Is anyone familiar with Eugenics or Sterilization history in the United States?

[Irish Girl]

I'm a twenty-something female - still quite a young kip - but found Eugenics and Sterilization both fascinating and disturbing. This is a slice of our history I never even knew existed. The United States was the first country to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of eugenics.

From Wikipedia on "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics">Eugenics":

Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention. Throughout history, eugenics has been regarded by its various advocates as a social responsibility, an altruistic stance of a society, meant to create healthier, stronger and/or more intelligent people, to save resources, and lessen human suffering.

Earlier proposed means of achieving these goals focused on selective breeding, while modern ones focus on prenatal testing, genetic counseling, birth control, in vitro fertilization, and genetic engineering. Opponents argue that eugenics is immoral. Historically, a minority of eugenics advocates have used it as a justification for state-sponsored discrimination, forced sterilization of persons deemed genetically defective, and the killing of institutionalized populations. Eugenics was also used to rationalize certain aspects of the Holocaust.

Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities. Funding was provided by prestigious sources such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and the Harriman family. Since the postwar period, both the public and the scientific communities have associated eugenics with Nazi abuses, such as enforced racial hygiene, human experimentation, and the extermination of undesired population groups.

Eugenics in the United States (1890s–1978)

The most significant era of eugenic sterilization was between 1907 and 1963, when over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States. When Nazi administrators went on trial for war crimes in Nuremberg after World War II, they justified the mass sterilizations (over 450,000 in less than a decade) by citing the United States as their inspiration.

As a younger American, I'm very interested to know if anyone remembers this?

[Heidi]

1. Here's a book that you absolutely must read:

"War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race," by Edwin Black.

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/

[fed_up_mother]

3. Yes, and Margaret Sanger was a eugenist

Ugh

[amdezurik]

9. that seems to have been a part of the whole Nazi thing too

and most of it's American supporters, Like dumbaya's grandad Prescott...

[Quantess]

23. Margaret Sanger was also a pioneer in reproductive rights.

Her main issue was that poor women should have the same reproductive options as wealthy women. Even though it was illegal, wealthy women were getting abortions from real doctors, and had access to contraceptives, while poor women had to go to back alley abortionists and had little access to contraceptives.

[arcadian]

36. Didn't he write 'IBM and the Holocaust'?

Featured in the movie,"The Corporation"

[demnan]

2. In Virginia they still had some laws on the books

about sterilizing the retarded into the early sixties. I don't know the particulars but I'm sure that Virginia, like other Southern states had a lot of these type of laws that were swept out with the Civil Rights movement.

[arcadian]

37. Buck vs. Bell

http://karmak.org/archive/2004/06/buckvbell.html

May 2nd marked the 75th anniversary of a nadir in American law and society. On this day in 1927, the United States Supreme Court upheld the concept of eugenic sterilization for people considered genetically "unfit." The Court's decision, delivered by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., included the infamous phrase "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Upholding Virginia's sterilization statute provided the green light for similar laws in 30 states, under which an estimated 65,000 Americans were sterilized without their own consent or that of a family member.

To commemorate the event, the state of Virginia erected a roadside marker in Charlottesville, home town of Carrie Buck, the plaintiff of the Supreme Court case. Carrie, like her mother Emma, had been committed to the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded in Lynchburg, Virginia at age 17. Carrie and Emma were both judged to be "feebleminded" and promiscuous, primarily because they had both had borne children out of wedlock. Carrie's child, Vivian, was judged to be "feebleminded" at seven months of age. Hence, three generations of "imbeciles" became the "perfect" family for Virginia officials to use as a test case in favor of the eugenic sterilization law enacted in 1924.


more at link

-----------------------------------------------------

It's also how the federal government got the land for Shenandoah National Park. They said the people were backwards and just took their land from them.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1125355

[Mrs. Overall]

4. Prescott Bush was an advocate of eugenics in the late '40's and into the '50's.

If you google Bush and eugenics you will get a lot of information.

[iamahaingttta]

12. Or, just read this:

http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm

George Bush - The Unauthorized Biography.

Lots of info on Prescott and eugenics here.

