 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(July 2022) |
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.
Her research focuses on the history of eugenics, [1] [2] the uses and misuses of genetics, and the extremism of the far right in national and international contexts. [3] She has also written about the history of public health, infectious diseases, and tropical medicine. [4] Through these topics, she explores the dynamics of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, disability, social difference, and reproductive politics.
In 2013, Stern founded the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab (SSJL), an interdisciplinary research team studying the history of eugenic sterilization in the United States. [5] Stern currently co-directs the SSJL with Nicole Novak, and Natalie Lira. [6] In January 2017, Stern and co-authors Nicole Novak, Natalie Lira, Kate O'Connor, Sharon Kardia, and Siobán Harlow published an article in the American Journal of Public Health entitled, "California's Sterilization Survivors: An Estimate and Call for Redress" which estimated the likely living number of survivors of California's 20th century eugenic sterilization program. [7] This research received extensive media coverage in The New York Times , [8] The Atlantic , [9] and NPR . [1] It inspired and informed a Los Angeles Times editorial urging the State of California to seriously consider reparations for survivors of eugenic sterilization. [10] In 2021, California passed the California Forced or Involuntary Sterilization Compensation Program, [11] [12] which provides compensation to survivors of eugenic sterilization laws from 1909 to 1979 and survivors of involuntary sterilizations in women's prisons after 1979. [13] The SSJL's research helped inform this effort, and the lead author of the bill was Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo. [14] The bill was co-sponsored by the Back to the Basics Community Empowerment, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, California Latinas for Reproductive Justice (CLRJ), and California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), in collaboration with the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab and with contributions from the Belly of the Beast film team. The SSJL was the source for demographic information and contextual historical research to identify survivors from the historic era. [15]
Stern has written over 50 books and articles, [16] and contributes to popular media stories about gender, medicine, and health in venues such as The New York Times Magazine, [17] The Daily Beast , [18] NPR , [19] The Washington Post , [20] and The Guardian. [21]
Stern is the author of Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America (University of California Press, 2005), [22] which won the Arthur Viseltear Award for outstanding contribution to the history of public health by the American Public Health Association. [23] Eugenic Nation is now in its second edition (University of California Press, 2015). [24]
Stern is also the author of Telling Genes: The Story of Genetic Counseling in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), [25] [26] which Choice Reviews named an Choice Outstanding Academic Titles. [27]
Stern's latest book, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right is Warping the American Imagination (Beacon Press, 2019), applies the lenses of historical analysis, feminist studies, and critical race studies to deconstructing the core ideas of the alt-right and white nationalism. [16]
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.
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.
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.
Lewis Madison Terman was an American psychologist, academic, and proponent of eugenics. He was noted as a pioneer in educational psychology in the early 20th century at the Stanford School of Education. Terman is best known for his revision of the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales and for initiating the longitudinal study of children with high IQs called the Genetic Studies of Genius. As a prominent eugenicist, he was a member of the Human Betterment Foundation, the American Eugenics Society, and the Eugenics Research Association. He also served as president of the American Psychological Association. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Terman as the 72nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century, in a tie with G. Stanley Hall.
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.
Eugenics has influenced political, public health and social movements in Japan since the late 19th and early 20th century. Originally brought to Japan through the United States, through Mendelian inheritance by way of German influences, and French Lamarckian eugenic written studies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eugenics as a science was hotly debated at the beginning of the 20th, in Jinsei-Der Mensch, the first eugenics journal in the Empire. As the Japanese sought to close ranks with the West, this practice was adopted wholesale, along with colonialism and its justifications.
Lucien Howe was an American physician who spent much of his career as a professor of ophthalmology at the University at Buffalo. In 1876 he was instrumental in the creation of the Buffalo Eye and Ear Infirmary.
Paul A. Lombardo is an American legal historian known for his work on the legacy of eugenics and sterilization in the United States. Lombardo’s foundational research corrected the historical record of the 1927 U.S. Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell. He found Carrie Buck’s school grades and the grades of her child Vivian. He was the last person to interview her, and he discovered the pictures of all three generations of the Buck family. In 2002, he sponsored and paid for a memorial plaque that was installed in Buck’s hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia.
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.
The Hereditary Health Court, also known as the Genetic Health Court, was a court that decided whether people should be forcibly sterilized in Nazi Germany. That method of using courts to make decisions on hereditary health in Nazi Germany was created to implement the Nazi race policy aiming for racial hygiene.
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.
Eugenics in California is a notable part of eugenics in America. 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.
The Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada (LAE) is a major research project, led by philosophy Professor Robert Wilson of the University of Alberta. The LAE seeks to investigate and understand the many aspects of the eugenics movement in western Canada. The project began in 2009 and is funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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.
Following the Mexican Revolution, the eugenics movement gained prominence in Mexico. Seeking to change the genetic make-up of the country's population, proponents of eugenics in Mexico focused primarily on rebuilding the population, creating healthy citizens, and ameliorating the effects of perceived social ills such as alcoholism, prostitution, and venereal diseases. Mexican eugenics, at its height in the 1930s, influenced the state's health, education, and welfare policies.
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.
Ada Estelle Schweitzer was an American public health advocate for women and infants in Indiana, an expert in infant health care, and a pioneer in public health in the early twentieth century. As the director of the Indiana State Board of Health's Division of Child and Infant Hygiene from 1919 to 1933, Schweitzer is best known for organizing and supervising Indiana's Better Baby contests at the Indiana State Fair from 1920 to 1932. Schweitzer's and her staff's educational outreach activities also helped change attitudes about child and maternal health. Statistics confirm that the state's infant mortality rate decreased during her years as a public health leader in Indiana to the fourth lowest in the United States, an accomplishment that was partly attributed to the efforts of her division. In addition to her work for Indiana's State Board of Health, Schweitzer was the author of numerous articles on children's health and was elected as president of the American Association of Women in Public Health in 1928.
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.
Compulsory sterilization of disabled people in the U.S. prison system was permitted in the United States from 1907 to the 1960s, during which approximately 60,000 people were sterilized, two-thirds of these people being women. During this time, compulsory sterilization was motivated by eugenics. There is a lengthy history when it comes to compulsory sterilization in the United States and legislation allowing compulsory sterilization pertaining to developmentally disabled people, the U.S. prison system, and marginalized communities.
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