Start Date
4-27-2020 9:00 AM
End Date
4-27-2020 10:00 AM
Disciplines
American Politics | History | Psychology | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies
Subjects
Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) -- Influence, Social Darwinism -- United States -- History, Eugenics -- United States -- History
Abstract
While Margaret Sanger made great strides in the crusade for legalization and open access to birth control for women, groups paired her work with ideologies such as Social Darwinism to arm the eugenics movement throughout the Twentieth-century. The eugenics movement was a culmination of racism and newly found scientific theories which led a crusade to purify the American population through reproductive cherry-picking on the basis of race. One of the primary ways that this group attempted to weed out “undesirable” races within the American population was through birth control as well as sterilization. These two movements - birth control and eugenics - while originally separate, collided between the 1920’s and the 1960’s and resulted in the use of birth control to reduce the reproduction of African Americans as well as the poor working class within the United States.
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Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/32909
Included in
American Politics Commons, History Commons, Psychology Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons
The Use of the Birth Control Movement as a Eugenics Weapon, 1920's-1960's
While Margaret Sanger made great strides in the crusade for legalization and open access to birth control for women, groups paired her work with ideologies such as Social Darwinism to arm the eugenics movement throughout the Twentieth-century. The eugenics movement was a culmination of racism and newly found scientific theories which led a crusade to purify the American population through reproductive cherry-picking on the basis of race. One of the primary ways that this group attempted to weed out “undesirable” races within the American population was through birth control as well as sterilization. These two movements - birth control and eugenics - while originally separate, collided between the 1920’s and the 1960’s and resulted in the use of birth control to reduce the reproduction of African Americans as well as the poor working class within the United States.