The Right to Live as a Family is Under Attack

Sweden: Famed for its meatballs, eugenics and 'strong welfare state'

I've had an email from a lady in the UK called Margaret. Thought it was worth posting. Everyone thinks Sweden is so great, forgetting its recent history in embracing the ideology of eugenics.

'I am the member of a group attempting to gain some publicity for a family in Sweden (one of many) who have been torn apart by the social services for no reason other than a difference of ideology .

The Swedish situation is extremely frightening, and actually more extreme than in this country, but serves as a warning for what can happen if these draconian powers, pitted against the rights of families, are not challenged. The undermining of the rights of families to bring children up according to their own beliefs is happening everywhere.

I know you will be aware of the attempts to enforce anti-Christian sex education policies in this country, together with the rights of parents to know what 'health' advice and 'treatment' is being given to their children.

My homeschooling friends report that there is also hostility in some quarters to their rights to educate their own children. This Swedish family are now appealing to the European Court of Human rights to have their child returned, but unless they get some more support the case might not even be heard. Many people are praying for them (including Tyburn Convent), but they could really do with a powerful voice (Powerful? Loud, maybe!) from the church militant, such as yourself, to spread the word. I am posting a link so you can check the case out for yourself: There is a link on the facebook group to an excellent website with more detailed information and heartbreaking 'before and after' photos. You may not feel that the case is relevant to your readers, but please check it out and see what you think.

So, there we go. In the words of Bryan Adams, in that hit that spent ages at number one, "You can''t tell me its not worth fighting for". Click here for a link to the Facebook campaign to have Domenic Johansson returned to his parents. Click here to sign a petition against his unwarranted seizure from his parents. We could see more of this happening in the UK, Europe and the US also, over efforts at parents to have their children homeschooled. Click here for a blog set up to raise awareness of the injustice suffered by Domenic and his family at the hands of the State.

On another note, if you look up the word 'Eugenics' on Wikipedia, Sweden feature strongly in the entry.

In Sweden, the Sterilization Act of 1934 provided for the voluntary sterilization of some mental patients. The law was passed while the Swedish Social Democratic Party was in power, though it was also supported by all other political parties in Parliament at the time, as well as the Lutheran Church and much of the medical profession. From about 1934 to until 1975, Sweden sterilized more than 62,000 people, with Herman Lundborg in the lead of the project. Sweden sterilized more people than any other European state except Nazi Germany. However, it is more reasonable to compare numbers per capita. If so, Finland has sterilised the most and the Nordic countries and the state of California sterilised about the same percentage. More people were sterilized in 1948 than any other year.

Sweden's large-scale eugenics program targeted the deviant and the mentally ill. Most sterilizations were voluntary (though voluntary does not necessarily mean free from persuasion or exhortation). The Swedish government inquiry found that about 30,000 of the 62,000 were sterilised under some form of pressure or coercion. As was the case in other programs, ethnicity and race were believed to be connected to mental and physical health. The Swedish government inquiry denied that the Swedish sterilisation program targeted ethnic minorities but did not provide any evidence for this and the government´s claims are contradicted by the experiences recounted by Swedish gypsies and travellers.

There is proof that the program targeted women. The goal of the program was to decrease deviant offspring. If one member of a family was considered deviant the whole family became the target of an investigation. It was perceived to be easier to persuade a woman to be sterilized than it was to persuade a man. For this reason women were more often sterilized than men, despite the fact that the medical procedure involved in the sterilization was simpler to carry out on a man.

Even as far as 1996, social democrats rejected paying compensation to those who had been sterilized. No one in Sweden raised the issue of compensation to the victims until there was international attention to Swedish eugenics following a 1997 series of articles in by the Polish-born journalist Maciej Zaremba, in Sweden´s largest daily, Dagens Nyheter. In 1999 the Swedish government began paying compensation to the sterilized and their families an equivalent to 21,000 USD to those who had "not consented" and who applied for the compensation.

The real 'pay day', of course, will come at the Last Judgment. Aside from the blatant strand of eugenics that runs through arguments for those who wish to offer drug addicts cash to cut their tubes, this information on the case of Sweden, as well as the obvious examples from history in the US and Germany should serve as a warning to us not to repeat their errors. Say a prayer for the victims of the tsunami in Indonesia too.