Aspirin and Eugenics

View 713 Friday, February 17, 2012

The web is abuzz. Rick Santorum has a friend who thinks Bayer Aspirin is a contraceptive pill! The horror!

It is an illustration of a generation gap. Recall that in 1953 Arthur Clarke’s Childhood’s End, in keeping with the various theories derived from the voodoo sciences of Freud and Jung about sexual repression, postulated that technology would someday develop a reliable contraceptive pill, and that, together with an infallible means of identifying paternity, would bring about a sexual revolution in which sex would be decoupled from marriage and families. No one would be repressed or suffer from psychological disorders due to sexual frustrations. The human race would enter an new era, and the childhood of the race would end. This was all incorporated into a story with benevolent aliens and flying saucers. A thoroughly New Age story.

In those times, there were two means for contraception: condoms and abstinence, and the only 100% reliable one was abstinence. Condoms were advocated widely but mostly for prevention of sexually transmitted disorders, and they didn’t always work, either for that or for contraception – particularly since it was fairly common to forget the condom in the heat of the moment. The best way for a girl to avoid pregnancy was to keep her knees together. Using an aspirin pill as a reminder to do that was optional. Foster Friess, a wealthy supporter of Rick Santorum, was astonished when he had to explain that joke. It’s another illustration of the generation gap.

In a startling outburst Thursday, the multimillionaire who’s given most to a super PAC supporting former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) for president remarked that universal contraception coverage for women shouldn’t be needed because, “Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives.”

“The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly,” he told MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell.

The comment comes by way of Foster Friess, the 71-year-old multi-millionaire former investment manager who’s become the largest donor to the Red, White and Blue fund, which supports the Pennsylvania Republican.

Aspirin is a painkiller, not a contraceptive. It’s not clear exactly what Friess meant, but the seeming implication is that women should just keep their legs closed to avoid pregnancy, instead of using modern contraceptives.

After which the press calls for Santorum, who wasn’t part of the interview and certainly said nothing of the sort, to apologize to women, because Friess used a high school joke about abstinence. What he is to apologize for is not clear.

One presumes the horror is over the notion that getting pregnant or not getting pregnant is a matter of individual responsibility and choice. Or perhaps the implication of a double standard – that chastity is the responsibility of women, not men.

Perhaps the apology ought to be demanded from the universe, or evolution, or from the Almighty for having made men and women different? Men don’t get pregnant and thus have far less to lose from indulgence in random acts of sex. This has been known to nearly everyone on Earth for several thousand years. This may be unfair, but whether by design or by evolution it is built into the structure of the human race. Changing this ‘unfairness’ is likely to be expensive, and it is difficult to discern the source of any moral imperative to do so: why is it the responsibility of the successful to pay for contraception.

Another argument is economic: it is in the interest of the productive and the successful to limit the number of people born to the irresponsible. Population control is important. The rich and successful are capable of personal responsibility, but the masses are not. Their numbers must be controlled or we are all lost. The stupids are outbreeding us, and we must do what we can to limit their numbers. Contraception is a useful and effective means for doing this. Those of a less cynical bent will go further and say that we must all limit the numbers of our offspring. Overpopulation threatens everyone’s quality of life.

Carried far enough this leads to policies like China’s “One Child” regulations. Larry Niven postulates something of the sort in his Known Space stories, in which the militia periodically engage in “mother hunts” for unlicensed pregnancies. In China enforcement is largely in the hands of local Party cadres, who are reported forcibly to have aborted mothers who got pregnant while raising a living child. There are also the usual stories of how high party officials and the rich evade those restrictions, and no one is surprised by that. The rich and powerful will always find ways around such policies. They always have. Eugenicists can even take heart: those smart enough to get away with having multiple children are probably the ones who ought to have them.

Incidentally, the early eugenicists such as Sir Francis Galton did not discourage the lower classes from having children: instead they founded organizations to encourage bright people to marry early and paid young married couples stipends to allow them to continue their education. They wanted the smart and educated to multiply. Galton’s Eugenics Society still exists, now under the name of The Galton Institute.

There were others concerned with the twin problems of overpopulation among the ‘unfit’ and over time eugenics societies transmogrified to the point at which some encouraged and carried out sterilizations of the unfit, the notion being to cull the human herd and remove defective genes from the gene pool. No one admits to such sentiments now, but in 1927 the Supreme Court decreed:

This is a writ of error to review a judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeals of the State of Virginia, affirming a judgment of the Circuit Court of Amherst County, by which the defendant in error, the superintendent of the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded, was ordered to perform the operation of salpingectomy upon Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in error, for the purpose of making her sterile. 143 Va. 310, 130 S. E. 516. The case comes here upon the contention that the statute authorizing the judgment is void under the Fourteenth Amendment as denying to the plaintiff in error due process of law and the equal protection of the laws.

