Since the defeat of the Nazi Third Reich and the end of its horrific
eugenics policies, battles over the politics of life, sex, and death
have continued and evolved. Dagmar Herzog documents how reproductive
rights and disability rights, both latecomers to the postwar human
rights canon, came to be seen as competing--with unexpected
consequences.
Bringing together the latest findings in Holocaust studies, the history
of religion, and the history of sexuality in postwar--and now also
postcommunist--Europe, Unlearning Eugenics shows how central the
controversies over sexuality, reproduction, and disability have been to
broader processes of secularization and religious renewal. Herzog also
restores to the historical record a revelatory array of activists: from
Catholic and Protestant theologians who defended abortion rights in the
1960s-70s to historians in the 1980s-90s who uncovered the
long-suppressed connections between the mass murder of the disabled and
the Holocaust of European Jewry; from feminists involved in the militant
"cripple movement" of the 1980s to lawyers working for right-wing NGOs
in the 2000s; and from a handful of pioneers in the 1940s-60s committed
to living in intentional community with individuals with cognitive
disability to present-day disability self-advocates.