Who Was It That REALLY Targeted Black Women and babies ? Contrary to Herman Cain, who wrongly blames Planned Parenthood, it was a governmental Eugenics program.

Planned Parenthood is under attack, nationally and here in Minnesota.  The right-wingers like to malign it with factually inaccurate accusations.  One example would be Michel Bachmann's fear-mongering that there was a danger of children being taken by school authorities to Planned Parenthood for abortions, and then getting on the school bus at the end of the day to go home as if nothing had occurred.

That Planned Parenthood lie by Bachmann was debunked pretty effectively. And we posted the debunking of the lie about Planned Parenthood told by Herman Cain repeatedly as well, here, citing the research into his statements by the excellent factcheck.org.

But in the face of the Eugenics / Involuntary sterilization controversy currently taking place in North Carolina, which you can read about, here, there has been a problem in the past, mostly from the 1920s through the 1970s that is currently center stage.  There HAS been targeting of certain groups, which in North Carolina included a disproportionate number of blacks, for sterilization, not abortion. But clearly, sterilization DID disproportionately limit the number of black children being born.

So, what are the facts about black women and babies being targeted?  You certainly will never hear the truth about it from any of the 2012 GOP Presidential contenders.  In fact, there is seldom an accurate statement from any of them on the topic of sex, reproduction, gender orientation, or human sexuality.

But the North Carolina controversy DID make me curious about Eugenics programs in the state of Minnesota.  Being fact-oriented and not factually challenged when it comes to facts relating to sex, gender, or sexuality, I did a little digging, as I am known to do from time to time.

What I found was this fascinating brief history of Eugenics in Minnesota at the Minnesota Historical Society's web site, where you can read more, here:

HISTORY TOPICS

Minnesota Eugenics Society & Founder Charles Fremont Dight

Eugenics was a movement to improve the human species by controlling hereditary factors in mating. The eugenics movement began in the late 1800s in Britain. Francis Galton, an English scientist, coined the term in 1883 and founded the Eugenics Society of Great Britain in 1908. Galton’s philosophy was that humanity could be improved by encouraging the ablest and healthiest people to have more children. Galton’s vision of eugenics is usually termed “positive eugenics.” The eugenics movements in the United States, Germany, and Scandinavia favored “negative eugenics,” which advocated preventing the least able from breeding. The American Eugenics Society was organized in 1926.
In the early 1920s, Charles Fremont Dight, a physician in Minneapolis, launched a crusade to bring the eugenics movement to Minnesota. He combined the moral philosophy of eugenics with socialism and espoused the idea that the state should administer reproduction of mentally handicapped individuals. His main lines of approach included eugenics education, changes in marriage laws, and the segregation and sterilization of what he called “defective” individuals.
Dight organized the Minnesota Eugenics Society in 1923 and began campaigning for a sterilization law. In 1925 the Minnesota legislature passed a law allowing the sterilization of the “feeble–minded” and insane who were resident in the state's institutions. For the next several legislative sessions Dight fought unsuccessfully for expansion of the law to include sterilization of the “unfit” who lived outside of institutions.
Dight continued his legislative efforts as late as 1935. He spoke and wrote on the subject of eugenics, including over 300 letters to Minneapolis daily newspapers, a 1935 pamphlet on the History and Early Stages of the Organized Eugenics Movement for Human Betterment in Minnesota, and a 1936 book entitled Call for a New Social Order. In 1933 he sent a letter to Adolph Hitler and included with it one of his letters to the editor in which he commended Hitler's work in Germany.
The Minnesota Eugenics Society became moribund by the early 1930s. Dight died on June 20, 1938, in Minneapolis. He left his estate to the University of Minnesota to found what became the Dight Institute for the promotion of Human Genetics.

That made me even more curious; a doctoral dissertation Neal Ross Holtan, from earlier this year on the history of eugenics and the U of MN put the end of the Dight institute at 1988 when it became the Institute for Human Genetics, not the 1960s, as stated in an MPR article from August 2011.  That places our eugenics history a couple of decades more recent, if relatively inactive for sterilization during those later years. 

There was this information on forced sterilization from this University of Minnesota web site:

Number of victims
In total, there were 2,350 victims of sterilization in Minnesota.  Of the 2,350, 519 were male, and 1,831 (approx. 78%) were female. About 18% were deemed mentally ill and 82% mentally deficient. The sterilizations in Minnesota accounted for 4 percent of all the sterilizations in the nation (Lombardo, p. 118).
Period during which sterilizations occurred
The sterilizations took place predominantly between 1928 and the late 1950s.  Sterilizations were relatively high in the 1930s and early 1940s (Paul, p. 393).  During the war, there was a shortage of staff, which may be the reason why there were fewer sterilizations from 1942 to 1946 (Paul, p. 396).

And there were several sources which identify Minnesota as having been one of, if not the most, eugenics conscious states in the U.S.  What I haven't found yet is if the law passed in the first part of the 20th century has been repealed, or if court decisions have simply made it no longer applicable.......or if its provisions have been replaced by other legislation.

Bachmann is that the claims about Planned Parenthood appear to play on the abuses of eugenics sterilization as part of their fear mongering repressive and regressive policies towards sex and reproduction, and especially wrong and bad in the policies they advocate for the terrible failure, abstinence only sex education.

I knew that in some other states, right wing sex paranoia took forms like banning sex toys including vibrators, and that Minnesota had at one time enforced draconian sodomy laws until they were overturned by our State Supreme Court.  What I did not know though turned up in this article, from of all places, that right wing bastion of propaganda, Fox News (you can read the whole article, here):

"Outdated, unthinkable, erotophobic and downright ridiculous, we should thank our lucky stars that enforcing them is another matter.
Sex toys are banned in some states, such as Alabama. Sexual intercourse between unmarried couples is illegal in Georgia. Flirting is banned in San Antonio, Texas. Oral sex is banned in Indiana. Anal intercourse is banned in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Sexual positions beyond missionary are illegal in Washington, D.C. Sleeping naked is illegal in Minnesota."

When I hear Herman Cain, or Michele Bachmann whinging on trying to propagandize culture war issues relating to sex, it seems to me that at least as regards abortion, they are playing on our real history, as a state, and as a nation, of eugenics abuses.  In Minnesota, we turned Eugenics into a study of Genetics, something which empowers people.  If we listen to Cain or Bachmann, and follow their recommendations, we might as well return to that inglorious, backwards and fearful era of another century.  I for one have no desire to return to a right wing dark ages of human sexuality.  Part of pushing back against that right wing fear mongering about abortion targeting blacks and Planned Parenthood being racist is to know our factual history, to recognize the false conflating of abortion and sterilization in the face of right wing fraud.