Reemergence of Eugenics
Social Welfare and Sterilization
In the 1970s, eugenics reemerged with a new disguise: social welfare. The government encouraged millions of women to undergo sterilization because they were receiving welfare payments.
“It is probable that of the [two] million people who undergo surgical sterilization each year, at least several hundred thousand are considerably less than well informed about the irreversibility, risks and alternative methods of family planning when the[y] ‘decide’ to have these operations.”- Health Research Group report “Surely the Federal Government must move cautiously in this area, under well-defined policies determined by Congress after full consideration of constitutional and far-reaching social implications. The line between family planning and eugenics is murky…[we may] drift into a policy which has unfathomed implications and which permanently deprives unwilling or immature citizens of their ability to procreate without adequate legal safeguards and a legislative determination of the appropriate standards in light of the general welfare and of individual rights.” - U.S. Federal Judge Gerhard Gesell in 1970s court case Relf v. Weinberger, involving two young African-American girls, Mary Alice and Minnie Relf, sterilized without informed consent "Relf v. Weinberger helped bring to light the sterilization abuses that were not just occurring in the United States but being paid for by the American people." -Nilmini Rubin, interviewed through email |
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Rediscovering Our Eugenic Past
“And so the case of Buck v. Bell remained for fifty years, a footnote to a moment of American history perhaps best forgotten. And then, in 1980, it reemerged to prick our collective conscience, when Dr. K. Ray Nelson, then director of the Lynchburg hospital where Carrie Buck was sterilized, researched the records of his institution and discovered that more than 4,000 sterilizations had been performed, the last as late as 1972. He also found Carrie Buck, alive and well near Charlottesville, and her sister Doris, covertly sterilized under the same law (she was told her operation was for appendicitis), and now, with fierce dignity, dejected and bitter because she had wanted a child more than anything else in her life and had finally, in her old age, learned why she had never conceived.” - Stephen Jay Gould, “Carrie Buck’s Daughter”
Many states have apologized for their eugenic pasts.
“While the advocates of eugenics felt they were on the cutting edge of science, it was a terrible example of how science can be misused.” - Lieutenant Governor John Hager of Virginia “[I want] to apologize for misdeeds that resulted from widespread misconceptions, ignorance and bigotry.” - Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon |
Many others, however, still keep involuntary sterilization on the books.
“Insane, idiotic, imbecile or feebleminded, and by the laws of heredity is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring likewise afflicted.” - Mississippi 1928 sterilization statute “Incompetents...by reason of mental retardation, mental illness, imbecility, idiocy or other mental incapacity...a sterilizing procedure is justified.” - Arkansas sterilization statute |
"Victim's voices have barely been heard by the courts, the government and the public. Since most of the victims were from groups that were economically and politically weak, they were and are often ignored. Reproduction is a fundamentally personal issue and speaking out about someone taking away your ability to reproduce is very hard. Once that person does speak out, they can be subjected to judgements that "they deserved to be sterilized". As already vulnerable people, it is hard for them to make themselves more vulnerable by speaking out. Many simply lack the funds necessary to launch a case against the perpetrators of the crime against them."
-Nilmini Rubin, interviewed through email
-Nilmini Rubin, interviewed through email