The Order of Canada to an Abortionist?

Dr. Henry Morgentaler has been named to the Order of Canada for his efforts in promoting and legalizing abortion.  The event provoked controversy. Not a surprise. But it got me thinking about it more seriously in two respects. First, how do I feel about it? And, second, what are the implications for our people?

My gut reaction is negative. I don’t like the whole idea of it being done to any woman, especially those I love. My god, what would it mean if my daughter became pregnant and considered an abortion? It would mean that something had gone very badly, no?

Of course if the fetus were obviously defective, e.g., with a genetic disease like Downs syndrome, there would seem to be no rational (as opposed to religious, aesthetic or emotional) argument against aborting such a fetus. Abortion in all such cases (6% of all abortions) is surely eugenic and is performed for precisely that reason even if the term “eugenic” is rarely used. Even if the “defective” individual were sterile, the parental and societal investment would, from a strictly biological and economic standpoint, constitute a waste of resources. True, even if the politically correct don’t want to think about it.

It’s the same in cases of rape (less than 1% of abortions). Abortion is rational, over and above the psychological trauma of rape (hatred, fear, alienation, sadness), since the pregnancy would not have been the result of the woman’s choice of mate. Women’s choice prevents parasitism by violence-prone males who will not invest in the child’s future. It can be thought of as a minimal selection mechanism for good genes — as well as an element (among many) for promoting a healthy psychological environment for a child.  

But what if there is no evidence of defect in the fetus nor of rape (absence of female choice) (93% of all abortions)? Here it depends on whether you’ve bought an “individualistic” view of humanity or one which assumes an inherent and inevitable interconnectedness and interdependence of people within a society (especially family, extended family and ethny/nation).1 According to the former view, a woman should be able to do anything she wants with herself and her unborn child since no one else is presumed to be directly affected. However, the interdependence position assumes that no one is an island and that we all have some responsibilities toward others in our family and our race.

While people obviously will disagree on the nature and degree of such responsibilities, other members of a woman’s family and extended family do have a legitimate interest in her reproduction. Parents of a woman will typically place great hope in their daughter having children. Ideally, they want their daughter to have a successful marriage (meaning first choosing and then getting a man with good genes, character and capacity to be a good, supportive father to her children). But if things are not ideal (e.g., marriage is not a possibility), the parents may still want the daughter to give birth and at the very least give it up for adoption if they are unable to care for the baby themselves. The strong demand for healthy white babies as adoptees is well known.

Such concerns are not a matter of a (negotiated) “social contract” between the woman and her parents any more than there was a “social contract” governing the parental care of that same woman when she was a child: Her parents simply feel instinctively that they don’t want to lose a grandchild, and obviously there are good evolutionary grounds for such feelings. One could even speculate that such instinctive feelings are the basis for “moral” judgments in such matters which for many are manifested as religious convictions.

Suppose there has been no rape or incest and no obvious defect in the fetus. Could abortion in such cases ever be considered biologically adaptive, meaning promoting the long-term genetic interests of the mother and her family members, their survival and continued reproduction? Well, yes. (Historically, so has infanticide, e.g., when a family’s survival was at stake). All sorts of variables, both genetic and environmental, can have an “adaptive” influence: the quality of the father, the economic circumstances and current health of the mother as compared to what she could anticipate later on, were she to postpone having a child. But having an abortion because of “unfortunate circumstances” has to be weighed against the health hazards of abortion, including risk to future fertility, and against the psychological damage abortion can cause in many if not all women. Incidentally, what sort of women find themselves in such a pickle? If memory serves, in the old days having had an abortion was not a “good sign” of a quality candidate for marriage, although there were sometimes extenuating circumstances. Perhaps today, given the environment that girls are brought up in, it may not signify all that much.

A striking element in this whole business is that many of the most talented people — across all races — are not replacing themselves and abortion would seem to have played at least some role in this trend. E.g., more than half of abortions are for women with family incomes over $30,000, and about twenty percent are for married women. Such patterns are surely dysgenic for an ethny. Reducing the planet’s human population is all well and good, but the place to begin is with those members of an ethny who are least able to provide for a family — as was once the case in N. Europe in the centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution. That revolution may in fact have been facilitated by the preceding differences in reproduction.

Interestingly, Afro-Americans and Hispanics have by far the highest abortion rates in the USA. It has been claimed that such abortions have lowered the crime rate thanks to potential criminals being aborted. If true, that would be eugenic for those groups (and good for the rest of the world), but the hypothesis remains controversial.

