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Explanation of the
symbols used on
pedigree charts
created by field
workers.
1911 Eugenics
Record Office
pamphlet, The Study
of Human Heredity
Pedigrees: tracking traits across generations.
Scientific evidence that “defects” are
transmitted by genes.

1921 text on
“heredity in
epilepsy.”
The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and
Heredity (1877). Found 2800 family members in New
York, estimated welfare costs $2 million.
Class-based eugenics
ERO flash cards to identify
genetic “defects,” 1922
Mental disabilities


19th century goal of treatment of
lunatics and training of “idiots” gave
way by 1900 to emphasis on
confinement and care.
1849 Massachusetts School for Idiotic
Children: “brutes in the human shape,
but without the light of human reason.”
History of institutionalization


1886 Washington
Territory opened first
school for “defective
and feebleminded
youth.”
States have civil
commitment laws to
authorize
institutionalization.

“I have gone into a
home and heard the
screeching, half-barking
sound of an idiot
tethered in the back
yard like a dog, with the
pathetic, grief-stricken
mother doing all she
could to hide it.... ‘We
have a magnificent
institution; we will take
the child and protect
it’.”

Superintendent Walter
Fernald (1893): “The
brighter class of the
feebleminded, with their
weak will-power and
deficient judgment, are
easily influenced for evil,
and are prone to become
vagrants, drunkards, and
thieves…. It is better and
cheaper for the
community to assume the
permanent care of this
class before they have
carried out a long career
of expensive crime.”
Danger to self, children, society

Immorality worst in the feebleminded
woman: “She has not sense enough to
protect herself from the perils to which
women are subjected. Often bright and
attractive, if at large they either marry and
bring forth in geometrical ratio a new
generation of defectives and dependants, or
become irresponsible sources of corruption
and debauchery in the communities where
they live.”
Supreme Court upholds forced sterilization,
Buck v. Bell 1927: “Three generations of
imbeciles are enough”
Carrie Buck and her mother
IQ testing

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1905 invented by Alfred Binet to ensure education for
“abnormal” children.
1910s US psychologists corrupt this goal.
 Intelligence is hereditary, unchangeable.
 Measure & label & institutionalize.
“Menace” to society.
 By 1900, 328 institutions, with 200,000 people
labeled lunatic or mentally deficient (moron—
imbecile—idiot).
Oliver Wendell Holmes decision 1927:
police power of the state vs. ind liberty
“There can be no doubt that so far as procedure is
concerned the rights of the patient are most carefully
considered. We have seen more than once that the
public welfare may call upon the best citizens for
their lives. It would be strange if it could not call
upon those who already sap the strength of the state
for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by
those concerned, in order to prevent our being
swamped with incompetence. It is better if instead of
waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or
to let them starve for their imbecility, society can
prevent those who are manifestly unfit from
continuing their kind.”
Gender bias? 2/3 of sterilization
victims were women
Why sterilize men & women?


Began in 1899, Dr. Harry Sharp at Indiana
State Reformatory: “treatment” and
punishment for criminals.
1909 WA state law: punitive purpose

“Whenever a person shall be adjudged guilty of
carnal abuse of a female under 10 years old, or of
rape, or shall be judged a habitual criminal, the
court may direct an operation to be performed for
the prevention of procreation.”
Eugenicist Harry Laughlin’s model
sterilization law (1922)


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AN ACT to prevent the procreation of persons socially
inadequate from defective inheritance, by authorizing and
providing for the eugenical sterilization of certain potential
parents carrying degenerate hereditary qualities.
Persons Subject. All persons in the State who, because
of degenerate or defective hereditary qualities are
potential parents of socially inadequate offspring,
regardless of whether such persons be in the population
at large or inmates of custodial institutions, regardless
also of the personality, sex, age, marital condition, race,
or possessions of such person.
State's Motive. Purely eugenic, that is, to prevent
certain degenerate human stock from reproducing its
kind. Absolutely no punitive element.
WA state 1921 eugenics law

State mental hospitals and custodial schools.

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FM, insane, epileptic, habitual criminals, moral degenerates,
sexual perverts, and inferior hereditary potentialities.
The purpose of said investigation, findings and orders
of the Institutional Board of Health shall be for the
betterment of the physical, mental, neural, or psychic
condition of the inmate, or to protect society from
the menace of procreation by said inmate, and not in
any manner as a punitive measure.
Any inmate or guardian of the inmate may appeal
from the order of the board to the superior court
within fifteen days after receipt of notice of the
board's decision by filing an informal notice of appeal
WA


Lobbyists for 1921 law were mainly
progressive women activists.
In total, 685 operations performed






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Mostly after 1934.
400 of them mentally ill people.
500 of them women.
FM as condition for discharge; concern about
overcrowding & should sterilize more.
Overturned in 1942 on grounds that it
violated procedural due process.
Hospitals started lobotomies instead.
1909 law still on the books, RCW 9.92.100
Is forced sterilization Constitutional?



1. Cruel and unusual punishment (8th
Amendment)
2. Equal Protection Clause (14th
Amendment)
3.Due Process Clause
“For the benefit of society and
for the benefit of the patient”

Case records of the Board of Health



Ask about traits/habits of relatives.
Ask about cause of breakdown.
“What is your attitude toward sterilization?”



Some women requested the operation as form
of birth control.
Several male inmates: “homosexual type,
acts of perversion.”
FM women: “sexual promiscuity.”
Government apologies for
sterilizations





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Virginia 2002
North Carolina
California
Oregon (records
destroyed)
Indiana 2007
Washington??

Criticism: does
history matter?
Avoid close
examination of who
sanctioned eugenics
and the rights
violations. Does the
public still believe
PWD “deserved” to
be sterilized?



Disability Studies analysis of eugenics
History of people with disabilities, esp institutionalized.
Eugenics was based on medical model of disability:


We argue for the social model of disability:



individual is genetically flawed.
Scientific knowledge claims, ableist attitudes, and racist/sexist
ideologies label people “unfit.”
Overlap between disability and other human differences.
Legacy today in pre-natal genetic testing.
 Subjectivity of “well-born” and “improvement”
 Medical fix, eliminate people
History & its significance
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement
www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/
Nazi Persecution of the Disabled (US Holocaust Museum)
Against Their Will, eugenics movement in North Carolina
Eugenics in California
Indiana Eugenics: History and Legacy
"Eugenics Apologies"
"Davis's Apology Sheds No Light on Sterilizations in California"
http://hnn.us/comments/9561.html
Human genetics research
Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man homepage (National
Center for Biotechnology Information)
Your Genes Your Health homepage (Cold Spring Harbor)
Genetic Disorder Information on the Web (HGP)
National Human Genome Research Institute website (NIH)
Genome Programs of the Dept of Energy website
www.genochoice.com