From the Clinton Administration to Nancy Pelosi, American family-planning policy continues to preserve the eugenicist principle that America would be better off if poor children were never conceived. In fact, Clinton tied Medicaid funding to state promises that it would save the government money in the long run by “averting births” of children who were likely to be a drain on the welfare system. But there is an alternative. The third in a three-part series.
The senators who originally designed our family planning policies believed that the mostly black welfare population was incurably lazy, promiscuous, intellectually substandard, and a burden on public schools, and, moreover, that they probably would remain so indefinitely. Birth control, therefore, was in their eyes a way to reduce the number of these undesirable people. This article is the second installment in a three-part series.
Nancy Pelosi’s widely reported comments on family planning were simply a restatement of a view shared by both political parties. This article is the first installment of a three-part series on the racist origin and eugenicist structure of U.S. family-planning policy.