Adam Cohen traced the infamous story of the sterilization of Carrie Buck, a perfectly normal woman for being an “imbecile.” The Supreme Court (Buck v. Bell), in a 8-1, decision upheld a Virginia Law in 1927 that made sterilization of “undesirable” citizens the law of the land. Voting for the majority was Chief Justice, William Howard Taft, Louis Brandeis, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
In general, major proponents of sterilization were leaders in academics, the medical community, Protestant clerics, and social workers. The Catholic Church was the only major group in opposition.
While the exact number of “undesirables” that have been sterilized is unknown, the estimates are close to 70,000. While most sterilization took place from 1920-1940, some of them took place in the late 1890’s and ended sometime in the 1980’s.
Imbeciles is the story of an assault upon defenseless people. The proponents of sterilization were an outgrowth of the Progressive Movement who wanted to improve the American stock (Eugenics) by reducing the number of criminals, prostitutes, unwed mothers, blacks, immigrants, alcoholics and less intelligent populace. Sadly, much of the academic support for widespread sterilizations came from leading academic institutions that used unsound scientific theories to foster their assertions. In the progressive attempt to upgrade the American stock, they supported not only sterilization, but the racist 1924 immigration law. The rationale for reducing immigration from Italy, Eastern Europe, and Jews, were data that claimed “some 40 % of these immigrants” were intellectually inferior.
I found the attitude toward epileptics to be particularly upsetting. In that era, instead of the public having empathy for epileptics, they treated them as outcasts—genetic inferiors.
Unlike other miscarriages of justice—Dred Scott, Plessey v. Ferguson, Korematsu v. United States— Buck v. Bell has never been explicitly overturned. In the movie, Judgment at Nuremberg, counsel for the defendants supported Nazi policies by citing this decision.
Originally published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune
