Forced sterilization in America was long and tragically heinous…during the 20th century. Moreover, well-known figures like Theodore Roosevelt supported the legislation and advocated eugenic interventions preventing individuals with inherited traits from reproducing.
For instance, President Roosevelt felt criminals and individuals with certain cognitive disabilities (the so-called ‘feeble-minded‘) should be sexually sterilized.
Coincidently, Roosevelt feared that if eugenic actions were not taken, the United States would be committing ‘race suicide,’ meaning that the superior race would decline.
What a thing for a President to think about—let alone advocate for—the victimization of citizens!
(Think about it!)
Interestingly, Oliver Wendell Holmes—a man personally appointed to the Supreme Court by Roosevelt—was responsible for upholding compulsory sexual sterilization laws in the United States.
Simply put, vulnerable people were deemed unfit to have children…if they were members of the inferior races, the degeneration of this country…
This article explores America’s dark history of forced sterilization and why it happened. These reprehensible practices stained our nation’s conscience and should never be forgotten or overlooked.
Let’s dive deeper into the tumultuous tragedy inflicted upon thousands of people across the country during The eugenics movement in the U.S. started in the early 1900s.
All forms of eugenics had one thing in common — that people were not allowed to make their own reproductive choices. The government decides who can and can’t reproduce.
Who Was Sterilized?
The vast majority were women, the poor, the disabled, the mentally ill, and people of color disproportionately were affected by forced sterilization.
Shamefully enough, it’s a way to “expurgate” the genetic pool. An evil sinister attempted to eradicate people with mental illness, disabilities, and people from certain ethnic groups by creating eugenics and the human genome projects.
Interestingly, the projects were viewed as scientific and progressive; but we now know it was nothing more than bigotry, racism, and prejudice of sinister-insidious bastards.
Like Hitler, they wanted science to “fix” it so that certain population growths were stopped by applying selective breeding principles.
Such as eugenics, population control, and the prevention of welfare dependency.
Those who were affected by sterilization included:
• African-Americans – Most states had laws that allowed for the sterilization of African Americans. It was sometimes used as coercion to control the poor black populations.
• Native Americans – Many reservations had high rates of poverty and disease, so sterilization was used to control these populations.
• Mentally Ill – Mental illness was often misunderstood by the medical community, causing many people to be misdiagnosed and sterilized.
• Disabled – Disabled people were sometimes sterilized so that they wouldn’t be able to have children.
Because of the law, this happened to an unnamed black woman…
In August 1964, the North Carolina Eugenics Board met to decide if a 20-year-old Black woman should be sterilized.
She was a single mother with one child who lived at the segregated O’Berry Center for African American adults with intellectual disabilities in Goldsboro.
According to the North Carolina Eugenics Board, she had an IQ of 62 and exhibited “aggressive behavior and sexual promiscuity.”
Additionally, she had been orphaned as a child and had a limited education. Likely because of her “low IQ score,” the board determined she was not capable of rehabilitation.
Instead, the board recommended the “protection of sterilization” for the woman because she was “feebleminded” and deemed unable to “assume responsibility for herself” or her child. Without her input, Bertha’s guardian signed the sterilization form.
For example…
United States Supreme Court ruling upheld a Virginia law for sterilizing persons as “developmentally inferior.”
The person at the center of the case was Carrie Buck, 18 years old at the time of the trial; she had an illegitimate child and was institutionalized. Afterward, she was ordered to be sterilized.
The Court based its decision on expert testimony from Arthur Estabrook, a physician with experience at the eugenics records office in Cold Harbor Spring, New York.
Estabrook did not re-apply the IQ test that Carrie had been given in the state home, stating instead that he had “talked to Carrie adequately, enough to arrive at his decision that she was feebleminded.
Therefore, the Court based its decision on the testimony from Arthur Estabrook, a supposed expert with experience in eugenics.
The Court heard that Carrie’s mother was under government care and feebleminded as well; Needless to say, they characterized Carrie’s six-month-old child as likely feebleminded.
Why Did It Happen?
The eugenics movement in the U.S. started during the late nineteenth century and continued as late as the 1940s.
The movement endorsed inhospitable eugenics, intending to eliminate undesirable genetic traits in the human race through selective breeding.
The American eugenics movement in the early 20th century was a time when laws legalizing forced sterilizations and prohibiting individuals with mental or physical defects from marrying were passed.
In addition, mixed-race couples also faced discrimination as they could not legally get married.
Thepolicies of this country are cruel and unfair, targeting people based on their race. It’s just wrong to treat anyone less than human!
The racist policies imposed by this country targeting people is downright despicable.
And the stupid assholes that came up with this bullshit…should burn in hell for eternity.
What’s more, all forms of eugenics had one thing in common — that people were not allowed to make their own reproductive choices.
Instead, the government decides who can and can’t reproduce.
They believed that they could try to improve the human race by studying genetics and that their experiments would lead to a better life.
Aftermath
Eugenics, also known as “racial hygiene” and the “science of racial betterment,” is a movement that emerged in the early 1900s and aimed to fix hereditary traits within a population.
It was promoted by many prominent scientists and thinkers, including Francis Galton, and was very popular with the governments of the day.
Galton was convinced people inherited social and mental traits like talent and intelligence.
The eugenic laws were passed across the country, and around 64,000 people in the United States were sterilized under this legislation, often against their will.
California to pay victims of forced, coerced sterilizations
Nation Jul 7, 2021, 2:29 PM EDT
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California is poised to approve reparations of up to $25,000 to some of the thousands of people — as young as 13 — who were sterilized decades ago because the government deemed them unfit to have children.
The payments will make California the third state — following Virginia and North Carolina — to compensate victims of the so-called eugenics movement that peaked in the 1930s.
Supporters of the movement believed sterilizing people with mental illnesses, physical disabilities, and other undesirable traits would improve the human race.
While California sterilized more than 20,000 people before its law was repealed in 1979, only a few hundred are still alive.
Conclusion
The history of forced sterilization in America should never be forgotten.
Eugenics may have been widely accepted then but doesn’t justify the worst crimes against humanity and human dignity imaginable.”
And the fact that these practices were once allowed by the government is a shameful stain on our nation’s conscience.
Thanks For Reading!
https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/forced-sterilization-policies-us-targeted-minorities-and-those-disabilities-and-lasted-21st#:~:text=Preliminary%20analysis%20shows%20that%20from,the%20rate%20of%20white%20men.
https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2020/11/04/americas-forgotten-history-of-forced-sterilization/
https://lawblogs.uc.edu/ihrlr/2021/05/28/not-just-ice-forced-sterilization-in-the-united-states/
