We’ve been talking about having babies lately, and as the mother of 15 children, I believe I have earned the right to be heard on this subject. Today we will specifically cover the grimy history of reproductive rights.
In the first post/podcast of this series I explained that this is a unit study for mommies, and that it will be in multiple parts (because the subject of babies is so huge!), and it will be brim-full of information.
The second and third posts/podcasts in this series were dedicated to the myth of overpopulation. In these we uncovered the lies concerning the negative repercussions of reproducing I recently heard the earth is capable of supporting 100 billion people). We concluded with some sound reasons why human beings are the earth’s greatest resource and explored God’s revealed intentions for all of us.
I’ve also been able to introduce an important historical figure concerning the study of human population; Thomas Malthus.
Today, we are going to focus on the history of “Reproductive rights.”
DISCLAIMER:
This post/podcast deals with mature issues and is not suitable for children.
Let’s begin at the beginning…
The first recorded instance of reproductive manipulation was in the Bible, specifically in Genesis 38:6-10:
Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death.
Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.
Now, we know Onan incurred God’s wrath because he did not want to give his brother offspring, so we easily brush that one off as being cultural and, therefore, irrelevant to our discussion.
But is it?
At the core of Onan and his reproductive manipulation is this:
For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.
1 John 2:16
This, my dears, is the root of all reproductive manipulation, and it is traced back to the tempter himself when he declared, “I will be like the Most High,” and when he tempted Eve with:
“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Genesis 3:4-5
And we can see this pattern over and over again unto this present day.
We want to be like God. We think we ARE like God. We believe that the fate of human life lies in our hands.
Many of us believe this is our RIGHT, and we have the ability to harness human reproduction for the “good” of mankind.
But when we learn the darkness surrounding this idealistic thinking, we have to question it.
For example, besides Onan’s selfishness, all forms of contraception and procreative manipulation in ancient history were linked to paganism.
Ebers papyrus recorded the induction of abortion via pessaries. Other cultures practiced extreme physical exertion of physical exertion of the mother and vaginal poultices, which were wads of cotton or wool soaked in poisonous solutions.
Then there was infanticide. The Bible records pagan practices of passing one’s son “through the fire,” which meant burning a child to death in the arms of an idol while loud drums were played to drown out the screams.
The Greek play “Oedipus Rex” includes Oedipus’ mother deciding to have her infant’s foot nailed to a hillside and left to die of exposure to the elements and wild beasts.
Ancient Romans practiced oral contraception and abortion, but infanticide was quite common. It was the patriarch who decided whether to keep or expose a newborn. The Twelve Tables of Roman Law required the death of visibly deformed children, and malformed infants were usually killed immediately after birth (of course not every Roman participated in this).
Archaeologists examining the ruins of Pompeii found numerous infant skeletons in a sewer down stream from a brothel, obvious evidence of abortion and infanticide as the results of prostitution were done away with.
Infanticide continued into the early Middle Ages, supposedly practiced on a gigantic scale.
It was Christianity that made the difference.
The transformational power of Jesus began working in the hearts of men, with mercy and compassion having their effects on culture. Tertullian himself railed against pagans and their treatment of the sick in the second century.
Also in the second century The Didache (also known as The Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations) included a condemnation of abortion, as did The Apocalypse of Peter written during the same period.
Early church fathers opposed procreative manipulation in all forms. Among these were:
John Crysostom (347-407 AD)
Clement of Alexandria (150-215)
Hippolytus of Rome 170-235
Augustine of Hippo 354-430
Jerome 342-420
Some go as far as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings before their conception.
Jerome
Augustine of Hippo in On Marriage and Concupiscence said concerning lust without procreation, couples, “use the respectable name [of marriage] to cover a shame…Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, comes to this, that they use sterilizing drugs.”
It was the first council of Nicaea in 325 that began a shift in thinking and practice. After this the Church created brephotrophs for exposed infants as well as orphanages (the hospitals formed were referred to as Houses of the Holy Spirit).
From the time of Jesus, Christianity has been associated with mercy and compassion towards all human life in practical, tangible ways.
The two factors fighting against this influence have been Neopaganism and its veiled counterparts materialism, humanism, and rationalism.
