Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior. In recent years, the term has seen a revival in bioethical discussions on the usage of new technologies such as CRISPR and genetic screening, with heated debate around whether these technologies should be considered eugenics or not.
The Eugenics Board of North Carolina (EBNC) was a State Board of the U.S. state of North Carolina formed in July 1933 by the North Carolina State Legislature by the passage of House Bill 1013, entitled "An Act to Amend Chapter 34 of the Public Laws of 1929 of North Carolina Relating to the Sterilization of Persons Mentally Defective". This Bill formally repealed a 1929 law, which had been ruled as unconstitutional by the North Carolina Supreme Court earlier in the year.
Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), is a decision of the United States Supreme Court, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., in which the Court ruled that a state statute permitting compulsory sterilization of the unfit, including the intellectually disabled, "for the protection and health of the state" did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Despite the changing attitudes in the coming decades regarding sterilization, the Supreme Court has never expressly overturned Buck v. Bell. It is widely believed to have been weakened by Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942), which involved compulsory sterilization of male habitual criminals. Legal scholar and Holmes biographer G. Edward White, in fact, wrote, "the Supreme Court has distinguished the case [Buck v. Bell] out of existence". In addition, federal statutes, including the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, provide protections for people with disabilities, defined as both physical and mental impairments.
Compulsory sterilization, also known as forced or coerced sterilization, is a government-mandated program to involuntarily sterilize a specific group of people. Sterilization removes a person's capacity to reproduce, and is usually done through surgical procedures. Several countries implemented sterilization programs in the early 20th century. Although such programs have been made illegal in most countries of the world, instances of forced or coerced sterilizations persist.
Paul Bowman Popenoe was an American marriage counselor, eugenicist and agricultural explorer. He was an influential advocate of the compulsory sterilization of mentally ill people and people with mental disabilities, and the father of marriage counseling in the United States.
In 1924, the Virginia General Assembly enacted the Racial Integrity Act. The act reinforced racial segregation by prohibiting interracial marriage and classifying as "white" a person "who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian". The act, an outgrowth of eugenicist and scientific racist propaganda, was pushed by Walter Plecker, a white supremacist and eugenicist who held the post of registrar of the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics.
Harry Hamilton Laughlin was an American educator and eugenicist. He served as the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office from its inception in 1910 to its closure in 1939, and was among the most active individuals influencing American eugenics policy, especially compulsory sterilization legislation.
Charles Matthias Goethe was an American eugenicist, entrepreneur, land developer, philanthropist, conservationist, founder of the Eugenics Society of Northern California, and a native and lifelong resident of Sacramento, California.
The American Eugenics Society (AES) was a pro-eugenics organization dedicated to "furthering the discussion, advancement, and dissemination of knowledge about biological and sociocultural forces which affect the structure and composition of human populations". It endorsed the study and practice of Eugenics in the United States. Its original name as the American Eugenics Society lasted from 1922 to 1973, but the group changed their name after open use of the term "eugenics" became disfavored; it was known as the Society for the Study of Social Biology from 1973-2008, and the Society for Biodemography and Social Biology from 2008–2019. The Society was disbanded in 2019.
Ezra Seymour Gosney was an American philanthropist and eugenicist. In 1928 he founded the Human Betterment Foundation (HBF) in Pasadena, California, with the stated aim "to foster and aid constructive and educational forces for the protection and betterment of the human family in body, mind, character, and citizenship," primarily through the advocacy of compulsory sterilization of people who are mentally ill or intellectually disabled.
The Human Betterment Foundation (HBF) was an American eugenics organization established in Pasadena, California in 1928 by E.S. Gosney and Rufus B. von KleinSmid with the aim "to foster and aid constructive and educational forces for the protection and betterment of the human family in body, mind, character, and citizenship". It primarily served to compile and distribute information about compulsory sterilization legislation in the United States, for the purposes of eugenics.
The social policies of eugenics in Nazi Germany were composed of various ideas about genetics. The racial ideology of Nazism placed the biological improvement of the German people by selective breeding of "Nordic" or "Aryan" traits at its center. These policies were used to justify the involuntary sterilization and mass-murder of those deemed "undesirable".
Compulsory sterilization in Canada has a documented history in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia. It is still ongoing as in 2017, sixty Indigenous women in Saskatchewan sued the provincial government, claiming they had been forced to accept sterilization before seeing their newborn babies. In June 2021, the Standing Committee on Human Rights in Canada found that compulsory sterilization is ongoing in Canada and its extent has been underestimated.
Eugenics, the set of beliefs and practices which aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population, played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States from the late 19th century into the mid-20th century. The cause became increasingly promoted by intellectuals of the Progressive Era.
Madrigal v. Quilligan was a federal class action lawsuit from Los Angeles County, California, involving sterilization of Latina women that occurred either without informed consent, or through coercion. Although the judge ruled in favor of the doctors, the case led to better informed consent for patients, especially those who are not native English speakers.
The Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 was a U.S. state law in Virginia for the sterilization of institutionalized persons "afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy”. It greatly influenced the development of eugenics in the twentieth century. The act was based on model legislation written by Harry H. Laughlin and challenged by a case that led to the United States Supreme Court decision of Buck v. Bell. The Supreme Court upheld the law as constitutional and it became a model law for sterilization laws in other states. Justice Holmes wrote that a patient may be sterilized "on complying with the very careful provisions by which the act protects the patients from possible abuse." Between 1924 and 1979, Virginia sterilized over 7,000 individuals under the act. The act was never declared unconstitutional; however, in 2001, the Virginia General Assembly passed a joint resolution apologizing for the misuse of "a respectable, 'scientific' veneer to cover activities of those who held blatantly racist views." In 2015, the Assembly agreed to compensate individuals sterilized under the act.
Alexandra Minna Stern is the Humanities Dean, and Professor of English and History, and at the Institute for Society and Genetics, at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Minnie Lee and Mary Alice Relf are two African-American sisters who were involuntarily sterilized by tubal ligation by a federally funded family planning clinic in Montgomery, Alabama in 1973. News coverage of a class-action lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center brought the fact of U.S. government-funded sterilization abuse to the national spotlight.
Sterilization of Latinas has been practiced in the United States on women of different Latin American identities, including those from Puerto Rico and Mexico. There is a significant history of such sterilization practices being conducted involuntarily, in a coerced or forced manner, as well as in more subtle forms such as that of constrained choice. Forced sterilization was permissible by multiple states throughout various periods in the 20th century. Issues of state sterilization have persisted as recently as September 2020. Some sources credit the practice to theories of racial eugenics.
Marian Stephenson Olden (1881–1981) was an American eugenics activist and an influential figure in the sterilization movement. She founded the Sterilization League of New Jersey in 1937, which unsuccessfully lobbied for New Jersey to pass a law enabling the compulsory sterilization of those considered unfit to procreate. In the years following World War II, the sterilization movement distanced itself from Olden, whose increasingly unpopular views on compulsory sterilization, and abrasive, uncompromising personality were seen as liabilities. The Sterilization League, then known as Birthright Inc., formally severed ties with Olden in 1948.
