Maternal Eugenics: The Dark History Behind the Dobbs Decision

Colloquy

"A victory for white life." That's how Illinois Congresswoman Mary Miller described the Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to an abortion at a rally with former President Donald Trump last June. Miller, who had quoted Hitler in a previous speech, later said that she had meant to say "right to life."

Jamie Marsella, a Harvard PhD candidate in the history of science, says that in historical terms, Miller's distinction doesn't make much difference. Looking back over a century to the Progressive Era, she finds that maternal and reproductive health policies were driven by racial imperatives. President Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, saw declining birth rates among white people as the country's greatest problem and spoke publicly about, quote, "race suicide.” This month on Colloquy, Marsella discusses the American ideal of motherhood, its racial overtones, and its echoes in the renewed wrangling over reproductive freedom epitomized by the recent Supreme Court decision on abortion.