Thread by @JMHendersonSr

Who should we kill?

A meditation on #MargaretSanger's mal mot, "The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."

[From M. Sanger, Women and the New Race (1920).]

Oddly, I grew up thinking that mercy granted life, extended life, ameliorated pain or difficulty, removed unjustly imposed restrictions on liberty.

You know what I mean. You've granted mercies to others.

They arrived late after you labored to prepare a meal.

They failed to take care and caused damage to property, knocking over a lamp or running into your rear bumper.

Thousands of small acts of thoughtlessness or lack of self-awareness intrude on our peace, our contentment.

When we are at our best, we don't fire back a revenging counter-slight at all; rather, we muse to ourselves about the terrible pressures the offender must be under, perhaps the loss of a job, a family member, etcetera. We show #mercy.

Governors, too, and presidents show mercy. #Clemency, #paroles, and #pardons are acts of executive mercy on convicted criminals, most typically felons.

Yet, in the upside-down, from which #Sanger and the #deathcult of #abortion emerged, mercy is different.

#WilliamShakespeare's #Shylock, the Jew, agreed to invest funds on behalf of another Venetian, allowing that Venetian to make certain trade investments. To secure that investment, a third man, a friend of the borrower agreed to act as surety on the investment.

Because that third party had abused Shylock for #usurious practices and #defamed #Judaism, Shylock set the bond as #apoundofflesh if the investment was forfeited.

Of course, misfortune struck, and the investment was lost.

Shylock, resenting generations of anti-Semitism in Europe demanded payment. Before he did so, Portia pleas to spare the guarantor from the knife, the wounding, and the risk of death should Shylock carry out his contractual right. Portia appeals to Shylock on the quality of mercy:

"The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest.

It becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings,
But mercy is above this sceptered sway.
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings.

It is an attribute to God himself.
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice."

This, aside from scripture itself, is the most moving elucidation of mercy written in the English language.

So, again, we return to Sanger and her Planned Parenthood and her cult of despair.

"The most merciful thing."

Not clothing them.
Not feeding them.
Not housing them.
Not teaching them.
Not loving them.

"THE MOST MERCIFUL THING ... IS TO KILL."

In context, Sanger expounds on her litany of the evils of large families:

"[S]ince there is still an abundance of proof at hand, it may be offered for the sake of those who find difficulty in adjusting old-fashioned ideas to the facts. The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."

I am a fifth son, a seventh sibling, and an eighth child. In every way that one can objectively consider the impact on me if large families followed Sanger's sentimentality, I would never have lived to my first birthday.

Nor would @Calgon8kids and I have raised a family of eight children, and you would never have had the chance, the unique opportunity, to know and love our younger kids, Tee, Justin Daniel Henderson, Patrick Henderson, and Megan Elizabeth.

Mayhaps you think the world would be better off if we were absent from its surface. If that is your feeling, then that would be some character trait other than mercy.

Yet, for Margaret Sanger, murdering children after they are born evinces mercy, not judgment. We see that her concept of mercy is strained, does not drop as the gentle rain from the heavens above, and does not bless either the giver or the receiver of it.

Reading Sanger in-depth confirms her entirely animistic approach to existence; reading her illuminates how she could speak glowingly of the Nazi program of eugenics or race purification.

In the earliest days of our years at New Hope Church, while the church held services in Springfield, Virginia, I ran into the spirit of Margaret Sanger. We were fairly new congregants and different from many attending as our still growing brood of five, with a sixth on the way.

We arrived early and sat in the middle of the assembly. After we sat down, a woman two rows back turned to her neighbor and said, in a stage whisper, "I'd rather be dead than have that many kids!"

For years, I wished I'd taken the opportunity to tell her to go fuck herself, as I doubted anyone could stand the thought of producing any offspring, let alone multiples, with her. But the Walter Mitty side of me held the helm and I didn't do so.

If I did experience the same treatment today as we did then, I would not unload. Instead, I would explain to her that children are a gift, a blessing, from God.

I would tell stories of how our lives were enriched with love and joy, how we learned practical lessons in love and in life through and with our children.

I would propose to them that children are a promise of future hopes, states of happiness, loves, even glories. But they aren't burdens, they aren't debts, and they aren't weights.

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