[rug]

27. His experiment failed.

[Brewman_Jax]

5. Virginia's Eugenical Sterilization Act of 1924

Virginia's Eugenical Sterilization Act provided for involuntary sterilization of anyone deemed an imbecile or feeble-minded. The famous Supreme Court case Buck vs. Bell was the test case for this law. Along with Dred Scott and Plessy vs. Ferguson, these three decisions are considered among the Court’s worst. In accordance with the Sterilization Act, “biologically defective or deficient” groups were given the choice of segregation or sterilization. Carrie Buck (of the Buck vs. Bell case), her mother, and her daughter were all sterilized in accordance with this law.

http://www.hsl.virginia.edu/historical/eugenics/3-buckvbell.cfm

[RubyDuby in GA]

6. Did two papers on this in college.

Very disturbing time in American history and it was the Nazi's justification for The Final Solution.

Buck v. Bell - "two generations of imbeciles is enough"

[wryter2000]

13. I thought it was 3 generations

And that was said by none other than Oliver Wendell Holmes.

There's a great discussion about this issue and the general theory of genetics and IQ in Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man. A must read book, imho.

[RubyDuby in GA]

15. You're right. 3 generations.

It's been a while since college. Mind like a steel trap...a rusty steel trap....

:)

[mrcheerful]

7. I remember either during Nixon/Ford or the early Carter years that the

republicons were talking about sterilization as a way to slow down welfare. They wanted laws enacted to force welfare mothers sterilized after 2 or 3 children. I'm not sure if it was 1 state or all 50, I am going on what was being said by republicon parents of friends. Of course that was before the religious right wing nuts came into power.

If memory serves me, I think thats what lead to the democratic push for birth control to the poor. It'd kind of hard to remember as there was a lot going on back then and it seems that was swept under the rug and forgotten during the Reagan years.

[EOTE]

8. My dad did a post on eugenics a bit back.

He posts under the name of Time For Change and did a pretty interesting post on the subject. You can read about it http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Time%20for%20change/312">here.

The Opening of the Floodgates of the Eugenics Movement in the U.S.: The Sterilization of Carrie Buck
Posted by Time for change in General Discussion
Wed May 21st 2008, 06:20 PM
By learning about the tyrannies of the past, hopefully Americans will learn to recognize it when they see it.
The eugenics movement in the United States is a sordid story of unbounded arrogance, hypocrisy, classism, racism, and blatant disregard for the principles upon which our country was founded. Perhaps it would not be worth learning about if we as a nation were in no danger of repeating similar atrocities.

[Blue_Tires]

10. you can also look up the Tuskegee Experiments

[Doodler71]

11. Lack of reproductive freedom... Lack of choice...

This is the side of allowing the government to control individual's reproductive rights, that right to lifers don't understand or talk about.

Freedom of choice... Pro-choice...It's not just about abortion. It's a very slippery slope back to this.

[AngryAmish]

20. Planned parenthood, Margaret Sanger, Frreedom of choice: irony overload

PP was founded as a pro-eugenics organization.

[Doodler71]

26. Color me pink... I didn't know that. Irony indeed. (nt)

nt

[HeraldSquare212]

14. It continues, but it's oftentimes couched as protection for the developmentally disabled people

e.g., they don't understand sex and the consequences, they couldn't handle being pregnant, etc., so they are sterilized to protect themselves. This usually involves some evidence of behavior, like kissing, etc., that is pointed to as the basis for fear of sex occurring.

[juno jones]

16. It was only fairly recently that they stopped

sterilizing native americans when they could. There are still people out there who went into the hospital for an appendectomy and came out missing other bits as well. I think it finally stopped in the 60's and 70's.

[bobthedrummer]

17. Here's an archived DU thread that I started last New Year's Day

"January 1, 1934 'The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring' took effect" (1-1-2008)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2570336

[AngryAmish]

18. Three generations of imbeciles are enough

Just about the most chilling thing ever in a Supreme Court opinion.

(And also applies to the Bush family, btw...)

[JackBeck]

19. Puerto Rican Women Sterilization Project:

http://www.cwluherstory.com/CWLUArchive/puertorico.html

[LanternWaste]

21. As an aside...

As an aside, just last week we had a thread locked because the OP was proposing eugenics (though calling it something warm and fuzzy).




Two books that may help you out (one pro and one con-- what I consider the best way to prep yourself on a new discipline)

Eugenics: In Defense of Human Enhancement, by Nicholas Agar (quasi-pro)

and

Eugenic Nation by Alexandra Minna Stern (con)

[LeftinOH]

22. "My dear lady- what if the child should get my body and YOUR brains?"

..George Bernard Shaw

[grammysandie]

24. More books

"Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity" by Harry Bruinius covered, among other topics, an especially creepy aspect of the eugenics movement: Fitter Families contests.

