Strange news item:Marie Stopes.

[POSTMAN]

British Government Chooses Hitler-Loving Abortion Movement Pioneer for Stamps.

By Hilary White


LONDON, September 2, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com ) - Marie Stopes, the notorious early 20th century contraception campaigner, eugenicist and anti-Semite, did for Britain what Margaret Sanger did for the US: preached the doctrines of eugenics and promoted contraception and sterilisation to achieve "racial hygiene." So successful was she at altering British society in favour of her eugenics doctrines, the British government has chosen her to be included in a "Women of Distinction" line of stamps.

The Royal Mail announced this weekend that the face of Marie Stopes, who advocated the sterilisation of poor women to promote the "welfare of the race", will feature on the 50p stamp. The stamps will be available beginning 14 October 2008.

Columnist Gerald Warner wrote on his weblog at the Daily Telegraph, "Considering the hysteria nowadays attaching to issues of race, at first sight it seems extraordinary that Stopes should have earned commemoration on a stamp."

"To the [politically correct] establishment, however, even racist peccadilloes can be ignored to honour a pioneer who helped promote the anti-life culture and relieve women of the intolerable trauma of giving birth to a child with a cleft palate."

Marie Stopes was a major figure in normalising eugenics doctrines in Britain and abroad one result of which has been that, under current British legislation, a child deemed by a doctor to have a "serious" defect may be legally killed by abortion up to the end of the natural gestation period.

Warner's comments have been re-published and expanded upon by many in the British Catholic bloggosphere. Fr. Ray Blake, a popular priest blogger and pastor of St. Mary Magdalen parish in Brighton commented, "I am afraid any items of post arriving here with this stamp on it will be returned to the sender. I hope other bloggers take this up, especially amongst the Jewish community."

Christopher Howse, another Telegraph writer, criticised the choice this weekend, calling it "absurd." "It is hard to think the postage stamp committee was fully aware of the craziness of Miss Stopes's life and ideas." Howse noted that when her only son Harry announced his engagement to a woman who wore spectacles, Stopes became furious, writing, "I have the horror of our line being so contaminated and little children with the misery of glasses."

Born in 1880, Stopes was a paleobotanist by education, but it is her legacy as a promoter of eugenics, Nazi racial theories, mandatory sterilisation for poor people and artificial contraception - what the Royal Mail calls "family planning" - for which she is best remembered. Marie Stopes International is a major engine of the world's abortion and population control movement, with nearly 500 centres in 38 countries.

In 1921, Stopes opened Britain's first "family planning" clinic, offering artificial contraception to married women of the lower classes in an attempt to control the population of the poor, whom she considered to be polluting the race. Reflecting the racist message of the eugenics philosophy, her birth-control organisation was called the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress. Her 1921 slogan, echoed by the modern abortion movement, was, "Joyful and Deliberate Motherhood, A Safe Light in our Racial Darkness."

In 1930, other such organisations joined to form the National Birth Control Council, later the Family Planning Association, which remains one of the most powerful voices of the abortion lobby to this day.

The BBC biography noted that Stopes spent the last years of her life writing poetry. The BBC declined to mention, however, that in August 1939, just a month before Britain went to war with Nazi Germany, she sent a collection of these to Adolph Hitler, accompanied by a note reading, "Dear mr Hitler, Love is the greatest thing in the world: so will you accept from me these (poems) that you may allow the young people of your nation to have them?" In 1935 Stopes attended the International Congress for Population Science in Berlin, sponsored by the Nazi regime.

In her 1920 book "Radiant Motherhood" Stopes called for the "sterilisation of those totally unfit for parenthood (to) be made an immediate possibility, indeed made compulsory." She also heavily criticised the abolition of child labour for the lower classes.

Following Stopes' death in 1958, a large part of her personal fortune went to the Eugenics Society, the organisation that lives today as the Galton Institute. The Galton Institute continues to promote eugenics through artificial reproduction techniques such as in vitro fertilisation, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and direct manipulation of human beings, and their genome, at the embryonic stage.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/sep/08090204.html

Below is a google search for Stopes.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Marie+ ... GB218GB218

[norbert]

Just a bit ? right wing ?

