Topic: CNSNews.com
A May 1 CNSNews.com article by Monisha Bansal is designed to promote the idea that" Charles Darwin's theories provided the basis for the eugenics movement, which 100 years ago saw the passage of the world's first forced sterilization law," which sounds a lot like D. James Kennedy's factually dubious attempt to link Darwin to Hitler. Bansal's main source is John West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, whom she describes only as a "conservative policy expert." in fact, the Discovery Institute is an anti-evolution, pro-creationism (which they call "intelligent design") activist group, something alluded to only when Bansal quoted a spokesman for the American Humanists Association, who referenced "the rhetoric creationists have been using since the late 1970s."
Bansal also repeated the usual conservative attack line that "Planned Parenthood Federation of America's founder Margaret Sanger was an advocate of eugenics," quoting West as saying, "Abortions are performed on the poor in disproportionate numbers," countered only by a statement pulled from Planned Parenthood's website that the organization finds Sanger's views on eugenics "objectionable and outmoded." She apparently made no effort to contact an organization spokesman herself.
But, as Pandagon notes, during the period of Planned Parenthood’s history in which Sanger was associating with eugenicists, the organization was, in fact, adamantly anti-abortion.
