From a volunteer at an abortion clinic:
“I always felt that Malthus was right. The population bomb was going to explode, that we are developing an underlying population for which we have no use, a part of society that doesn’t fit in.”
Faye D Ginsburg Contested Lives: the Abortion Debate in an American Community (Berkeley and Los Angeles California: University of California Press, 1989) 68
Thomas Malthus was an 18th century British essayist who believed that overpopulation was a danger to society and that people, especially those of “lower” classes, should have fewer children.
What people comprise the “underlying population” that there is “no use” for?” It is an elitist and possibly racist way of thinking.
Did her concern about curbing the population (particularly by eliminating certain people) influence the way she dealt with people coming in for abortions?
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