[plodsie]

I didn't know the Government chose what goes on our stamps... I'd have liked to have seen our Olympic Gold medal winners honoured on our stamps instead of this witch.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

I am sorry but that article was written by a Pro-Life Group in America and understandably is heavily biased in its views on Marie Stopes. To balance that please find link below to a pro Stopes site http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wstopes.htm.

I personally have no feelings either way on this woman but as always I urge people not to rely on one source of information, even when you agree with it, but when a subject interests you, research it yourself, and where possible read articles and publications that oppose each others views and ultimately make your own mind up. There are very few things in this world that are as Black and White as the mainstream media would like us to believe.

[andy2007]

I've read that one too. However, have you seen the Wikapedia article about her?
It includes this enlightening quote from her:
“Not many years ago the labourer's child could be set to work early and could very shortly earn his keep; while at the same time the young gentleman was an expense and care to his father and mother until he had passed through the University of Oxford or Cambridge, and among some even until he had made his "finishing" world tour. The trend of legislation has continuously extended the age of irresponsible youth in the lower and lower middle classes, until it now approaches that of the middle and upper class youth. A stride in this direction was taken by the last Education Act, which has made education compulsory throughout the whole country to an age which is nearly university age.
I need not labour the resulting effect of the ever increasing prolongation of youth. It is not only apparent but has received sufficient treatment from the hands of various authors and thinkers.
Its corollary, however, has still not received that clear and direct thought which its significance demands.
Parenthood under the present regime, is not only an increasing responsibility and expense, it has become so great a strain upon the resources of those who have for themselves and their children a high standard of living that it is tending to become a rare privilege for some who would otherwise gladly propagate large families.
As Dean Inge reminded us (Outspoken Essays, 1919), there was a stage in the high civilisation of Greece when slaves were only allowed to rear a child as a reward for their good behaviour. I find a curious parallel to this in the treatment of a section of our society by our present community.
Crushed by the burden of taxation which they have not the resources to meet and to provide for children also: crushed by the national cost of the too numerous children of those who do not contribute to the public funds by taxation, yet who recklessly bring forth from an inferior stock individuals who are not self-supporting, the middle and superior artisan classes have, without perceiving it, come almost to take the position of that ancient slave population.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Stopes

Still think she's a suitable person to be on our Stamps?

[pinstripe]

She was definitely a product of her age. We should remember that anti-Semitism was rife throughout Europe until after the second world war (and not only in Germany, but France, Poland, Russia and even England). Her views therefore on the 'lower classes' are not really surprising, although I wonder what her views on the suffragette movement were.

[andy2007]

It's not just her attitude to the Lower Classes and Jews, that I find objectionable. But her advocation of Eugenics.

She was a product of her time. But she was very determined to make things even worse than they already were! Many of us wouldn't be alive, if she had got her way.

She is the sort of person, who should be remembered, so that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. Not as someone who should be honoured, by putting her face on Stamps.

I Posted the earlier quote from Wikapedia, to show just what she was like. Regardless of where her attitudes and behaviour come from. They are still disgusting.

Would you like to see one of the great advocates of the Slave Trade honoured?
Or someone who fought against it?

In the same way. I would expect someone who played an important part, in preventing Eugenics becoming the norm in Britain, to be honoured. Not the likes of her!

[Lounge Lizard]

British Government Chooses Hitler-Loving Abortion Movement Pioneer for Stamps.

By Hilary White


LONDON, September 2, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com ) - Marie Stopes, the notorious early 20th century contraception campaigner, eugenicist and anti-Semite, did for Britain what Margaret Sanger did for the US: preached the doctrines of eugenics and promoted contraception and sterilisation to achieve "racial hygiene." So successful was she at altering British society in favour of her eugenics doctrines, the British government has chosen her to be included in a "Women of Distinction" line of stamps.

The Royal Mail announced this weekend that the face of Marie Stopes, who advocated the sterilisation of poor women to promote the "welfare of the race", will feature on the 50p stamp. The stamps will be available beginning 14 October 2008.

Columnist Gerald Warner wrote on his weblog at the Daily Telegraph, "Considering the hysteria nowadays attaching to issues of race, at first sight it seems extraordinary that Stopes should have earned commemoration on a stamp."

