The original image is a photo I took at an exhibition at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.
By Hope K
The more I look into Brett Kavanaugh's background, the more revolting things I find. And I'm not talking about the women he allegedly assaulted. As far as I'm concerned, there is no definite evidence at this time that he did or did not rape anyone. I explained that in my last blog post about Kavanaugh (link: https://steemit.com/politics/@hope-k/kavanaugh-s-elephant-in-the-room ).
Today I will explore his small part in contemporary eugenics in the USA.
Yes, eugenics.
People hear that word and they think of Nazi Germany. However, the concept of eugenics is ancient. Plato believed that society should be controlled by only allowing people of high social status to reproduce. Spartan babies were inspected by the city's leaders, and if they didn't match up to expectations, they were abandoned and left exposed to the elements. In the antebellum South, slaves were bred for traits that were considered conducive to their bondage.
Charles Darwin's cousin, Sir Francis Galton, was a eugenicist. He took natural selection and applied it to humans. This theory of Social Darwinism took off, especially in the United States. Eugenics was used as a reason to segregate and discriminate against oppressed people, including indigenous persons and black people in the South. In 1910, the Eugenics Records Office was established in the US by the biologist Charles Davenport. This led to an acceptance of forced sterilizations, most often for people with disabilities. The 1927 Supreme Court decision, Buck v. Bell, which permitted forced sterilizations at a Virginia facility for people with intellectual disabilities, set a precedent and has never been overturned.
Nazis in World War II took eugenics to a new and horrifying level by performing repugnant human experiments and exterminating people they did not like. After that, eugenics as a concept lost popularity in the USA. But it never stopped.
Kavanaugh enters the picture in 2007. He was the Circuit Judge who upheld the District of Columbia's 2003 ruling that authorized sterilization surgeries for intellectually disabled persons. In Doe Tarlow v. District of Columbia, Kavanaugh states that the wishes of the intellectually disabled are not to be considered if they are deemed by medical personnel to be incapable of making decisions for themselves.
I want to emphasize that these are surgeries on people's "private parts." Imagine being trapped in a situation in which you have no family to help you, you have to rely on a state institution, and that institution has decided that you need to be given anesthesia and get your reproductive parts cut. If you disagree, well, that doesn't really matter.
Surgery is never without risks and it is always painful. Sometimes, if it doesn't go well, the pain and suffering are severe. Patients have even died from this type of surgery.
The UN Human Rights Council decreed in 2013 that forced surgical sterilizations are considered a form of torture. I have to admit that I didn't know it was still legally happening in the US until I started researching Kavanaugh's background. Honestly, I'm less concerned about his small role in this issue than the issue itself. In exploring Kavanaugh, I've discovered more horrors in our judicial system. Thanks, Brett!
I've been wondering why President Trump would choose Kavanaugh to be on the SCOTUS. It occurred to me that, if he's willing to go along with Ken Starr and write that abysmal Starr Report that appears to purposefully obscure a possible homicide, and if he's willing to go along with the DC court with its allowing of forced sterilization surgeries, this guy will do whatever he is told to do in order to get ahead. Yes, this is speculation, and I've been told to not speculate, but I don't care.
I put Brett Kavanaugh's name into the WikiLeaks search bar and found a document from the DNC Email Archive ("Trump/Grassley SCOTUS," 2016-05-05) that kinda proves my point.
Looks like Kavanaugh agrees that the POTUS should always have the ability to override the courts.
No wonder Trump likes him. What president wouldn't?
