Eugenics is a philosophy that advocates controlliing reproduction to produce better offspring. It flourished in the early 1900s but lost credibility after the Nazis' horrifically extreme version of eugenics in the Second World War. Organised New Zealand eugenics groups in the early 1900s advocated sterilising those who were 'unfit' to breed. They urged upper-class and middle-class women to stop using contraception and to breed more, to stop the country being dominated by 'defectives'. This report of the establishment of a Eugenic Society in Christchurch appeared in the Poverty Bay Herald in August 1911.
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
National Library of New Zealand, Papers Past
Reference: Poverty Bay Herald, 16 August 1911, p. 7
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