REFERENCE TITLE: removal; Margaret Sanger

State of Arizona

Senate

Fifty-fifth Legislature

First Regular Session

2021

SCR 1026

Introduced by

Senator Rogers

A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

supporting the removal of margaret sanger from the arizona women's hall of fame.

(TEXT OF BILL BEGINS ON NEXT PAGE)

Whereas, in her book, "Woman and the New Race," Margaret Sanger wrote, "The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it" and that birth control "is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives"; and

Whereas, in her article entitled, "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda," Margaret Sanger wrote, "I wish to take advantage of the present opportunity to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes" and that "the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective"; and

Whereas, in her writings entitled, "America Needs a Code for Babies" Margaret Sanger wrote, "no woman shall have the legal right to bear a child, and no man shall have the right to become a father, without a permit for parenthood"; and

Whereas, in her article "My Way to Peace," Margaret Sanger urged that we should "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"; and

Whereas, Margaret Sanger endorsed the 1927 Buck v. Bell decision written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that compulsory sterilization of the "unfit" was allowable under the Constitution—a decision that enabled states to sterilize citizens deemed unfit without their consent and sometimes even without their knowledge; and

Whereas, in her book "High Lights in the History of Birth Control," Margaret Sanger wrote that birth control "means the release and cultivation of the better elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks -- those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization."; and

Whereas, in her article "Morality and Birth Control," Margaret Sanger wrote, "all of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class..." and that it must lead "ultimately to a cleaner race"; and

Whereas, in her writing "The Pivot of Civilization," Margaret Sanger wrote "Feeble-mindedness perpetuates itself from the ranks of those who are blandly indifferent to their racial responsibilities." She further opined that "this type" is "perpetuating those direst evils in which we must, if civilization is to survive, extirpate by the very roots"; and

Whereas, in her writing "The Pope's Position on Birth Control," Margaret Sanger wrote that Catholic doctrine is "definitely against…race improvement."

Therefore

Be it resolved by the Senate of the State of Arizona, the House of Representatives concurring:

That the Members of the Legislature, in light of Margaret Sanger's views espousing racism and support for eugenics, support the removal of Margaret Sanger from the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame.