Margaret Sanger call your office. We’d like to throw you a victory party. Sanger who was very intent on stopping minorities and the poor from breeding, seems to have many disciples.
Last year we learned Supreme Court Justice Ruth Vader Ginsburg said: “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
Well, just this week South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Andre Bauer had a similarly interesting comment. The AP reports:
“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed! You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that.”
Can anyone be surprised that someone in power thinks this way. This way of looking at things is pervasive in our culture today. It takes a strong faith to avoid it.
Bauer maybe forgot his Matthew.
They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Bauer would do well to ponder those words.
He’s already saying he misspoke and all those things but it just seems too close to what so many others are saying to discount it. The art of dehumanization in our increasingly “humanistic” society has just too many tragic consequences to let it pass, in my opinion.
Isn’t it ironic that the “humanistic” way of seeing people so often views people as nothing more than animals?
January 26, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Behind Bauer's statements, which used an inadvisable analogy, is a truth that government welfare programs incentivize poverty and disincentivize personal responsibility. Furthermore you cannot extrapolate from Matthew 25 to the stance that Christians must support government handouts. Taking care of the needy ought to be a personal, private initiative.
January 26, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Our current system rewards stupid women for having children out of wedlock. That's evil.
January 26, 2010 at 3:44 pm
This is a sad display that those that we believe protect life do not. ALL life is sacred. Women who have children outside of marriage are not _rewarded_, the 'benefits' from having a child in the welfare system are few, healthcare until the baby is born, WIC food, a slight increase in foodstamps. There are very few that get pregnant to "improve" their lives. I agree that the private sector should be the ones supporting these women, but we as Catholic Christians need to watch our language and, more importantly, our thougts of the poor. If we except that the poor are money grubbing parasites, as Margaret Sanger and so many in the anti-life movement proclaim, we will never be able to protect life. Are we really in favor of life? In all situations? Or only when it is conventient? If we do place conditions on our support of life, what makes us different from the rest of society?
January 26, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Doesn't scripture also tell us to teach a man to fish instead of handing him a fish every single day? There does come a point in a life of a person when they have to take responsibility and at least try to support themselves and/or the family they create.
January 26, 2010 at 4:07 pm
@Anonymous:
I assume that your comments are more directed at Dymphna than at anyone else. Your point that the welfare benefits from having a child out of wedlock are few is well-taken. However, if I'm not mistaken, Dymphna is correct insofar as those benefits disappear if the woman decides to get married. Assume this situation: A woman on welfare is living with a man, and she gets pregnant by him. If the father of the child is also needy, she may be materially better off by not marrying him but continuing to live with him. In this way, our current system discourages families and "rewards… women for having children out of wedlock." It is not necessary to assume that people who are not in favor of government-funded welfare, or at least welfare as it exists now, think that the poor are "money grubbing parasites." It's not that people are not in favor of life; rather, it would be more accurate to say that life as such must be protected, but that certain lifestyles should not be encouraged.
January 26, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Oops, my previous comment was directed at Anonymous @ 10:44.
January 26, 2010 at 4:40 pm
To Emily, in Louisiana, at least, the "benefits" of having a child born in poverty are the same whether a person is married or single. If her boyfriend lives with her, his income is included in her reports; if she is married to him, his income is included in her reports. I'm a divorcee, a single mother, and a tax-paying citizen who has been on welfare before. It's important that citizens view welfare as a springboard to take oneself out of poverty, rather than a bed on which to make oneself comfortable, and I think many receipts view it as this springboard. (Especially in states as impoverished as my own.) For the record, Bauer did not compare _unmarried_ poor women to animals, he compared people who fail to "plan" their families to animals.
January 26, 2010 at 4:59 pm
I'm sorry, _poor_ people who don't plan their families to animals. As close as I can think, he is offering us two options: 1) To have a society similar to third world countries. Poor people have children at their own risk, if they reproduce, their children are left to fend for themselves. Those who are smart and poor will have less children. 2) Provide welfare so long as the poor practice contraception. Chemical birth control (which is monitered by a doctor) for the women. If a woman gets pregnant she has two options: lose welfare or abort.
