Planned Parenthood and the Eugenics Movement http://t.co/K6tVOQjbHv pic.twitter.com/lJhoCVKvh9
— National Review (@NRO) August 15, 2015...The eugenics agenda eventually fell out of favor: The conscience of the West was quickened by the sight of the ovens at Auschwitz, the ultimate manifestation of the logic of eugenics. Yet the scientific community, with its rising cultural authority, had helped to persuade a generation of an urgent biological necessity. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was among the ranks of the true believers. Speaking at Vassar College in 1926, Sanger warned of a social crisis — “an increasing race of morons” — unless sterilization policies were widely implemented.
For people of faith, the problem is not science, but scientism: the belief that science can explain every facet of human existence from Nature itself.
In that worldview, there are few restraints on what science can do — must do — in order to improve mankind’s physical well-being. This is what C. S. Lewis meant when he warned of “the abolition of man” — the negation of human dignity in the name of progress, or compassion, or humanity, or science itself. Lewis lived long enough to witness firsthand the dreadful progeny of this idea: “For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please.”
The passage of time, it seems, has only strengthened this power and the fearsome temptation to use it.