While Christianity made compassion and the value of human life tenets of civilization, the Renaissance ushered in a reviving of the old values. By the 18th century, philosophers were attacking Christian presuppositions. “Higher Criticism” and rationalism took hold. Kant, Hegel, et al began to slowly eat away at the foundations of Christian societal influence. From this arose Thomas Malthus and Charles Darwin, who in turn made way for the evils of the 20th century, including socialism and relativism. Gone were the underpinnings holding up the veneration of human life as unique among living creatures. In its place arose a pragmatism, with the health and life of the planet at its center. God’s law played second fiddle to the relativistic platitudes of man.
With Christianity’s influence out of the way, blood of the innocents once more ran freely. Purgings, genocides, gulags, and death camps followed.
In our own country Eugenics came to the forefront. In the name of the evolutionary ideal of “survival of the fittest,” people were involuntarily sterilized, with the black and the poor targeted for voluntary genocide.
The most notable character of the interplay of this time was Margaret Sanger, who is credited with the founding of what we know today as Planned Parenthood.
I don’t like sensationalizing, but I think it’s important for us to dig deep here; I warn you that where we are going is dark, but I feel it is necessary in order to reveal just how godless, filthy, even demonic reproductive manipulation truly is.
Margaret Sanger was the sixth child born to an Irish couple, the mother being Catholic and the father being a socialist atheist. As a young girl she enjoyed a zest for spiritual things, but by the age of 17 she developed a hatred of the church.
She was sent to a boarding school where she delved deeply into suffragette feminism, radical politics, and unfettered sex.
Eventually she married a wealthy man and lived comfortably, but lacked direction. As her husband became more involved in the radical political Socialist, Anarchist, and Communist movements meeting in Greenwhich Village, Margaret found her life’s motivation.
She flung herself entirely into the causes of rebellion and revolution that were thriving at that time. This meant joining the one group unifying radicalism in the US–The Socialist Party. By 1912 The Socialist Party boasted 116,000 members and had elected 1200 officials in 33 states and 160 cities, publishing over 300 periodicals.
By this time Margaret was the mother of three children, but she was so politically involved that she had no time for her children, her home, or her husband.
She fell under the influence of Emma Goldman, a woman with ties to radical groups around the world and traveled the country lecturing on the necessity of free love and the nobility of incendiary violence, as well as every other radical, godless idea. She published the anarchist magazine Mother Earth and distributed leaflets on contraception and liberated sex.
Because of Goldman’s influence, she began to follow the teachings of Havelock Ellis, a man who wrote the seven volume Studies on the Psychology of Sex.
Shortly afterwards, she told her husband she wanted an open marriage.
Along the way she was a regular participant in the discussions held at the fifth Ave. apartment of one Mable Dodge. Radical artists, writers, actors, and activists participated, and Sanger’s discussions were always on sex. She spoke on, “romantic dignity, unfettered self-expression, and the sacredness of sexual desire.”
Dodge wrote of Sanger:
Margaret Sanger was a Madonna type of woman…who introduced us all to the idea of birth control, and it, along with other related ideas about sex, became her passion…She was the first person I ever knew who was openly an ardent propagandist for the joys of the flesh.
Not long after, she began publishing her own paper, The Woman Rebel. The slogan of this paper was:
NO GODS! NO MASTERS!
In her first issue she called marriage a “degenerate institution,” and sexual modesty “obscene prudery.” She also wrote, “rebel women claim the…right to be lazy, the right to be an unmarried mother, the right to destroy…and the right to love.”
Her periodical gave reason for her to be charged and arrested under the Comstock Laws. She decided to flee the country, but just before she left she published the illegal leaflet Family Limitation which encouraged the use of Lysol douches, bichloride of mercury elixirs, heavy doses of laxatives, and herbal abortifacients as birth control methods.
She eventually landed in England, where she began to form ties with followers of Thomas Malthus, whom we discussed in our previous videos on this subject.
The Malthusians of that time believed all the unfit must be removed to make way for the fittest. The unfit included the poor, the spiritually diseased, racially inferior, and mentally incompetent, but eschewed the mover radical methods of pestilence and famine as agents. Instead, they preferred the agents of education, contraception, sterilization, and abortion.
Margaret Sanger seized on these ideas. Now she could claim the moral high ground of “saving humanity” with her radical suggestions of reproductive manipulation.
From there Margaret also gleaned bits and pieces from the other Malthusian off shoots, including the Eugenicists.
While in England she practiced what she preached and liberally shared her bed with H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and had a strange affair with Havelock Ellis (who was impotent but practiced other forms of sensuality).
