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Eugenics was practiced in about 33 different states. Oregon was one of the many states that implemented eugenics programs and laws. This affected a number of different groups that were marginalized for being "unfit" and often were subject to forced sterilization.
Eugenics is the belief and practice of controlling the population's genetic quality by restricting people who were deemed "unfit" to reproduce. [1] Eugenics was not a new idea, but Francis Galton, the half cousin of Charles Darwin, coined the term in 1883. Galton took Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and selective breeding and applied it to humans. In the United States, eugenics became popular in the 19th century, but after the first World War it fell in popularity.
On November 8, 1912, Benjamin Trout was arrested for a petty crime and during his interrogation he told the Portland Police about homosexual activity that was going on in the area. After the news broke, it became the main focus of the newspaper, not just locally but also nationally. [2]
The government took this scandal seriously, even the Federal Authorities got involved. There were as many as fifty people who were incriminated for crimes relating to the scandal but many charges were dropped due to the lack of evidence. Some of the people who were suspected of sex related crimes were people who came from reputable backgrounds who roomed at the YMCA. The YMCA was known for being supported by the "better classes" [2] causing backlash against the YMCA, similar businesses, and the wealthy for being a cause for the "immorality" [2] that was happening in the city.
The newspaper covered this story for a few weeks but it impacted history for many years. Schools reinforced heterosexual teachings when it came to sex education. It affected much of the northwest to change sodomy laws so that the maximum sentence increased from five years to fifteen years and included "... other gross, bestial and perverted sexual habits".[ citation needed ] This scandal primarily influenced Oregon, Washington, and Idaho to start eugenic programs. The eugenic programs also became more focused towards sex offenders because of this scandal.
Being considered a sex offender included:[ citation needed ]
One of Oregon's first female physicians, Bethenia Angelina Owens-Adair, helped write and promote the first bill to create the Oregon Board of Eugenics in 1909. It was initially rejected by Governor George Chamberlain but in 1913, [3] Governor Oswald West approved the second bill that was introduced. Governor Oswald was one of the many supporters for eugenics specifically when it pertained to sex offenders and was more driven to make the bill a reality because of the Portland Vice Scandal. Even though it did pass it did not last for very long because the Anti-Sterilization League, led by Lora Cornelia Little, was able to get a referendum which appealed the Oregon Sterilization Act of 1913 for a few years. Later in 1917 [4] the bill was reintroduced and signed into law and by this time Lora Cornelia Little [5] had moved on from the Anti-Sterilization League. The Anti-Sterilization League tried to get another referendum but it failed which lead to the Oregon Board of Eugenics being established. In 1919 the law was amended to include an appeal process for patients.
Freeman, Josh. "Anti-Sterilization League." The Oregon Encyclopedia, 17 Mar. 2018 [4] stated:
Compulsory human sterilization laws originated in America during the last half of the 19th century, driven primarily by politically active physicians interested in shaping the population to exclude undesirable demographics—such as criminals, the mentally ill, epileptics, and gays and lesbians—in a movement called eugenics.
Forced sterilization was a large part of the eugenics movement. They targeted mostly people who were mentally ill, homosexual, criminal, or people in poverty. Basically the idea was to improve the population for the better. People saw wealth, good morals, good mental health, and heterosexuality as good factors for marriage and to create children. Much of this was not scientifically backed up. Lawrence, Cera R., "Oregon State Board of Eugenics". Embryo Project Encyclopedia (2013-04-22). ISSN: 1940-5030 [6]
During the 1970s, many male and female teenagers at homes for wayward teens, such as Fairview Hospital and Training Center in Salem, were injected with sedatives and sterilized against their will. In the court case Nancy Rae Cook v. State of Oregon (1972), 17-year-old Nancy Rae Cook appealed the Board of Social Protection's ruling that she be sterilized due to mental illness resulting from childhood physical and sexual abuse.
The people who fell outside what was considered "fit" were forced to undergo sterilization, permanently leaving them unable to reproduce.
In Oregon, better baby competitions started appearing especially at the State Fair they were done to determine which baby was the "better baby" from all the contestants that entered. This was done by checking their mental health, weighing them, and measuring their body proportions. Winning babies received cash prizes and were published in the newspapers. These competitions also promoted the idea that people should be more careful of whom they decide to marry and procreate with. The other proponent was to decrease baby mortality rates. [7]
In 1921 the 1917 statute was ruled unconstitutional by the Circuit Court of Marion County and then in 1921 a new law was signed and passed to bring back eugenics to Oregon. The Board of Eugenics revised their practices but even so there was not any real change. After the Civil Rights Movement and the first World War, The Board of Eugenics became the Board of Social Protection in 1967. The last recorded forced sterilization was in 1981 and in 1983 the Oregon State Senate finally abolished the statute and the board.
