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(A Plan for Peace, authored by Margaret Sanger,
was published in Birth Control Review, April
1932, pages 107-108):
First, put into action President Wilson's fourteen points, upon which
terms Germany and Austria surrendered to the Allies in 1918.
Second, have Congress set up a special department for the study of
population problems and appoint a Parliament of Population, the
directors representing the various branches of science: this body to
direct and control the population through birth rates and immigration,
and to direct its distribution over the country according to national
needs consistent with taste, fitness and interest of individuals. The
main objects of the Population Congress would be:
a. to raise the level and increase the general intelligence of
population.
b. to increase the population slowly by keeping the birth rate at its
present level of fifteen per thousand, decreasing the death rate
below
its present mark of 11 per thousand.
c. to keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain
aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of
the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic,
epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this
class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.
d. to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation
to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose
inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to
offspring.
e. to insure the country against future burdens of maintenance for
numerous offspring as may be born of feebleminded parents, by
pensioning all persons with transmissible disease who voluntarily
consent to sterilization.
f. to give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of
segregation or sterilization.
g. to apportion farm lands and homesteads for these segregated persons
where they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the
period of their entire lives.
The first step would thus be to control the intake and output of
morons, mental defectives, epileptics.
The second step would be to take an inventory of the secondary group
such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes,
dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government
medical protection, and segregate them on farms and open spaces as long as
necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct.
Having corralled this enormous part of our population and placed it on
a basis of health instead of punishment, it is safe to say that
fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized
into soldiers of defense---defending the unborn against their own
disabilities.
The third step would be to give special attention to the mothers'
health, to see that women who are suffering from tuberculosis, heart
or kidney disease, toxic goitre, gonorrhea, or any disease where the
condition of pregnancy disturbs their health are placed under public
health nurses to instruct them in practical, scientific methods of
contraception in order to safeguard their lives---thus reducing
maternal mortality.
The above steps may seem to place emphasis on a health program instead
of on tariffs, moratoriums and debts, but I believe that national
health is the first essential factor in any program for universal
peace.
With the future citizen safeguarded from hereditary taints, with five
million mental and moral degenerates segregated, with ten million
women and ten million children receiving adequate care, we could then
turn our attention to the basic needs for international peace.
There would then be a definite effort to make population increase
slowly and at a specified rate, in order to accommodate and adjust
increasing numbers to the best social and economic system.
In the meantime we should organize and join an International League of
Low Birth Rate Nations to secure and maintain World Peace.
Summary of address before the New History Society,
January 17th, New York City |
