Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

My nose has been buried between the pages of Donna Kossey's STRANGE CREATIONS: Aberrant Ideas of Human Origins from Ancient Astronauts to Aquatic Apes. I cumbersome title for a fascinating book. Even as theories of evolution evolve, the need for people to believe we didn't develop from sludge and/or primates is strong, pervading and in some cases amusing.

In some cases not so amusing.

I'd no idea that Nazis had patterned some of their eugenics laws after laws passed in the thirty three of United States for mandatory sterilization of those considered inferior people. The term most often used was 'feeble-minded' - a rather ambiguous word.

The widespread sterilization of Native American women is something I had known a little about. It is not just a matter of history. As of 1982, fifteen percent of white women had been sterilized, compared with twenty-four percent of African-American women, thirty-five percent of Puerto Rican women, and forty-two percent of Native American women. In the early 1970's, an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 low-income individuals were annually subjected to sterilization under federally funded programs.

"It is better for all the world,
if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kindÂ…
Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
United States Supreme Court. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

In a the research I've done on the subject, I realize I'm at the tip of a large iceberg. Accusations of eugenic population control are being used by the right and the left in American today. The founders of Planned Parenthood and NARAL stand accused. What I've written here is just a taste of a vast and emotional topic.