Boxing legend Max Schmeling died at his home in Germany on Feb. 2, 2005. He was 99 years old.
Schmeling is perhaps best known for his two fights against “The Brown Bomber” Joe Louis. The first fight, in 1936, ended when Schmeling upset Louis in the twelfth round. Schmeling immediately and inadvertently became Hitler’s poster boy for the superiority of the Aryan race. Schmeling’s victory over the black man was accepted as proof of eugenics, “the science of human improvement through better breeding.” Eugenics was a process that brought about so-called “improvements” to the human race by rooting out “undesirable” genes. “Undesirable” genes included those of the handicapped, the feeble, paupers, the mentally ill, the criminal, and all races other than the Nordic.
In 1938, Louis and Schmeling fought again. This time, Schmeling was quickly defeated in the first round. When it became clear that Schmeling was going to lose the fight, Hitler ordered that the radio transmission be cut off in all German territories. His Aryan superman had been defeated, and the whole concept of eugenics had been dealt a deadly blow.
But Eugenics was not an entirely German science. Noted American eugenicists include Arthur Estabrook, Charles Davenport, and Margaret Sanger. Sanger is better known as the founder of Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest provider of abortions and contraception.
Planned Parenthood denies any link between its founder and this creed of white supremacy. Her official Planned Parenthood biography points out that, “Eugenicists, like the Nazis, were opposed to the use of abortion and contraception by healthy and ‘fit’ women.” Indeed, this was one issue where Sanger and the Nazis diverged. The Nazis believed that it was the duty of people possessing desirable genes to spread those genes far and wide. Sanger, on the other hand, believed that “human weeds” should be discouraged from reproducing, segregated, sterilized, and aborted, but did not encourage rampant procreation among “desirables.”
Planned Parenthood makes its case for the defense of Sanger at www.plannedparenthood.org. The only concession that Planned Parenthood makes about its founder is that she supported the Supreme Court’s 1927 Buck v. Bell decision. The decision permitted states to segregate “illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, and dope-fiends on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct,” and adopting laws to keep diseased and “feeble-minded” immigrants out.
But Planned Parenthood has a lot of explaining to do about the writings and deeds of its founder. For example, they claim that Sanger never promoted abortion because it was illegal and dangerous in her time. Sanger died in 1966, seven years before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal. Sanger denounced abortion, calling the practice “vicious.” But while she was denouncing the practice publicly, she was privately raising money for back-alley abortions and referring women to illegal abortionists.
Today, Planned Parenthood argues in favor of abortion under the specious logic that barring abortions would create a terrible industry of “back-alley abortions,” which are so terrible that we must tolerate 35 million unborn children to be slaughtered to avoid such a situation. Unfortunately, their founder disagrees, and thought that back-alley abortions were a suitable alternative to the disgraceful state of motherhood.
They need to explain her remarks of 1937, when she advocated “good breeding” through sterilization. “It makes possible the creation of a new race,” she said. “A new generation brought into this world consciously conceived. It makes possible the breeding out of human weeds… [and] the breeding in of clean, strong, and fit instruments to carry on the torch of human destiny.” If that doesn’t summarize eugenics, I don’t know what does.
Planned Parenthood also claims that Sanger had no intentions of targeting specific ethnic groups. She favored birth control to benefit women, not to curb the population growth of any particular race. Oh, really? Well please explain her presence at a 1926 rally of the KKK. And what about the articles that she penned for her own publication “The Birth Control Review” entitled “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control” and “Birth Control and Racial Betterment?” Explain her remarks that Aboriginal Australians were “just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development,” and complaints of Jews and Italians filling up insane asylums and feeble-minded institutions.
Planned Parenthood must also explain why she favored the sterilization laws that forcibly made 60,000 Americans incapable of reproduction in the earlier half of the 20th century. More than half of the states passed such laws, and in all cases, minorities were disproportionately represented among those sterilized. Among states with sterilization laws were five segregated southern states, with Virginia leading the nation.
Sadly, the remnants of eugenics didn’t die with Max Schmeling. They live on to this day in the slogans and intentions of Planned Parenthood and their ilk. “Every child a wanted child,” they say. Children shouldn’t have to grow up poor, they argue. They contend that abortion is the logical decision when a child is to be born handicapped or deformed, and nearly half of all abortions are performed on black or Hispanic mothers. Hitler’s dream lives on to this day.
Ben Duffy is a Collegian columnist.
