Feb. 19, 1936: Unfit mothers
Posted on February 16th, 2009 – 10:52 PMBy Ben Welter
On the eve of World War II and the Holocaust, the always provocative Minneapolis Star of 1936 ran this one-source wire story [keywords: medicine, childbirth, evolution, eugenics] on page three:
HUMAN RACE DEGENERATING
Doctor Would Bar Motherhood to Unfit Women
Chicago, Ill. – (U.P.) – Dr. Charles B. Reed, bald and bespectacled, folded his newspaper painstakingly, and declared all unfit women ought to be sterilized.
Otherwise, he said, the human race will become extinct, because present-day mothers are bearing children “who can’t take it.”
Reed, associate professor of obstetrics at Northwestern university, is attending sessions of the congress of medical associations.
The human race is degenerating, he declared.
How far will it degenerate? To extinction – unless a holocaust wipes it out first.
He explained it is a process of evolution. The human race is not as healthy and strong as it used to be.
“The mothers say they don’t want their children to have as tough a time as they did, and they do everything to make life comfortable for them.
“The daughters are pampered and petted. They don’t get enough sunshine or exercise. They can’t take it the way their grandmothers did.”
Reed explained nature customarily eliminates the unfit.
Years ago, many physically unfit women died in childbirth, and so did their progeny. Today, they go to hospitals where trained doctors save them. Thus the unfit survive despite nature. Their defects are handed down.
These are the women Dr. Reed believes should be sterilized.
“They are the ones who bear most of the children,” he said. “The others – the intellectual, careful, hygienic women – the ones who should bear the children, don’t do it.”
“You can’t protect the world against fools,” he said, angrily.
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| Mother of the year candidate, 1935: What’s with that scrub brush, Mrs. Nascher? (Photo courtesy mnhs.org) |
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