Meaning of Margaret Sanger's 15-20 million soldiers
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Who are these 15-20 million soldiers? Are they literal soldiers enforcing the "stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation"? or are they the people prevented from reproducing? or are they the people allowed to reproduce? or something else that I can't think of?
It seems crystal clear to me that she is talking about the previously mentioned categories of undesirable people, which she estimates at about 15 to 20 million. They are not literal soldiers; she is just using military language and symbolism. These 20 million people would form a figurative army to wage war on society's ills by... not passing their undesirable traits on to any children. To quote Wikipedia:
During the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th century, eugenics was considered a method of preserving and improving the dominant groups in the population
...
Early proponents of eugenics believed that, through selective breeding, the human species should direct its own evolution. They tended to believe in the genetic superiority of Nordic, Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples; supported strict immigration and anti-miscegenation laws; and supported the forcible sterilization of the poor, disabled and "immoral".[12]
So the basic idea was to improve society by preventing undesirable people from having children who would inherit their parents undesirable traits. And, lest we judge Mary Sanger too harshly, this form of Eugenic ideology was wildly popular at this time in the US, and found its way into legislation, supreme court decisions and even scientific journals and studies, and advocates were not always content to give anyone a choice, or confine their methods to birth control. I'll end on a couple excerpts from the same Wikipedia page I quoted above.
Eugenics was widely accepted in the U.S. academic community.[7] By 1928 there were 376 separate university courses in some of the United States' leading schools, enrolling more than 20,000 students, which included eugenics in the curriculum.[17]
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One of the most prominent feminists to champion the eugenic agenda was Margaret Sanger, the leader of the American birth control movement. Margaret Sanger saw birth control as a means to prevent unwanted children from being born into a disadvantaged life, and incorporated the language of eugenics to advance the movement.[24][25] Sanger also sought to discourage the reproduction of persons who, it was believed, would pass on mental disease or serious physical defect. She advocated sterilization in cases where the subject was unable to use birth control.[24] Unlike other eugenicists, she rejected euthanasia.[26] For Sanger, it was individual women and not the state who should determine whether or not to have a child.[27][28]
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