Meg Spaulding - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
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Modern arguments about genetic engineering and its offshoots are tinged with the memories of the ... more Modern arguments about genetic engineering and its offshoots are tinged with the memories of the eugenics movement that took hold around the world in the last century. These memories are easily accessible, as eugenics is a relatively new socially-constructed science. One can easily access the opinions of then-respected and successful scientists who wrote extensively about the positive implications of what they considered to be selective breeding. The intersection of the eugenics movement and the birth control movement complicates these memories, as birth control in essence applies to eugenic practices of selective breeding but makes no mention of this connection or possibility as it exists now. However, when the birth control movement was first looking for support, it could be found among many eugenicists. This is evident in the issues of the Eugenics Quarterly, the official scientific journal of the American Eugenics Society. The 1929 issues, released monthly, paint a picture of the meeting of two movements, and demonstrate how eugenics supporters supported birth control, not as a means to empower women and men's sexual freedom and agency, but as a way to promote and further enact eugenic population control with the aim of improving the stock of the human race. Further, they demonstrate how the birth control movement used their space in the Eugenics Quarterly to advocate for their own cause, ultimately showing that both movements used each other's authority 47 Spaulding: Inside the Eugenics Quarterly: American Eugenicists and
Modern arguments about genetic engineering and its offshoots are tinged with the memories of the ... more Modern arguments about genetic engineering and its offshoots are tinged with the memories of the eugenics movement that took hold around the world in the last century. These memories are easily accessible, as eugenics is a relatively new socially-constructed science. One can easily access the opinions of then-respected and successful scientists who wrote extensively about the positive implications of what they considered to be selective breeding. The intersection of the eugenics movement and the birth control movement complicates these memories, as birth control in essence applies to eugenic practices of selective breeding but makes no mention of this connection or possibility as it exists now. However, when the birth control movement was first looking for support, it could be found among many eugenicists. This is evident in the issues of the Eugenics Quarterly, the official scientific journal of the American Eugenics Society. The 1929 issues, released monthly, paint a picture of the meeting of two movements, and demonstrate how eugenics supporters supported birth control, not as a means to empower women and men's sexual freedom and agency, but as a way to promote and further enact eugenic population control with the aim of improving the stock of the human race. Further, they demonstrate how the birth control movement used their space in the Eugenics Quarterly to advocate for their own cause, ultimately showing that both movements used each other's authority 47 Spaulding: Inside the Eugenics Quarterly: American Eugenicists and