Roe v. Wade attorney: Use the abortion pill to ‘eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy, and poor’

Disturbing correspondence from a co-counsel of Roe v. Wade, the decision which legalized abortion nationwide, reveals that a eugenics and population control ideology has long been behind the push for the abortion pill’s availability.

The abortion pill, which has ties to the manufacturer of the deadly gas Zyklon-B used by the Nazis during the Holocaust, was introduced under the name RU-486 (“RU” for Roussel-Uclaf, the French manufacturer of the pill, and “486” for the drug’s serial number). The abortion pill was eventually brought to the United States by groups with ties to eugenics, and today, eugenics-connected groups are funding the expansion of the abortion pill.

“Eliminate… the poor”

In 1992, Ron Weddington, a co-counsel of Roe v. Wade and the ex-husband of Roe attorney Sarah Weddington, wrote to the newly-elected Bill Clinton administration expressing concern about the growing size of certain population groups. His open letter, uncovered by Judicial Watch, recommended that the president should “eliminate” certain segments of society via vasectomies, tubal ligations, abortions, and the RU-486 abortion pill (emphasis added):

Sarah and I have been discussing the notion of our setting up [a non] profit corporation to license and distribute RU486. It’s possible that such an endeavor could be the vehicle for a number of birth control efforts. 26 million food stamp recipients is more than the economy can stand.

“I don’t think you are going to get very far in reforming the country until we have a better educated, healthier, wealthier population,” Weddington suggested.

The former Roe co-counselor also introduced his audacious plan in a letter addressed directly to “President-To-Be Clinton” (emphasis added):

… you can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country.  No, I’m not advocating some sort of mass extinction of these unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that.

The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can’t afford to have babies. There, I’ve said it. It’s what we all know is true, but we only whisper it….

I am not proposing that you send federal agents armed with Depo-Provera dart guns to the ghetto. You should use persuasion rather than coercion. You and Hillary are a perfect example. Could either of you have gone to law school and achieved anything close to what you have if you had three or four or more children before your were 20? No! You waited until you were established and in your 30’s to have one child. That is what sensible people do. For every Jesse Jackson who has fought his way out of the poverty of a large family there are millions mired in poverty, drugs and crime….

Weddington understood that the target community viewed abortion as Black genocide. The same year Weddington penned his letter, accusations of racism were directed at a school program in Baltimore which targeted minority students with the Norplant contraceptive, developed by the Population Council.

In 1994, with the encouragement of the Bill Clinton administration, Roussel-Uclaf assigned the US rights of marketing and distribution of the abortion pill to the eugenics-founded Population Council. The drug’s distribution was later handed over to Danco Laboratories, a sub-licensee of the Population Council.

Forced population control as a back-up plan

But forced population control was always on the table. Just a few years prior to Weddington’s letter, a 1969 New York Times article acknowledged that many leaders sitting on Planned Parenthood’s board were in favor of coercive population control. The paper quoted a Planned Parenthood board member as saying, “What it all comes down to is that we want the poor to stop breeding while we retain our freedom to have large families. It’s strictly a class point of view.” (emphasis added)

Alan F. Guttmacher, a former Planned Parenthood president and vice-president of the American Eugenics Society, was also an advocate of population control. He desired “voluntary measures” of control to be used first, although compulsory measures were never ruled out. As he saw it, if “voluntary measures” did not work, then force could become necessary. In 1970, Guttmacher even suggested to Boston Magazine that the U.N. should be used to “curb population” so it would not be perceived as genocide. “If the United States goes to the Black man or the yellow man and says slow down your reproduction rate, we’re immediately suspected of having ulterior motives to keep the white man dominant in the world. If you can send in a colorful UN force, you’ve got much better leverage,” Guttmacher stated.

Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger had the same idea when she recommended that Black doctors and ministers be recruited to spread her organization’s message to the Black community. And Weddington’s ideas resemble those of Sanger, who was an advocate of forced sterilization and eugenics. Weddington also mirrors the thoughts of Larry Lader, a Sanger biographer and “disciple” who co- founded what is known today as NARAL Pro-Choice America. “Abortion,” Lader’s first publication, was cited several times in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Abortion has long been the tool of racists 

Lader once suggested that “the percentage of Puerto Ricans, Negroes, [and] other minority groups ” are the groups who need abortion the most. He told WNCY, “[…W]e can []… no longer afford to bring into the world ten, fifteen children, most of whom will be starving not just in India, but often in our own home, will become the flotsam and jetsam of society, will become the drug addict.”

Lader also advocated for the legalization of the abortion pill. In a 2000 press release, Lader boasted about his “plot” to break the law and smuggle the drug into the US. He told an audience, “We have all sorts of little tricks; we’re tricky people. We smuggled some in from China through a doctor I knew coming in….”

Lader’s book, “Abortion II” hinted at the eugenic ‘benefits’ abortion could bring, pointing out that the “balance” of adoptable babies had shifted from white to, in his words, “unwanted” minority children. In his 1991 book on RU-486, Lader made it clear that “[w]orldwide population control could be an indirect benefit of the use of RU-486.”

In Weddington’s letter, he emphasized:

[…G]overnment is also going to have to provide vasectomies, tubal ligations, and abortions… RU486 and conventional abortions… Our survival depends upon our developing a population where everyone contributes. We don’t need more cannon fodder. We don’t need more parishioners. We don’t need more cheap labor. We don’t need more poor babies.

Read more of Weddington’s elitist and condescending letter, seen below:

Ron Weddington letter about RU486 abortion pill to President Clinton page 3 to 4 (Image: Judicial Watch)A 1991 book published by three pro-choice researchers in 1991 said that the idea that the abortion pill was developed “to expand or improve women’s ‘choices’ to control their reproduction” is a complete “misconception.” They wrote, “The specific intention of such research was to restrict population growth in countries that were judged to be ‘underdeveloped.’ If successful, the method(s) could be extended to groups in the United States, Black, Hispanic and Native American Women (Department of Health, Education and Welfare, NIH, USA, 1969).”

“Reproductive technological history seems to be repeating itself,” they added. And indeed, the population control agenda of the abortion pill continues today in full force, having ended the lives of more than 3.7 million preborn children.

“Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!