"To the [politically correct] establishment, however, even racist peccadilloes can be ignored to honour a pioneer who helped promote the anti-life culture and relieve women of the intolerable trauma of giving birth to a child with a cleft palate."

Marie Stopes was a major figure in normalising eugenics doctrines in Britain and abroad one result of which has been that, under current British legislation, a child deemed by a doctor to have a "serious" defect may be legally killed by abortion up to the end of the natural gestation period.

Warner's comments have been re-published and expanded upon by many in the British Catholic bloggosphere. Fr. Ray Blake, a popular priest blogger and pastor of St. Mary Magdalen parish in Brighton commented, "I am afraid any items of post arriving here with this stamp on it will be returned to the sender. I hope other bloggers take this up, especially amongst the Jewish community."

Christopher Howse, another Telegraph writer, criticised the choice this weekend, calling it "absurd." "It is hard to think the postage stamp committee was fully aware of the craziness of Miss Stopes's life and ideas." Howse noted that when her only son Harry announced his engagement to a woman who wore spectacles, Stopes became furious, writing, "I have the horror of our line being so contaminated and little children with the misery of glasses."

Born in 1880, Stopes was a paleobotanist by education, but it is her legacy as a promoter of eugenics, Nazi racial theories, mandatory sterilisation for poor people and artificial contraception - what the Royal Mail calls "family planning" - for which she is best remembered. Marie Stopes International is a major engine of the world's abortion and population control movement, with nearly 500 centres in 38 countries.

In 1921, Stopes opened Britain's first "family planning" clinic, offering artificial contraception to married women of the lower classes in an attempt to control the population of the poor, whom she considered to be polluting the race. Reflecting the racist message of the eugenics philosophy, her birth-control organisation was called the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress. Her 1921 slogan, echoed by the modern abortion movement, was, "Joyful and Deliberate Motherhood, A Safe Light in our Racial Darkness."

In 1930, other such organisations joined to form the National Birth Control Council, later the Family Planning Association, which remains one of the most powerful voices of the abortion lobby to this day.

The BBC biography noted that Stopes spent the last years of her life writing poetry. The BBC declined to mention, however, that in August 1939, just a month before Britain went to war with Nazi Germany, she sent a collection of these to Adolph Hitler, accompanied by a note reading, "Dear mr Hitler, Love is the greatest thing in the world: so will you accept from me these (poems) that you may allow the young people of your nation to have them?" In 1935 Stopes attended the International Congress for Population Science in Berlin, sponsored by the Nazi regime.

In her 1920 book "Radiant Motherhood" Stopes called for the "sterilisation of those totally unfit for parenthood (to) be made an immediate possibility, indeed made compulsory." She also heavily criticised the abolition of child labour for the lower classes.

Following Stopes' death in 1958, a large part of her personal fortune went to the Eugenics Society, the organisation that lives today as the Galton Institute. The Galton Institute continues to promote eugenics through artificial reproduction techniques such as in vitro fertilisation, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and direct manipulation of human beings, and their genome, at the embryonic stage.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/sep/08090204.html

Below is a google search for Stopes.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Marie+ ... GB218GB218

"lifesitenews" says it all.
If they're not having a go at Stopes appearinging on a British stamp they're commenting on "uproar in Vatican over a conference promoting organ donation" or attacking the use of condons in AIDS ridden sub-saharan Africa.
Such nutters are probably best ignored.

[norbert]

good point - don't get me wrong on this - but who wants to go back to the age of women having 13 children or women dying due to childbirth

[Poshpost]

Winston Churchill was an advocate of eugenics, as was Alexander Graham Bell, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, H.G.Wells, Emile Zola, William Kellogg, Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge. So Marie Stopes was not alone, unlike Churchill, Bell and a few others in the list above it took until 2008 for her to be placed on a British postage stamp. What is the problem? Churchill sent armed troops in against striking miners and was an alcoholic, did that stop him from being placed on a stamp.

[Poshpost]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... ily.gender

Harry Stopes-Roe started his career as a physicist, but went on to take a PhD at Cambridge in philosophy. Then at Birmingham University he combined physics and philosophy, but then turned to moral philosophy. He now recognises over-population as the most important practical moral problem. He is a Vice President of the British Humanist Association.

