Interview, And Typescript press release.
(Sanger, Margaret). Muzumdar, Dr. Haridas T. Press Release Typescript, Interview with Sanger. New York: The New History Society, n.d. (post-1932, December).
Two typescript leaves, legal size; rectos only; light wear to top edge; one inch closed tear along horizontal crease.
An interview conducted after Sanger accepted the invitation of the All-India Women’s Conference to address their meeting in Travancore during the Christmas holidays, it was, apparently, worked up into a press release to advertise the event. Dr. Haridas T. Muzumdar, the interviewer, writes, “I went up to see her for the twofold purpose of supplying her requisite information about India and getting a story for our press at home.” Muzumdar is identified as author of Gandhi Versus The Empire, Light from the East, and other works; a member of the International Board of Judges of The New History Society Essay Competition; a “noted author and lecturer; trained in India and America, with a Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin (1929); formerly a fellow and member of the faculty, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin; one of the Founders of the Institute of Oriental Students, Chicago, and now a member of the Advisory Board.”
In this “interview,” in which Sanger summarizes her speech to the Society from January 1932, she puts forth some of the disturbing tendencies of her brand of “scientific birth control,” with its emphasis on segregation and sterilization of those she deemed eugenically “unfit.” Viewing birth control as “a part of the public health program of a country,” she outlines a plan to alleviate the national “burden” of unwanted children worldwide, a plan predicated on the creation of a “Population Congress” that would police immigration, segregation, and sterilization policies. A sampling of their purposes includes the following:
(c) To keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feeble-minded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the Immigration Laws of the United States, 1924.
(d) To apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.
(e) To insure the country against future burdens of maintenance for numerous offspring as may be born of feeble-minded parents, the government would pension all persons with transmissible disease who voluntarily consent to sterilization.
The “second step” in her plan is “to take an inventory of the secondary group such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection, and segregate them on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct.” The third step safeguards the health of women at risk by providing contraception education. Sanger concludes that these steps “seem to lay emphasis on a health program instead of on tariffs, moratoriums and debts but I believe that national health is the first essential factor in any program for universal peace.”
Muzumdar wraps up his report on his visit with Sanger by dramatically comparing her to Gandhi: “In essence, both Mahatma Gandhi and Mrs. Margaret Sanger are interested in improving the lot of the poor—only their methods differ: one advocates continence, the other advocates scientific birth control. The meeting of these two ‘servants’ of the poor will be a sight for the gods.”
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