Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
Eugenics movement during 20th century
Eugenics past and future
Social darwinism in your own words
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Eugenics movement during 20th century
Eugenics past and future
Social darwinism in your own words
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Margaret Sanger was a birth rights advocate and in her later years, supported eugenics. Eugenics is the belief that all of the good human qualities can be the main characteristics instead of all the bad qualities in the human population. In the speech, Sanger believes that people with mental illnesses should have limited children or no children at all which proves that she supported negative eugenics and sterilization.
That did not mean eliminate the possibilities of poorer areas reproducing. It did not involve permanent defects on test subjects simply because they are poor. Eugenics in the penal system took the negative approach and called it a “movement” using the poor and imprisoned as subject studies of that movement. The eugenics movements in the United States, Germany, and Scandinavia favored the negative approach. The courts would offer shorter sentences to people who would agree to be sterilized, knowing that they would take it because they could not afford bond and would want a shorter sentence.
Darwinists in turn, believed biology to be destiny and that if one's ancestors were unfit their children would be as well. Much like in evolution, Spencer assumed that the unfit populations would decline overtime due to their failure to compete, however paranoia led some Americans to speed up this process, introducing eugenics. Eugenics were supposed to improve men, ridding the undesirable traits of the unfit and changing genetic structure to create more fit individuals. The Eugenics movement in America took people of color, the mentally ill or disabled, LGBTQ individuals, and other members of society deemed unfit, and conducted experimentation ranging from forced breeding, involuntary sterilization, or institutionalization on them. Although the movement was eventually stomped out, it violated thousands of
Eugenics was prominent during the twenties and aimed to improve the human population by reducing the likeliness of defective genetic traits. Eugenics was practiced mainly in institutions for patients who possessed traits that could be passed through reproduction. During the time of eugenics, a young woman named Carrie Buck was sterilized in order to prevent passing on the traits that she and her mother possessed. Carrie and her mother were both institutionalized and considered “feeble minded”, therefore they were seen as unable to contribute to the procreation of the human race. These ideas of perfecting the human race resembled that of Hitler’s, as described in the Mein Kampf.
In 1917, a law was passed creating the Oregon State Board of Eugenics. Eugenics is the concept of promoting people with sought after physical and mental traits to reproduce in order to enhance society. The board was allowed to sterilize inmates and patients in prisons and mental institutions, and if they could not reproduce, the thought was it would improve society. However, in 1983 the law was abolished. Sterilizing people does not stop the following generation from having physical or mental abnormalities nor does it prevent crime, using genetics to predict the mental state of future generations is not logical, and the sterilizations were unfair and inhumane.
Research Paper Rough Draft- Eugenics The amazing thing about the world today is the rapidly changing society, and the contemporary technology. Something that scientist have been working to perfect for many years is the modernization of eugenics. It is changing the way people are born by selecting specific traits for an individual to be smarter, stronger, more attractive and many other traits. Many parents of the new generation are willing to try the science of eugenics for their child to be customized to them.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, eugenics is: “a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed”. ("Definition of Eugenics by Merriam-Webster") The most common example of this concept would be the Holocaust, which was the extermination of Jewish people and others deemed “unfit” for society in World War Ⅱ. But little do many know, the Nazi’s were not the only people practicing eugenics in the early 1900’s, eugenics was being practiced in the United States long before the Holocaust. The American Eugenics Society aimed to educate American people on the science of Eugenics.
Furthermore, men were the majority of sterilization victims and then intension shifted dramatically to women. The unfit mother and well-fit dependency affected many people. Plan Parenthood has led to the eugenics movement with eugenics mania occurring. The unfit motherhood was the real problem in the society. In the 1960’s, black power groups formed and race genocide occurred.
Eugenics was a racist pseudoscience the aimed at clearing out all human beings that we regarded as unfit leaving behind only a selected that were conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Sterilization and segregation policies and marriage restrictions were enacted enshrining elements of philosophy. California was among the top five states to adopt such laws by early 1910. This attributed to a substantial number of marriages being barred and thousands of Americans being sterilized. On average about half of coercive sterilizations were done in California before the eruption of World War II in the 1940s.
It is important to realize that Sanger’s campaign for a women’s to choose birth control was at a time when women where not thought of as equals and contraception was considered to be obscene at the time. In fact, she provokes a hostile reaction among Christian leaders that considered her concepts for birth control to be offensive and evil to society. Her advocacy work drew controversy from political followers that criticized her association with science to be immoral for seeking to improve or change the human population. She was often criticized and associated which eugenics, the branch of science that believed in improving the human species through selective mating. However her goal was to allow women to have control over how many children
1920 U.S.A Eugenics Eugenics: (Noun/Verb): The act of attempting the perfection of genes within a pre-existing population similar to that of selective breeding within a select species of mammals. During the Roaring Twenties of the United States a process of artificial selection arose known as the process of Eugenics. Eugenics is as stated, a process of elimination of the “Lesser” individuals to preserve traits that are thought highly of. During the latter 19th Century and the early 20th Century, eugenics was considered a favored method of preserving society, therefore only showcasing the preferred traits within society.
Humans have a need to categorize the world around them. We like things to be labeled and orderly. Dividing humans up into races probably started innocently enough. Basing the races on geographic location and observable, objective traits like skin colour and facial features isn’t inherently bad, but becomes problematic when one group decides they are superior and begins attributing negative characteristics to other races. The Europeans did exactly that when they needed reasons to justify their colonization and enslavement of other people.
In spite of eugenics being imposed by force, in the form of sexual isolation and sterilization, in other instances, it was utterly by one self-made choice. Today, the eugenics-minded government offers those that are not yet married cruises to intellectual women hoping that they will find husbands and replicate. By no means is this defiance to the reproductive freedom, even if it is reckless (Sheehy). Eugenics was the foundation for the progressive movement in some states in America, at the beginning of the 20th century and was closely associated with the birth control movement and the Planned Parenthood. Citizens can make the decision of how many children they want and at what time they what to have them.
Though eugenics may begin with good intentions, through events such as The Holocaust, one can see how quickly the good intentions can be twisted and turned into something vile and inhumane. It really boils down to the fact that yes, the human race is imperfect. But in that imperfection beauty is found in the diversity as well as progress. If humans were all perfect specimens, there would be no reason to dream or hope for a better tomorrow. The dreamers are the ones who advance society and always have been.
Eugenics could make the human race more tough in terms of surviving epidemics or apocalyptic conditions which could wipe us off the face of the Earth as it is an attempt to improve the human gene pool .It could get rid of genetic diseases(from common ones like type 1 diabetes to severe ones like cystic fibrosis) which cause grief to family members, reduce quality of life and costs a lot of maintain life or treat, furthermore it could greatly increase our lifespan which is all good individually but it may have consequences as a species since competition for already scarce resources may increase if the birth rate is not controlled (is that ethical as well?), overpopulation could cause a greater anthropogenic pollution of the Earth leading to our doom which started off as a way to improve our lifestyle could lead to more industry to support the higher population leading to larger ozone holes more melting of polar icecaps and higher rising of sea levels and more cases of skin cancer. We would be playing god, altering a sort of natural cycle which regulates the population or cause a frenzy where everyone wants perfection where there could be discrimination where people can’t afford or are in no situation to receive the advantages of eugenics. In this case we should make eugenics widely and cheaply available but a question arises whether that is practically possible. Therefore eugenics also touches on other controversial topics like IVF, PID an