In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot, the are many adversities that poor people, especially those of “colored” had to deal with. Many individuals of which were victims of the eugenics program. The eugenics program was a way of creating a population of more desirable (the whites), and getting rid of the undesirables ( all others who did not meet the criteria of society then). The way that this was carried out was through forced sterilization, and/ or elimination by death. Even though Henrietta lived in a time period where this was more than likely to happen to her. I believe that she was not a victim of the eugenics program, in spite the fact that she still became sterile after being given cancer treatment. Through
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They may not be forcing them to take this test and terminate their pregnancies, but they are using other tactics that make it seem as if it is okay. This is similar to the eugenics program of Hitler, he had brainwashed society by telling them that Jews were worthless and had a negative impact on society, in turn getting everyone who was not a Jew to eliminate them. This is the same concept applied in Iceland, their goal is to” eradicate” the number of people giving birth to babies with down syndrome. This is done by giving expecting mothers access to a “combination” test that determines if the baby will be born with deformities and leaving her (the mother) with the choice of terminating her pregnancy or not. Although the test is only 85% accurate, Quinones points out that almost 100% of women terminated their pregnancy when they found out their babies were to be born with down syndrome. Through my interpretation of this article, it seems as if Iceland wants to rid themselves of people who are not “normal” to create what eugenicist was demeaning a perfect population. In the article, they introduce a mother who had chosen to take the test simply because “ most women did so”, she began to follow a trend. Now recent studies show that
They may not be forcing them to take this test and terminate their pregnancies, but they are using other tactics that make it seem as if it is okay. This is similar to the eugenics program of Hitler, he had brainwashed society by telling them that Jews were worthless and had a negative impact on society, in turn getting everyone who was not a Jew to eliminate them. This is the same concept applied in Iceland, their goal is to” eradicate” the number of people giving birth to babies with down syndrome. This is done by giving expecting mothers access to a “combination” test that determines if the baby will be born with deformities and leaving her (the mother) with the choice of terminating her pregnancy or not. Although the test is only 85% accurate, Quinones points out that almost 100% of women terminated their pregnancy when they found out their babies were to be born with down syndrome. Through my interpretation of this article, it seems as if Iceland wants to rid themselves of people who are not “normal” to create what eugenicist was demeaning a perfect population. In the article, they introduce a mother who had chosen to take the test simply because “ most women did so”, she began to follow a trend. Now recent studies show that