Thinning the Flock (book review)

[MountainLaurel]

I'm including this in the Choice section because the issue of forced sterilization is one that goes hand in hand with that of forced birth.


Three generations of imbeciles are enough." With those chilling words, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., one of the great Supreme Court justices, sealed the fate of Carrie Buck. More precisely, the court's ruling led to the sealing of Carrie Buck's fallopian tubes. Buck v. Bell put the ultimate legal stamp of approval on a practice that was already widespread: the sterilization of the supposedly genetically unfit. In 1907, Indiana became the first state to introduce sterilization laws. All told, about 65,000 people were sterilized in 33 states. After World War II, mainly because of the taint caused by similar practices in Nazi Germany, there was a decline in enthusiasm for such practices. A slow decline: The last compulsory sterilization in Oregon was as recent as 1981.

Controlling (or rather preventing) the reproduction of some members of society is called eugenics, a word derived from eugenes, the Greek term for "well born" or "good breeding." In "Better for All the World," Harry Bruinius tells the story of the United States' enthusiastic practice of eugenics. His subtitle is "The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity." I am not sure how "secret" things were then or are now. Certainly, compulsory sterilization was a very public issue when in full force, and in the past 20 years, books -- notably, Daniel Kevles's "In the Name of Eugenics" -- as well as articles have been published on the topic. In 1994 there was a television drama, "Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story." But the topic is sufficiently important to tell again and again, and Bruinius's telling is a first-rate read.

snip

Bruinius suggests, rightly, that compulsory sterilization was horrible and not something of which the nation should be proud. However, because he concentrates on individuals and tries to convey their personalities, hopes and shortcomings, he fails to provide any real understanding of them or the issues that defined them. Teddy Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler had similar ideas about breeding, and evidence shows that the Nazis learned from the Americans. Yet I simply cannot see the two men as moral equivalents. Are my different judgments based simply on the fact that I know what Hitler went on to do in the Holocaust, or is it that I am not sure that sterilization is always a bad thing? After all, Hitler was strongly against smoking; the simple fact that he was for or against something is not the ultimate moral determinant. Consider a case that Bruinius mentions, that of a woman with an IQ of 71 -- just about the level that even today's Supreme Court thinks makes a person incompetent -- who had eight children out of wedlock. Is it absolutely wrong if the state says, "Get sterilized or we will keep you out of society until you are past reproductive age"? I keep thinking of all of those kids. Even if they are not genetically inferior, I doubt very much that they are going to have the warm, nurturing upbringing I have tried to give my children.

Judge me a moral monster if you will. I simply do not find these questions easy to answer, and I think a book on the subject of eugenics should at least start to grapple with them seriously. But I do not want to end on a sour note. Harry Bruinius writes well and always engagingly. If you want a good start to a problematic part of America's history, this is the book to read.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/26/AR2006042602245.html

[Warpy]

1. It's a tough issue

One of the people I cared for when I was just starting out was a profoundly retarded 33 year old woman. She was so proufoundly retarded that she didn't interact with her enviroment at all, had been bottle fed all her life, and was permanently contracted into a fetal position, no recognition of faces and no smile.

She didn't come into the state system until she was in her mid 20s. By that time, she had produced 3 children, all born at home and all retarded, thanks to a daddy who paid for her keep by pimping her out to the neighborhood.

Should this badly damaged human being have been sterilized? Oh yeah. However, where do we draw the line? That same hospital sterilized teenagers who were only borderline retarded, probably due to poor nutrition of their mothers and in their own childhoods. There is a whole lot of trust involved in making decisions like that, and most of the people making them have proven to me that they are untrustworthy.

I guess that puts me firmly against involuntary sterilization, even for the woman I just described.

[Finder]

3. Agree, it is complicated...

and like you, because of the abuses in the past, I must lean against it. I do support education and birth control. Many social service agencies are dispensing birth control but they are soon to be replaced by the new faith based initiative funded agencies and I doubt much birth control will be dispensed.

[Sinti]

2. Forced sterilization and forced birth may be more intertwined

than we would assume. Most of your oldest, and some of the most vocal proponents of forced birth (anti-choice luminaries) were at one time some of your biggest proponents of Eugenics. HW himself, when he was in Congress, was very pro-Eugenics. Birthright Inc. was an actual provider of forced sterilization in the South. They are now Birthright International, an international anti-choice moral whiplash group.

If you remove access to normal means of birth control, i.e. condoms, pills, spermicidal chemicals and so on, and make abortions illegal even for rape and incest victims, the only choice left for many is sterilization, as opposed to having so many children you can't feed them all. It's poverty eradication and disease prevention in their eyes.

[Iris]

4. Yes, but Margaret Sanger was also a support of the eguenics movement.

So tread lightly here.

There was an article about this on Salon about 6 months ago.

[Quantess]

5. Margaret Sanger

was a hero, in my opinion. Her primary concern was for lower class, poor, underprivileged women to have the reproductive control that was already available to affluent women. Poor women had no effective way to limit family size, which only meant a continuation of poverty for her and her family. The result of a poor woman not having the "luxury" of family planning, was a huge family of malnourished, poorly raised, poverty stricken offspring, who were a strain on society. Poor women with large families had no way to escape poverty.

Margaret Sanger's main goal was for all women, including poor women, to control their reproduction. She was interested in helping women break the cycle of poverty.

[Iris]

6. I did not say any of that was not true.

But it is also known that she believed in eugenics. As I mentioned, there was an article about this at salon.com. You can look it up in their archives if you don't believe me.

[Quantess]

7. I'm not arguing with you.

I wrote an 11 page essay about Margaret Sanger in a Women's History class in 1994. I remember it.

Eugenics is a loaded word, and yes, she supported it. But that was a minor motivation, compared to her wanting family planning for poor women. Wealthy women already had those privileges.

From her point of view, poor women were just breeding more poor people, because they had no other choice, thereby staying in poverty. Sanger saw the multiple offspring of poor women as mostly miserable, disadvantaged people who had few other choices than to turn to crime, or to just perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Remember, this was depression-era. So yes, she supported eugenics.

She also decried incest and inbreeding, because of the resulting birth defects. Margaret Sanger was concerned about babies being born with physical and mental disabilities (called handicaps for a long time), because at that time in history, they would more than likely be institutionalized, having to endure horrible living conditions.

I read Sanger's own writings, and she seemed to have a lot of sympathy and compassion for poverty stricken women of that time in history, who knew nothing except having a repeat cycle of unwanted children, or, dying in childbirth, or dying from a back-alley abortion. For the era, she was a hero, in my opinion.

(edited to add the part about back-alley abortions)

[Quantess]

8. self delete