Havelock Ellis is considered the grandfather of the Bohemian Sexual Revolution. The list of his perverted sexual recommendations (about which he wrote numerous books) is too provoking to write out here. He orchestrated orgies, lesbian affairs (some involving his own wife), and established a network for homosexual and heterosexual encounters.He also experimented with mescaline and other psychotropic and psychedelic drugs.
Henry Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939) was an English physician, eugenicist, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and inclinations, as well as on transgender psychology. He developed the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism, later adopted by psychoanalysis.
I’m sorry to drag you through this dark filth, but there is a reason for it. You see, it was this Havelock Ellis who helped Margaret Sanger to develop the strategy she used to altar the course of Western Civilization.
Today, Margaret Sanger is known as the benevolent angel of women. According to modern sources, she has been our liberator and protector. Her past has been white-washed so carefully that Planned Parenthood claims she was always against unnecessary abortions and fought to “protect” families.
What utter hogwash.
I actually printed out a short biography of Margaret Sanger from the Planned Parenthood website. My, my how they can spin!
In this biography they fail to mention that the Reverend Billy Sunday, the Catholic social reformer Msgr. John Ryan, and President Theodore Roosevelt fought against her initiatives.
They also downplay her connection to Eugenics, saying “everyone” was a Eugenicist back then.
But they can’t erase her own words and the actions which have been captured as public record.
Her ideals share a generous amount of common ground with the eugenics of Nazism, but more to the point, she expended a considerable amount of time and money towards making sure her eugenic ideals were implemented. The fact that she supported, collaborated and promoted this abbreviated list of eugenicists, sympathizers, collaborators, and known members of Hitler’s government, both before and after The Holocaust, renders her views more than merely insulting. Her organizing and propagandizing of eugenics was consequential enough to have made a difference in the way the eugenics movement evolved ultimately to light the fires of The Holocaust.
Margaret’s Nazi Connections in Historical Context. written by: A.E. Samaan — Feb. 2023
In her book, The Pivot of Civilization, published in 1922, she brazenly called for the elimination of “human weeds” and suggested the ending of charity, as well as calling for the segregation of “morons, misfits, and the maladjusted” and for the sterilization of “genetically inferior races.”
There is so much more that could be shared, such as her dabblings into the occult and her open marriage agreement with her second husband in which both parties lived in separate homes, but time (and tolerance) are limited…
Just know this, that Sanger, through all of her pushing, shoving, and marrying into money, is the woman through whom legal oral contraception came into general use. And, it is Margaret Sanger who is responsible for the organization which, world-wide, has committed more murder of human beings than any other single private organization in human history.
More important than all this, we all need to wake up to the immense influence Sanger and her ilk have had on our culture, especially as part of the Western church.
In the 20th century, barbarism has been cleansed. Instead of being associated with the dark, filthy ignorance of ancient paganism, murder has been re-costumed and put in a brilliantly clean operating room attended by scientists and medical practitioners in white lab coats.
Our vocabulary has changed as well. No more talk of sin, impurity, or lasciviousness. Now we are concerned with the worship of “self.” Even in churches, Jesus is complicit of our self-exultation and adoration as we call on Him to help us fulfill our “dreams.”
In this environment, we listen to the priests wearing the mark of their Phd’s and our prophets in the media who stand before the altar of our TV screens and declare to us the demands of our gods. Transgression has been redefined as anything that gets in the way of our self-actualization.
Cross-carrying and self-denying are now considered sacrilege. We want none of that, just more of Jesus making our lives happy and comfortable without any sacrifice on our part.
It’s just the same old lies. And these lies never lead to satisfaction or purpose or long-lasting happiness and joy.
But surrender to God does.
As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:9
For this is what the high and exalted One says—
he who lives forever, whose name is holy:
“I live in a high and holy place,
but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and to revive the heart of the contrite.
Isaiah 57:15
Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.
Luke 17:33
It’s the paradox St. Francis of Assisi wrote of in his famous prayer:
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled,
as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
I’ve taken a lot of this post/podcast from a number of online sources, including Planned Parenthood’s website, but mostly I have been blessed with information from George Grant’s book, Grand Illusions, The Legacy of Planned Parenthood (affiliate link). A more modern version of this information also by George Grant is Killer Angel (affiliate link) which is also a bit cheaper to purchase.
Let me know what you think about this unit study for mommies. Are you taking notes? Maybe we should have a notebooking page contest for mommies on Margaret Sanger–what do you think?
Next time, we will be talking about actually having babies, as in, will we move out in faith or listen to fear?
Below please find the links to the podcast:
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