This insidious quotation was the tag line in Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's infamous opinion in the 1927 case of Buck v. Bell, which legitimized the eugenics movement in the United States, involving forced sterilizations on a massive scale of persons deemed "socially inadequate" to bear children. Unfit persons included the poor, illiterate, blind, deaf, deformed, diseased, orphans, "ne'er-do-wells," homeless, tramps, and paupers. This evil experiment in social engineering was intended to purify the white race; the program served as a model for the Nazi racial laws and Hitler's "final solution" for exterminating the Jews. Holmes rejected Carrie Buck's plea to prevent her court-ordered salpingectomy to make her sterile. The eugenicist for the state of Virginia claimed she was "feeble-minded," a controversial and indeed fraudulent label used to justify the procedure. In fact, as disclosed many years later, Carrie Buck was a poor 18-year-old woman of normal intelligence who was ordered sterilized to hide the shame of her pregnancy after being raped by a relative of her foster family. Holmes, who served as an infantryman in the Civil War, with arrogance for the virtuous and well-to-do, and contempt for the poor and amoral, makes the following quintessential defense of eugenics:
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. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
This dark chapter in American history -- which most people would prefer to forget -- continues to haunt public discourse. Several states which participated in the forced sterilizations have apologized and offered to compensate the thousands of victims who are still alive and whose grim accounts of being forcibly sterilized are finally being revealed. A few weeks ago a task force in North Carolina -- one of the most aggressive states that sterilized 7,600 people -- recommended paying victims $50,000. The task force heard from survivors and witnesses about the sterilization of young girls considered unintelligent and "oversexed," poor persons who came from homes with deficient housekeeping standards, teenagers with behavioral problems at school, women who became pregnant at a young age often from rape, and children whose parents had low I.Q.s The program disproportionately targeted minorities, poor, uneducated, and mentally handicapped. Girls and women made nearly 90 percent of those sterilized.
How did this crazy experiment in human genetic engineering in the U.S. become so influential and with such devastating consequences? Wealthy businessmen, powerful politicians, and a phony intelligentsia, steeped in the fashionable Darwinian theory of the "survival of the fittest," drove the movement, whose goal was to purify the white race by preventing the propagation of those persons considered biologically unfit to bear children and encouraging procreation only by those considered worthy. More than 31 states launched government-run eugenics programs, and over 65,000 persons were sterilized. A "Model Sterilization Act" was proposed by officials at the central eugenics agency - with the Orwellian title "Eugenics Record Office" -- which became the model for states as well as for the racial laws in Nazi Germany. The eugenics movement lists as one of its greatest triumphs the severe restriction on immigration, with national quotas that discriminated against those considered mentally inadequate.
Reflecting on this grotesque phenomenon in U.S. history raises troubling associations with current laws and policies. For example, is there any connection between the eugenics movement and the anti-choice movement? One of the principle elements of each of these movements is that a woman is deemed incompetent to make decisions about whether to bear children and indeed devoid of any legal right to control her own fertility. Forcing a woman to give birth -- which the anti-choice movement effectively requires -- really is not that different conceptually from preventing her from giving birth. Both movements place a woman's reproductive decisions under the control of either the government or other institutions, typically religious ones. (Consider the current attempt by some religious leaders to force an exemption in the Obama administration's contraception policy). Moreover, in both movements there is little interest in protecting the well-being of children by ensuring adequate prenatal and post-natal medical care of infants, and supporting other child-nurturing policies. One wonders whether the alleged desire for healthy children proclaimed by both movements is simply a pretext for controlling female sexuality.
Another parallel to the eugenics movement is the furious attack on national immigration policy, and the attempt to restrict asylum opportunities for non-citizens, and increase the numbers of aliens being deported. One of the hallmarks of the eugenics movement was the contempt shown by the well-bred and comfortable white populace against poor, uneducated, illiterate, and persons of questionable morals. The vicious anti-immigrant fervor today reflects a similar contempt (and fear) of the "other" - which includes the alien, the stranger, the person of color - and this paranoid strain has been a fixture in American society from the beginning.