Now then, what about Dr. Morgentaler? He was honored for promoting abortion not for cases of defective fetuses or rape and incest (since such abortions were already available in hospitals) but essentially for healthy women and their fetuses when the women simply didn’t want a child at that moment.

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It is sometimes said that such abortions are encouraged by Jewish doctors (e.g., Morgentaler) primarily for non-Jewish women as one of several strategies for reducing the dominance of non-Jewish ethnies. Given the influence of Jews in promoting non-white immigration and the anti-white (and anti-Arab) themes of so many Jewish controlled Hollywood films, this is not an unreasonable hypothesis.

Jewish views on abortion are quite varied. Orthodox or highly religious Jews have almost none at all, obeying the Talmudic dictum to “be fruitful and multiply”; they might well get an abortion if the mother’s life were at stake, but even when the fetus is defective quite often they refuse an abortion. Indeed, Orthodox Jews have eagerly embraced reproductive technology, and Israel has strong pro-natalist policies aimed at producing Jewish babies.

Jewish researchers have been largely responsible for screening for Tay Sachs, a genetic disease common among Ashkenazi Jews, and drastically reducing its incidence in part through abortion (but there are other strategies that avoid abortion).  Since Jews make up only a small percentage of the population of N. America, the sample sizes in statistical studies may be too small for very refined analysis of Jewish abortion rates, but their reported portion of abortions overall (1-2%) seems to be proportional to and not far removed from their reported portion of the general population (2-3%). But that still would mean that in absolute numbers, gentiles are having a vastly higher number of abortions.

It is also said that most abortionists are Jewish and that that is evidence of an ethnic conflict factor. This is possible. The case of Felix Theilhaber, a racial Zionist working in Germany in the early twentieth century, certainly suggests ethnic conflict. Like all racial Zionists, Thielhaber wanted to end Jewish intermarriage, increase Jewish fertility, and preserve Jewish racial purity. Theilhaber was very concerned about the declining Jewish birth rate and was politically active in attempting to increase Jewish fertility (going so far as to propose to tax “child-poor” families to support “child-rich” families). At the same time, he was also instrumental in creation of the Gesellschaft für Sexualreform, whose aims were to legalize abortion and make contraceptives available to the German public.

It would be worthwhile documenting the ethny (not just religion) of both abortion providers and recipients (and not just the present racial categories of black, Hispanic and white). If it turns out that abortion on demand really is almost entirely provided by Jewish doctors for gentile women, then that aspect should be highly publicized in the context of a general discussion of how our people can make healthier life choices within a healthier life style. Those who are responsible for interfering in this quest should be held accountable.

My conclusion concerning Dr. Morgentaler:

It seems quite possible that the promotion of abortions as a routine method of birth control has contributed to the devaluation in Western cultures of the sentiment of “sacredness” surrounding pregnancy and birth of a child. For that reason I’m dismayed by the celebration of Dr. Morgentaler’s “achievements” with an Order of Canada. To the contrary, aborting healthy babies ought to be re-stigmatized. Of course girls would have to be raised to appreciate the nature of abortion rather than left to their own devices in this world of pro-abortion propaganda. That should be part of a major “consciousness raising” for our women — and men — in a campaign to encourage the healthiest and most talented (and not only the best educated) to have plenty of children, while encouraging those who are not healthy or who are unable to be productive citizens to exercise responsible restraint when it comes to reproducing and thereby avoid saddling the rest of society with the cost of their children’s upbringing. (How to put into practice such a policy requires another essay.)

Condemning abortion is only part of the matter, however. Other birth control methods seem likely to have been much more important in promoting non-reproductive sex both inside and outside of marriage. Fortunately, the abortion rate is gradually declining in the West (down 13% over 9 years in Canada). Unfortunately, the population of Western ethnies, relative to the rest of the world, is also decreasing.

Note also that the success of a country like Iran in reducing its birth rate and avoiding catastrophic overpopulation has depended much more on methods other than abortion — which is available there only for extreme cases (including defective fetuses or threat to the physical or psychological health of the mother) and not as a routine birth control method. I would favor such a policy for my own family and people, but with the added stipulation of encouraging reproduction in those responsible enough to raise a healthy, smart and honorable next generation — within their ethny.

Anthony Hilton is Assoc. Prof. (retired) in the Psychology Department, Concordia University, Montreal. He thanks the editor for valuable suggestions.