[Lounge Lizard]

Winston Churchill was an advocate of eugenics, as was Alexander Graham Bell, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, H.G.Wells, Emile Zola, William Kellogg, Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge. So Marie Stopes was not alone, unlike Churchill, Bell and a few others in the list above it took until 2008 for her to be placed on a British postage stamp. What is the problem? Churchill sent armed troops in against striking miners and was an alcoholic, did that stop him from being placed on a stamp.

That's right, Churchill has appeared on seven British stamps, two in 1965, four in 1974 and 1 in 2006. And Alexander Graham Bell was commemerated in 1976 and H G Wells in 1995. Also well known Nazi sympathiser King Edward VIII had 4 definitive stamps before his abdication in December 1936.

[andy2007]

I had no idea, that they all advocated Eugenics. But did any of them, actually call for certain groups of people to be prevented from having Children. Or did they simply advocate certain types of people, being encouraged to have Children?
I know I'm showing my ignorance here. But I really don't know he answer.

If they DID call for certain people to be prevented from having Children. Then, despite all the good things that they have done as well. They should be treated with the same contempt, that I show for Marie Stopes. Unless of course, they later Publicly denounced Eugenics, later in their lives.

I know that many of you will be deeply shocked by my attitude. But anyone who actually advocated trying to kill off certain sections of Society, by preventing them having Children. Deserve nothing more, than our contempt. Regardless of their other, good contributions to Society.

There are also those, who are advocating the use of Genetic Engineering, to provide even better results than Eugenics promised. Designer Babies, as they are called. Are no longer Science Fiction. But could potentially be a reality, in just a few years. It's only current Law, that has prevented it happening already.

It seems that there are still some, who haven't learned the lessons of the past. Thank goodness, that there are (so far) enough people, who are willing to stand against them.

I happen to think, that Marie Stopes, achieved a great deal for Women. And those achievements, are still helping them today. But does that compensate for her other beliefs?
Not in my opinion!

[Poshpost]

From Virginia Woolf's diary January 1915: "On the towpath we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles. the first was a very tall young man, just queer enough to look twice at, but no more; the second shuffled and looked aside; & then one realised that every one in that long line was a miserable ineffective shuffling creature, with no forehead, or no chin, & an imbecile grin, or a wild suspicious stare. It was perfectly horrible. They should certainly be killed."

Such views were commonplace and widely accepted at the time, and reflected in public attitudes, as Virginia Woolf exemplifies in this diary entry.

In pre-1914 years, when Winston Churchill was a Cabinet Minister, he said that 'the unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate.' The solution he proposed was that 'the source from which all the streams of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed.' This 'simple surgical operation' would allow these individuals 'to live in the world without causing much inconvenience to others.'

The National Socialist eugenic policies pursued by Germany in the 1930's should have brought such views into total disrepute, but sterilisation policies were pursued in many countries until recent years. Sweden, that bastion of social democracy, sterilised some 60,000 citizens between 1935 and 1976, mostly compulsorily, in pursuit of eugenic policies. Other Scandinavian countries were involved and many American states had similar legislation.

Woolf's, Churchills etc views should be seen in this perspective. Similarly, anti-semitism was widespread and accepted at the time, sometimes coupled with racial eugenic theories. In 1907 Sidney Webb, a founding father of British socialism, could write a Fabian pamphlet deploring the falling birth-rate 'when children are being freely born to the Irish Roman Catholics and to the Polish, Russian and German Jews, on the one hand, and to the thriftless and irresponsible on the other. This can hardly result in anything but national deterioration, or, as an alternative, in this country gradually falling to the Irish and the Jews.' It is important in this as in other areas to consider the views of the above in the context of their times.

[Lounge Lizard]

The Marie Stopes stamp is a 50p one which is not a domestic rate but 50p is intended on mail up to 20g for Europe so it will probably go down well with present day Nazi sympathisers in Germany.
Also of concern is the sexist nature of the stamps, "Women of Distinction", following on from the "Famous Women" set of 1996. Never has Royal Mail issued sets for "Men of Distinction" or "Famous Men".