Even after Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court has ruled that procreation is a fundamental constitutional right that can be overridden only by the most compelling reason. But Buck v. Bell has never been overruled, and the legacy of that case, albeit a footnote in constitutional law, is a brooding presence that continues to unsettle our national conscience. States may continue to express regret for what they did in the name of fraudulent science and social hypocrisy, but the stain really doesn't go away.
See the conservatives of this country have been invading you home and telling you what to do with your own body for a century now!
Boggles my mind how conservatives who claim to espouse individual freedom so much still vote for these types...or perhaps they, deep down, still don't think women are true citizens
Agreed, the problem with eugenicists is that they are rich from ruthless leveraging in acquiring *property* (ie - experts at manufacturing poverty), selectively *uneducated* (ie. "I do not recall..."), destructive of established definitions of meanings is their unique form of illiteracy, and the list is too long about how they are the very embodiment of *questionable morals*!!!
Seems to me it's just genocide against good normal people...
NORMAL people do put a lot of thought into when and if to procreate...
The planet can't support us (and wildlife due to loss of habitat) if we, as a species, reproduce like it's still Biblical times. But we are, apparently, still involved in the argument of whether it's wrong to impede access to birth control or the many other health services offered by Planned Parenthood. Humans are stupid. :-) I mean that in the nicest possible way.
The list given above of those selected for eugenics fits right in with this "girl's" ideas for reforming welfare. Eugenics is alive and well in the minds of some right wing people (who apparently support Newt Gingrich for some reason).
education and informed choice is our only hope.
It was the appropriate outcome to respect the wishes of this woman no matter how ill she is. But, it did remind me of the dreadful eugenic days.
Your analogy to the "pro-life" movement is splendid and shows a very disturbing trend.
Pro-choice is about that also.
Viagra is covered by insurance; birth control is not. Women who do not want to have children, and who have made this decision maybe as early as their teens or early twenties are told they cannot undergo tubal ligation because "they're too young and they'll change their mind". Even young women who might already have a child or two are told to "wait a bit--you might change your mind." Women are told they aren't "fulfilled" until they've become mothers. Are men told that? Or are they just encouraged to go out and breed as much as they can? Are they ever told No to a vasectomy? Not that many volunteer for the procedure. Why should they? Pregnancy risk is all on the woman. That risk includes ectopic pregnancy (which if the all-inclusive bans on abortion are implemented mean death not just for the fetus but the mother); sepsis, infection, death. Those are the risks.
Abortion should be safe, legal and rare. Birth control should be available to everyone. Forced sterilization is wrong in all cases, but voluntary sterilization should be available for those who want it.
It's always been about controlling female sexuality.
only when and where women rise up is real change possible
and yup, that includes the US and yup, from shunning education and information to abortion control, we are knee-deep in it still
A great many ardently pro-choice doctors will not perform an irreversible operation for the exact reason you mention. It is a good one.
Yes men are told that having a child is a matter of fulfillment all the time.
I do not know if men are told they cannot get a vasectomy very often. There is a key difference in that a vasectomy is generally reversible.
The law makes pregnancy a concern for the man as he is liable for financial support.
The impetus behind the anti-choice/pro-life movement is primarily an abhorrence of the arbitrary extinguishing of human potential if not life. I share that abhorrence but believe that it does not out weigh a woman's right to chose in most circumstances (excepting late term pregnancies with no abnormal health risks to the mother).
My home state of Arkansas DID participate in the eugenics programs during the 30s and 40s
BUT
they did it by providing free contraception to the 'undesirables' and performed NO sterilizations.
...still ashamed though. Not just as an Arkansan or even as an American but as a HUMAN BEING.
If it was truly voluntary, it's not different from any medical program that offers treatment to the poor.
States, and the Federal Government, are very careful to include lengthy and detailed permits and require a period of at least 30 days between counselling and a vasectomy or tubal ligation to allow the patient to change their minds. It is still a concern when the patient is incompetent to make that decision.