I know this sounds far out there, but stop and think, this is really what we are saying when we say that by feeding the poor we encourage mindless breeding.
January 26, 2010 at 5:02 pm
One thing to notice is that when Ruth Vader Gisnburg essentially said the same thing it got zero media coverage. I'd bet this story will be everywhere in the media even though nobody ever heard of him outside of South Carolina before today.
January 26, 2010 at 6:03 pm
By "misspoke" a politician usually means he accidently said what he really believes.
January 26, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Matthew, I found his comments, along with the fact that it was so publicized was ironic in many ways. Firstly, dems can say that anytime and they don't get so much as a head-nod for it (mostly because they are Sanger's disciples). But also, what I found discouraging was that at the end of the article I read on Yahoo news, they concluded that the comments made by Bauer would not effect his popularity as he is followed by an "avid fundamentalist base". Does this mean that pro-life conservatives follow this guy??? Yikes…
January 26, 2010 at 7:47 pm
I am reminded of the following Flannery O'Connor quote:
In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.
January 26, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Yeah! Let's stop feeding people and give them contraceptives instead of food. Isn't that what our Saviour would do? As Jesus taught us, don't feed the hungry because it will make them dependent on government programs. I know this from personal experience. I have a five year old daughter in need of a bone marrow translplant but I cannot afford it. If we lose this battle, those of you who are against helping the poor will win since it will be one mouth less feeding on the system.
January 26, 2010 at 10:08 pm
No one here is against feeding the poor. Religious folks give more money to charity than those who don't attend church. Conservatives give much more than liberals. But…it isn't charity if it is forcibly taken from you in the form of taxes. Plus, many people do not feel the need to give, "I've already paid my taxes for welfare," or cannot afford to give more because the government takes so much.
I think it is good to help our fellow man and no one here would think of your child or any other soul as a useless eater, that is the Democrats chant, not ours. Good Catholics love every life and want to protect them from contraception to natural death.
I pray for your little girl to find a donor.
January 27, 2010 at 3:27 am
"Good Catholics love every life and want to protect them from contraception to natural death." –kat @ 01/26/2010, 5:08 PM
Um, I'm a little bit confused, should that have been "…conception to natural death?"
January 27, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Whoops. Yes, that would be, "Good Catholics love every life from conception to natural death."
conception good
contraception bad
January 31, 2010 at 6:06 am
I now see where you so-called holier-than-thou people hearts are. Pro-life for the selected only. Protect the rest until birth. Listen at your selves. You stand behind this man only because he is a Republican. You stand in front of GOD, and judge even when he tells you not to judge. Shame on you all. I will pray the sinners' prayer for you.
January 31, 2010 at 9:29 am
Sorry, last Anonymous, we Catholics are sinners. Our priests go to Confession every week
and so should we all. No one is standing behind Bauer for any reason. Living in SC I can tell you he's killed his chances for the governship -as if he really had much of a chance!
If we're supposed to be "standing behind" the man just precisely who are we judging? It seems to me that you're the one who is judging someone. It's not clear who you're accsing of being judgmental and why you'd pray the sinners' prayer for anyone but yourself.
February 14, 2010 at 2:45 am
I've never read so much patent BS in my life. The comments are even worse than the O.P.
You are the foulest, most self-righteous, lacking in any personal virtues, group of scoundrels I have ever, ever had the misfortune to encounter.
You are not well off because you are virtuous, or because the almighty favors you. Others are not poor for lack of virtue or disfavor with God.
You are out of your minds… and have hearts like shriveled up raisins.
April 3, 2010 at 4:25 am
Too many idiots breeding and on Welfare. We have too many welfare people and not enough tax payers. I am sick of these welfare mama's with 10 kids and my wife and I struggle to save for 1 or 2 children.