By Their Fruits: Eugenics, Population Control, and the Abortion Campaign

Ann Farmer illuminates a dark corner of modern Western history in her groundbreaking new study of the English abortion campaign. The product of rigorous research, this book aims to correct long-held assumptions that the abortion campaign was the product of feminism and concern about backstreet abortion, and argues instead that it was the fruit of the eugenics/population control movement. Associated with Nazi Germany, eugenics is a social philosophy that advocates the improvement of the human race through various forms of intervention.

Farmer demonstrates that despite their compassionate rhetoric, female abortion advocates were all eugenicists, inspired by men, racist, elitist, and obsessed with controlling the quality and quantity of mankind. 'Solutions' included even the lethal chamber, and abortion advocates worked closely with American and German eugenicists, despite Nazi anti-Semitism.

After the Abortion Act of 1967 was passed, the abortion campaign mobilized an incestuous network of charities, feminist, and 'overpopulation' lobbying groups to defend it; they maintained that it was a necessary means to end dangerous backstreet abortions. Farmer disagrees and argues that in reality the Act was orchestrated by a liberal Home Secretary as a means of addressing poverty. She shows that in subsequent years, abortion increasingly targeted poor women and teenagers and became an integral element of state population control.

Though controversial in subject, By Their Fruits presents an important examination of not only the history of abortion legislation but also the history and impact of the Eugenics movement.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

An independent writer and researcher, Ann Farmer resides in Essex, England. She has published articles in Catholic Herald, Catholic Times, Catholic Life, Christian Family, and Nursing Standard.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:

"In a book which is the result of rigorous research (over 20 pages of 'Works Consulted', a forest of footnotes), mother and researcher Ann Farmer, shows clearly how our current legalized abortion campaign was conceived by the horrendous 1930s' eugenics programme initiated in Nazi Germany -- the philosophy that advocated the improvement of the human race through various forms of intervention and social control." -- www.catholic-family.org

"Ann Farmer's controversial book, By Their Fruits is an alarming revelation for the less well informed of the real motivation behind the Abortion Campaign. In a thoroughly researched and painstakingly documented work she traces the progress of eugenics, population control, from its earliest modern proponent, Thomas Malthus, writing at the end of the eighteenth century to its continued covert manipulation of the legislature right up to today's controversy over the proposed amendments to the 1990 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act. . . . Farmer, well known for her outspokenness in the Labour Life Group, characteristically pulls no punches in her bold disclosures of the subtle under-hand activities of the Eugenics Society that uses well meaning people to further their own ends. She produces facts and figures to prove all of her accusations . . . . At times one could be carried away reading this book as if it were a thriller nove. . . . Whilst this is undoubtedly a seminal academic work it is not a difficult book for the non-academic to read and understand and it ought to be read by all those who take an interest in socio-political affairs and particularly in the future well being of mankind." -- Leon Menzies Racionzer, In Touch

"Ann Farmer uncovers the disturbing politics behind the legislation/decriminalisation of abortion in Britain. Abortion went from being a crime to being a right in 30-some years, from the 1930s, when the energetic campaigning really got underway, to abortion's decriminalisation in 1967."