What are sterilization laws?

The Eugenics Movement and Sterilization Laws

The founder of the eugenics movement is considered to be Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911), who carried out extensive genetic studies of human traits. He thought the human race would be improved by encouraging humans with desirable traits (such as intelligence, good character, and musical ability) to have more children than those people with less desirable traits (positive eugenics). With the development of Mendelian genetics shortly after the beginning of the twentieth century, research on improving the genetic quality of plants and animals was in full swing. Success with plants and domestic animals made it inevitable that interest would develop in applying those principles to the improvement of human beings. As some human traits became known to be under the control of single genes, some geneticists began to claim that all sorts of traits (including many behavioral traits and even social characteristics and preferences) were under the control of a single gene, with little regard for the possible impact of environmental factors.

The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, was set up by Charles Davenport to gather and collate information on human traits. The eugenics movement became a powerful political force that led to the creation and implementation of laws restricting immigration and regulating reproduction. Some geneticists and politicians reasoned that since mental retardation and other “undesirable” behavioral and physical traits were affected by genes, society had an obligation and a moral right to restrict the reproduction of individuals with “bad genes” (negative genetics).

The state of Indiana passed the first compulsory sterilization law in 1907, which permitted the involuntary sterilization of inmates in state institutions. Inmates included not only “imbeciles,” “idiots,” and others with varying degrees of intellectual disability (described as “feeble-mindedness”) but also people who were committed for behavioral problems such as criminality, swearing, promiscuity, and slovenliness. By 1911, similar laws had been passed in six states, and by the end of the 1920s, twenty-four states had similar sterilization laws. Ultimately, thirty-three states enacted sterilization laws.

The US Supreme Court, in its 1927 Buck v. Bell decision, supported the eugenic principle that states could use involuntary sterilization to eliminate genetic defects from the population. The vote of the court was eight to one. The court’s reasoning went as follows: We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.

Ironically, the sterilization laws of the United States and Canada served as models for the eugenics movement in Nazi Germany in its program to ensure so-called racial purity and superiority.

Impact and Applications

Two problems associated with eugenics are the subjective nature of deciding which traits are desirable and determining who should decide. These concerns aside, the question of whether there is a sound scientific basis for the desire to manipulate the human gene pool remains. Does the sterilization of individuals who are intellectually disabled or who have some other mental or physical impairment improve the human genetic composition? Involuntary sterilization of affected individuals would quickly reduce the incidence of dominant genetic traits. Individuals who were homozygous for recessive traits would also be eliminated. However, most harmful recessive genes are carried by individuals who appear normal and, therefore, would not be “obvious” for sterilization purposes. These “normal” people would continue to pass on the “bad” gene to the next generation, and a certain number of affected people would again be born. It would take an extraordinary number of generations to significantly reduce the frequency of harmful genes.

The impact sterilization laws had on the US population by 1960 was far-reaching, as some sixty thousand people were sterilized. In 1978, the federal government passed legislation requiring full, informed consent and a waiting period of more than a month before a publicly funded sterilization may be performed. Other countries also had laws that allowed forced sterilizations, with many programs continuing into the 1970s. The province of Alberta, Canada, sterilized three thousand people before its law was repealed. Another sixty thousand were sterilized in Sweden. The story of sterilization and “euthanasia” in Germany needs no retelling. According to Paul Samakow, legal advice contributor to the Washington Times, China and India continued to perform forced sterilizations, sometimes en masse, in the 2010s for reasons of population control. As the United Nations and World Health Organization stated in their interagency statement Eliminating Forced, Coercive and Otherwise Involuntary Sterilization (2014), involuntary and/or coercive sterilizations of specific populations, such as those with disabilities and those belonging to ethnic, racial, or sexual minority groups, continues around the world. With the ability to decipher the human genome and implement improved genetic testing procedures, a danger exists that new institutionalized programs of eugenics might once again emerge.

Key Terms negative eugenics : the effort to improve the human species by discouraging or eliminating reproduction among those deemed to be socially or physically unfit positive eugenics : the effort to encourage more prolific breeding among “gifted” individuals sterilization : an operation to make reproduction impossible; in tubal ligation, doctors sever the fallopian tubes so that a woman cannot conceive a child

Bibliography

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