Dr. Ruth Westheimer has seen more than most people, and not just because she’s 91 years old. The nonagenarian is a Holocaust survivor, and she’s spent her life as a media personality and sex therapist. Last month, Hulu released a documentary on her career, “Ask Dr. Ruth,” and after the growing attention, Westheimer said she’s changed her mind about talking politics.
In an interview with the Daily Beast published Sunday, Westheimer said she worries about abortion. No, she’s not worried how selective abortion may echo the eugenics of the Nazis. She’s worried that women won’t have enough choices.
“The crucial aspect here is that there always will be some unintended pregnancies — a condom can break, etc. There will always be issues where an abortion is necessary,” she said. “What upsets me very much is, if it becomes illegal again, only women with money will be able to obtain an abortion, because they will fly to Mexico or Europe, and the other ones will go to abortionists or coat hangers. So I’m very concerned about it, because the issue of needing an abortion is always going to be prevalent in our society, because there always will be some contraceptive failures.”
The former Planned Parenthood employee added that what’s happening in the states (in Georgia and Alabama, for example) is “so sad” and said the issue hits home for her because of her career: “I do stand up to express how upset I am … about the issue of abortion and the issue of family planning, because that is what I worked on my entire professional life.”
Setting aside that inconvenient question about the other human life involved in every abortion, Westheimer seems not to realize that abortions are often not the result of a contraception mishap. Moreover, arguments for the “necessity” of abortion tend to echo the ideals of Nazi eugenicists.
Sex selective abortions, primarily in China and India, have led to 23 million fewer female babies, according to one analysis. For societies that value sons more than daughters, abortion is a common form of family planning. In the U.S., a majority of aborted babies come from minority families (39% African American and 25% Hispanic). Abortion can be used as a tool of discrimination, targeting girls and minorities and babies with Down syndrome.
Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger was not simply a fan of “choice,” either. She was a believer in eugenics who wrote that the United States should “apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization, and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.”
When the abortion debate in America is framed as one simply about choice, it makes sense that Westheimer would be pro-abortion. But that’s not the whole story.
Westheimer is on the board of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and as an activist, she no doubt hopes to ensure that no ideological strain of the derangement that led to the Holocaust arises again. Yet the same “purity of the race” animus that drove eugenics in Nazism was also integral to the rise of the modern abortion movement.
Westheimer can argue that supporting abortion is just about supporting women’s freedom, but she can’t ignore history.
