In a 1921 article, Sanger explained: "The most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective." When Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, a Republican from Nebraska, subsequently pressed Clinton on her expressed "awe" of Sanger, Clinton compared the unapologetic eugenicist to Thomas Jefferson.
The roots of the modern-day "pro-choice" movement are real and can be seen without too much effort, but are not often discussed. It may be the hubris that comes with being the majority party in Washington that accounts for such prominent officials letting their eugenic slips show.
And it's not just a women's issue. But it is often the Gray Lady's -- the New York Times. One week after the Supreme revelation, the same Sunday insert published a piece by Princeton University professor Peter Singer, an unapologetic defender of infanticide, in defense of rationing health care. The ties that bind on the left, right out in the open.
With all this going on, it's disturbing but not surprising that the president would dismiss questions about abortion and his healthcare plan. In an interview with Katie Couric that aired the night before his dud of a primetime healthcare press conference, Obama called such questions a "distraction," -- the fate of human lives and dignity are but details to be hashed out and cast aside by politicians in a rush to socialize medicine.
His mistake was to be so dismissive just as it's becoming increasingly impossible to ignore the pro-choice movement's eugenic past. If you're pro-choice in America today you need to confront the roots of your ideology. Because it's not just the stuff of history.