Oregon sterilized 2,648 people under its eugenics law. [8]
In December 2002, Governor John Kitzhaber formally apologized for the forced sterilization that occurred in Oregon and then made December 10 Human Rights Day in Oregon. [6] [9]
Henry Havelock Ellis was an English physician, eugenicist, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and inclinations, as well as on transgender psychology. He developed the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism, later adopted by psychoanalysis.
Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), is a landmark 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.
Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942), is a unanimous United States Supreme Court ruling that held that laws permitting the compulsory sterilization of criminals are unconstitutional as it violates a person's rights given under the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, specifically the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause. The relevant Oklahoma law applied to "habitual criminals" but excluded white-collar crimes from carrying sterilization penalties.
Compulsory sterilization, also known as forced or coerced sterilization, refers to any government-mandated program to involuntarily sterilize a specific group of people. Sterilization removes a person's capacity to reproduce, and is usually done by surgical or chemical means.
Carrie Elizabeth Buck was the plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, after having been ordered to undergo compulsory sterilization for purportedly being "feeble-minded" by her foster parents after their nephew raped and impregnated her. She had given birth to an illegitimate child without the means to support it. The surgery, carried out while Buck was an inmate of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, took place under the authority of the Sterilization Act of 1924, part of the Commonwealth of Virginia's eugenics program.
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.
The Eugenics Record Office (ERO), located in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States, was a research institute that gathered biological and social information about the American population, serving as a center for eugenics and human heredity research from 1910 to 1939. It was established by the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Station for Experimental Evolution, and subsequently administered by its Department of Genetics.
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.
Joseph Spencer DeJarnette was the director of Western State Hospital from 1905 to November 15, 1943. He was a vocal proponent of racial segregation and eugenics, specifically, the compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill.
Leilani Marietta (O'Malley) Muir, previously named Leilani Marie Scorah, was the first person to file a successful lawsuit against the Alberta government for wrongful sterilization under the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta. Her case led to the initiation of several other class action lawsuits against the province for wrongful sterilization. Muir's advocacy shed light on eugenics, institutionalisation, human rights for persons with a disability, and self-advocacy.
Compulsory sterilization in Canada is an ongoing practice that has a documented history in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia.
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.
The Portland vice scandal refers to the discovery in November 1912 of a deviant group in the U.S. city of Portland, Oregon. Nearly 70 men were charged, and three were convicted by jury; the Oregon Supreme Court then reversed the convictions on legal technicalities.
The history of eugenics is the study of development and advocacy of ideas related to eugenics around the world. Early eugenic ideas were discussed in Ancient Greece and Rome. The height of the modern eugenics movement came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Eugenics in California is a notable part of eugenics in the United States. As an early leading force in the field of eugenics, California became the third state in the United States to enact a sterilization law. By 1921, California had accounted for 80% of sterilizations nationwide. This continued until the Civil Rights Movement, when widespread critiques against society's "total institutions" dismantled popular acceptance for the state's forced sterilizations. There were an estimated 20,000 forced sterilizations in California between 1909 and 1979; however, that number may be an underestimation. In 2021, California enacted a reparations program to compensate the hundreds of still living victims from its eugenics program.
Institutions for Defective Delinquents (IDDs) were created in the United States as a result of the eugenic criminology movement. The practices in these IDDs contain many traces of the eugenics that were first proposed by Sir Francis Galton in the late 1800s. Galton believed that "our understanding of the laws of heredity [could be used] to improve the stock of humankind." Galton eventually expanded on these ideas to suggest that individuals deemed inferior, those in prisons or asylums and those with hereditary diseases, would be discouraged from having children.
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.
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.
Eugenic feminism was a current of the women's suffrage movement which overlapped with [[eugenics]]. Originally coined by the Lebanese-British physician and vocal eugenicist Caleb Saleeby, the term has since been applied to summarize views held by prominent feminists of Great Britain and the United States. Some early suffragettes in Canada, especially a group known as The Famous Five, also pushed for various eugenic policies.
In Minnesota, developmentally disabled people, most of whom were women, were involuntarily committed to state guardianship and sterilized, but today, many of those who were either committed to state guardianship or sterilized would not be considered disabled. Eugenic ideals were popular in the state during much of the early-mid 1900s.
