained that the Democratic Party, especially since its “radical pro-abortion president” Barack Obama, has shifted from being simply the pro-choice party to being the pro-abortion party.[18] This reality should deeply trouble Christians.
Christians should also recognize the significance of the Supreme Court’s composition. Justices like Clarence Thomas come to sit on the Court because presidents, with the advice and consent of the Senate, nominate them for a lifetime appointment. This reality is highly significant because justices sit on the bench for decades, either carrying out those principles of Romans 13 or else reeking havoc on them, whereas presidents occupy the White House for four years (maybe eight).
In other words, the legacy of justices is more culturally-historically significant than that of the president. But like it or not, presidents play an indispensable role in getting justices on the Court. And these justices interpret laws and fact scenarios on everything from life, abortion, and eugenics to the right of Christian adoption agencies, churches, schools, and other ecclesial organizations to exercise their religious liberty in how they conduct their business.
Finally,
even if (God forbid!) legislators pass bad laws and justices issue bad
holdings, as exemplified by those states that passed sterilization laws or the Buck case, Christians must still resolve
to affirm an ethic of life and hope and to work toward that which is good and right in life and in society. In the
end, Christians recognize that truth is not based in the courts but in the
Creator.
[1]Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc., 587 U. S ___ (2019) (Thomas, concurring), at 1; accessible at https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-483_3d9g.pdf.
[2]Box, 587 U. S ___ (Thomas, concurring), at 7. Doctors can administer tests to determine whether unborn babies in utero have genetic abnormalities. However, these tests may pose a risk to the child (including miscarriage), and for this reason many mothers choose not to perform them, not to mention how late in the pregnancy these tests may occur.
Additionally, the House in Pennsylvania is also working on laws similar to those in Indiana, concerning fetal remains and Down syndrome, though the present governor has stated he would veto such bills. See Cassandra Maas, “Pennsylvania legislature advances fetal burial, Down syndrome abortion bills,” Jurist, November 20, 2019; https://www.jurist.org/news/2019/11/pennsylvania-legislature-advances-fetal-burial-down-syndrome-abortion-bills/; accessed November 22, 2019; Internet.
[3]Id. (Thomas, concurring), at 4.
[4]Id. (Thomas, concurring), at 6. See also Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 23, 24.
[5]Id.
[6]See also Miroslava Chávez-García, “Youth of Color and California’s Carceral State: The Fred C. Nelles Youth Correctional Facility,” The Journal of American History (June 2015): 47–60.
[7]Buck v. Bell, 274 U. S. 200, 207 (1927); accessible at https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/274/200/.
[8]Box, 587 U. S ___ (Thomas, concurring), at 8.
[9]Id. (Thomas, concurring), at 3.
[10]Id. (Thomas, concurring), at 11, 12.
[11]Id. (Thomas, concurring), at 14.
[12]Id. (Thomas, concurring), at 3, 16.
[13]Id. (Thomas, concurring), at 15–17.
[14]Id. (Thomas, concurring), at 20.
[15]See J. Philip Wogaman and Douglas M. Strong, eds., Readings in Christian Ethics: A Historical Sourcebook (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 13, 15, 27, 28.
[16]R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The Culture of Death and Its Lessons,” Albert Mohler, May 11, 2004; https://albertmohler.com/2004/05/11/the-culture-of-death-and-its-lessons/; accessed October 11, 2019; Internet.
[17]To be sure, decisions concerning these “hard cases” are frequently difficult, with unique variables, and, consequently, Christians should extend compassion and grace toward those who are going (or have gone) through such circumstances.
[18]See R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “In His Own Words: A Radical Pro-Abortion President,” Albert Mohler, January 24, 2011; https://albertmohler.com/2004/05/11/the-culture-of-death-and-its-lessons/; accessed October 12, 2019; and R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The Briefing,” Albert Mohler, June 28, 2019; https://albertmohler.com/2019/06/28/briefing-6-28-19/; accessed October 13, 2019
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