Carrie Buck is a feeble-minded white woman who was committed to the State Colony above mentioned in due form. She is the daughter of a feeble- minded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feeble-minded child. She was eighteen years old at the time of the trial of her case in the Circuit Court in the latter part of 1924. An Act of Virginia approved March 20, 1924 (Laws 1924, c. 394) recites that the health of the patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives, under careful safeguard, etc.; that the sterilization may be effected in males by vasectomy and in females by salpingectomy, without serious pain or substantial danger to life; that the Commonwealth is supporting in various institutions many defective persons who if now discharged would become [274 U.S. 200, 206] a menace but if incapable of procreating might be discharged with safety and become self-supporting with benefit to themselves and to society; and that experience has shown that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, imbecility, etc. The statute then enacts that whenever the superintendent of certain institutions including the abovenamed State Colony shall be of opinion that it is for the best interest of the patients and of society that an inmate under his care should be sexually sterilized, he may have the operation performed upon any patient afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity, imbecility, etc., on complying with the very careful provisions by which the act protects the patients from possible abuse.

The superintendent first presents a petition to the special board of directors of his hospital or colony, stating the facts and the grounds for his opinion, verified by affidavit. Notice of the petition and of the time and place of the hearing in the institution is to be served upon the inmate, and also upon his guardian, and if there is no guardian the superintendent is to apply to the Circuit Court of the County to appoint one. If the inmate is a minor notice also is to be given to his parents, if any, with a copy of the petition. The board is to see to it that the inmate may attend the hearings if desired by him or his guardian. The evidence is all to be reduced to writing, and after the board has made its order for or against the operation, the superintendent, or the inmate, or his guardian, may appeal to the Circuit Court of the County. The Circuit Court may consider the record of the board and the evidence before it and such other admissible evidence as may be offered, and may affirm, revise, or reverse the order of the board and enter such order as it deems just. Finally any party may apply to the Supreme Court of Appeals, which, if it grants the appeal, is to hear the case upon the record of the trial [274 U.S. 200, 207] in the Circuit Court and may enter such order as it thinks the Circuit Court should have entered. There can be no doubt that so far as procedure is concerned the rights of the patient are most carefully considered, and as every step in this case was taken in scrupulous compliance with the statute and after months of observation, there is no doubt that in that respect the plaintiff in error has had due process at law.

The attack is not upon the procedure but upon the substantive law. It seems to be contended that in no circumstances could such an order be justified. It certainly is contended that the order cannot be justified upon the existing grounds. The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck ‘is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization,’ and thereupon makes the order. In view of the general declarations of the Legislature and the specific findings of the Court obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. 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 kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 , 25 S. Ct. 358, 3 Ann. Cas. 765. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. [274 U.S. 200, 208] [snip] [ emphasis added]

The opinion was given by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most respected justices of all time, and one of the liberal justices who helped change our notion of the Constitution. Holmes greatly expanded the power of legislatures and the powers of government. This particular opinion was widely applauded at the time it was delivered. Note that it does not expand the power of the Federal government; this is purely a state matter.

It is no surprise that the offhand remark about a Bayer Aspirin tablet being an effective contraceptive has sparked such wide attention. It reminds us of a time when people were considered to be responsible for their actions, and for the consequences of their actions; of a time when the power of government to insert itself into people’s lives was quite different from what it is now, and seen to be quite different.

It challenges the notion that it is the responsibility of the state to provide the means for contraception. What Foster Friess did not ask but might have is whether, given that it is the responsibility of the state to provide the means of contraception and those paying for it should not quibble because it is in the interests of society that people not have unwanted children, why not take the next step and make use of contraceptives compulsory for all those who have not shown themselves worthy of having descendents? It would certainly make for lower taxes, and for that matter, for a larger treasury to be distributed as largesse to the voters.

I am not fully recovered from my weeks of this virus infection, but I am able to do a bit more work. I regret having to miss BOSKONE (a Boston science fiction convention) where I was supposed to be an honored guest this weekend, but it is clear that I made the right decision in not going. I’m still coughing, and I’d still be far more a burden than an asset – as well as contagious.

My thanks to those who have chosen to subscribe or renew subscriptions during this week’s Pledge Drive. This place operates on the Public Radio model – it’s free, but it needs subscribers in order to stay open. I do periodic subscription drives rather than continuously bugging people about it. I do my pledge drives when KUSC does theirs. That’s this week.

For those alarmed by an announcement that cell phone numbers are about to be released to telemarketers, before you decide to register with the national DO Not Call Federal Trade Commission number 888-457-8378 you might want to check the story. I am no great fan of Snopes (Snopes has agendas I do not share) but they can be useful. It does no harm to register with the FTC Do Not Call number, but it may not do much good, and there seems to be no urgency in the matter. http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/cell411.asp

I bring this up because recently I have been getting emails warning me that I am about to be spammed on my cell phone. You probably have too.