"In Reckless Hands: Skinner v. Oklahoma and the Near-Triumph of American Eugenics" by Victoria Nourse is on my to-read list.

[Amelie]

25. Remember it? Hell, it was only a month ago in my state

http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl092408cblabruzzo.a931c79f.html

Be vigilant.

[JackRiddler]

28. Puerto Rico, Where Sterilization of Women Became "La Operacion"

http://www.cwpe.org/node/66

Puerto Rico, under the United States since 1898 when it was ceded by Spain, has long been a laboratory for U.S. initiated social, economic and cultural policies. Beginning in the late thirties, privately funded foundations based in the United States, and later, the Puerto Rican government, with U.S. government funds, have promoted sterilization of women as a way of limiting population growth. In the forties, just when women were joining the work force in large numbers as industrialization opened up job opportunities, sterilizations were provided at minimal or no cost. While women suffered from lack of safe, legal abortion services, other methods of contraception, day care services, and health care services, they were offered sterilizations.

The results of deliberate policies, more concerned with curbing population than with meeting women's and children's needs, were high regret rates among the unprecedented nearly forty percent of women who by 1968 were sterilized. More than one third of women surveyed did not know sterilizations were permanent! Many approached sterilization decisions from mistaken notions that sterilization would improve their health, sexual life or marriage relationship. Many found depression, complications of surgery and abandonment by husbands as unexpected results.

[conscious evolution]

29. Read DUer Octafish's stuff

He covers the eugenics movement and the bush familys involvment.

[Octafish]

32. Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection; American Children Used in Radiation Experiments

Thank you, conscious evolution. Your help has lightened the load, immensely.

Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection

Know your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments

BTW: Welcome to DU, coincidenceor... When it comes to politics, FDR said there are no coincidences.

[ColbertWatcher]

30. Yes, I am familiar, in fact, beauty pageants started as a quasi-eugenics "county fair" thing. n/t

[readmoreoften]

31. Good chapters in "Making Sex" by Thomas Laqueur on racial and class-based sterilization.

Eugenics lost favor after WWII for obvious reasons. Eugenics is far from out of fashion, however. In a way it blended perfectly with the hystericized positivism of mid-century America (the common choice of women, African-Americans, and the laboring class for medical experimentation in the mid-century suggests this.)

[yardwork]

33. The Nazis got the idea from the United States.

A lot of racist "scholarship" still continues. They don't call it eugenics, but that's what it is. There's a jerk at Harvard who pumps out this crap. And the guy who published _The Bell Curve_ some years back.

[KamaAina]

34. Unfortunately, it's not quite history yet

at least not in David Dukkke's old district in lily-white Metairie, La.

http://adrastos.blog-city.com/malaka_of_the_day_john_labruzzo.htm

It seems that not all local pols with Italian surnames are running for District Attorney. State Rep. John LaBruzzo (R-Metry) has other things on his mind. LaBruzzo is advocating a plan to pay poor folks to get their tubes tied to save on "welfare costs." LINK. It's a pity that LaBruzzo doesn't have a phallic name but he's definitely a dickhead who deserves to be beaten with a plaster schmeckle as well as a malaka of epic proportions.

LaBruzzo represents the district that once elected Fuhrer wannabe and plastic surgery connoisseur, David Duke. No surprise there. It is, however, disappointing that someone with roots in Southern Europe is advocating what amounts to neo-eugenics. Early 20th Century American Eugenicists favored sterilizing as many folks of "non-native" stock as feasible. That meant that *my* Greek relations were as likely to have been on the...uh...chopping block as those of Mr. LaBruzzo.

Mr. LaBruzzo *claims* that he just wants to help "those" people and save the taxpayers some money. I'm sure getting his picture on the front page of the Picayune had nothing to do with it. I'm sure he's enjoying the comments at NOLA.com as well. I only skimmed them, I have a delicate digestive system and rabid bigotry upsets my stomach....

Obviously, LaBruzzo's bill provides an *incentive* for the "wrong sort of people" to be sterilized instead of making it mandatory but the intent is the same. Basing public policy on bigotry and stereotypes is another form of imbecility. And imbecility and malakatude are synonymous so that's why State Rep. John LaBruzzo is malaka of the day.

(malaka n. (Gk.) wanker; jerkoff)

Malaka LaBruzzo was eventually stripped of his position as vice chair of the health committee. As for me, I can think of at least two other (small) things he should be stripped of... :grr:

[arcadian]

35. You can get the journals of the Eugenics Society on eBay from time to time.

I think they were around til the 70s though most popular in the 1920s.