ID# 1747:
"Sterilization of the Unfit" by Anthony M. Turano, Forum (February 1934)
Date:
1934
Pages: (1|2|3)
Source:
Cold Spring Harbor, ERO, Davenport, 1933-34

&quote;Sterilization of the Unfit&quote; by Anthony M. Turano, Forum (February 1934)

[hairline rule] Sterilization of the Unfit [hairline rule] operation, many physicians have been compelled to refuse, as well as in cases of congenital idiots and other feeble-minded defectives whose guardians were willing to consent. But it is interesting to note that in recent years the treatment has been widely resorted to in the Hawaiian plantations, for purely Malthusian reasons, by workers of both sexes, in order to escape the economic burdens of large families. II Although sterilization laws have been enacted in as many as twenty-seven states, no extensive enforcement of their provisions has been made in any more than two or three jurisdictions. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is the prevailing popular notion that the treatment involves mutilation. A great deal of religious opposition has also been met with on the strength of the old theological dogma that social interference with the process of procreation is disobedience to divine command, and that the reproduction of defectives is a process no less sacred than the preservation of normal strains. The opponents of the new legislation seem to forget that the confinement of criminals and the unfit, in state institutions that are far from co-educational, is itself a partial negation of an absolute right of each individual to reproduce his kind. Most of these statutes, however, are legally unenforceable, because of the erroneous theory upon which they have been enacted. In so far as they authorize sterilization with the consent of the patient, they do not violate any submission to the treatment by an epileptic or an idiot who prefers to end his days without issue. But in providing also for compulsory operations, most laws are so worded that they defeat their own purpose. For instead of emphasizing social expediency or humanitarian and prophylactic considerations, they attempt to impose surgery as a supplementary vengeance of the law upon the unfortunate defective. Consequently, their enforcement cannot be easily sustained by the courts; and on several occasions they have been properly declared unconstitutional, as violations of the provision against cruel and unusual punishments. The Oregon law, for instance, defines the various crimes for which the operation may be ordered, and seems to assume that hereditary mental alienation of deficiency has a selective affinity for certain offenses. A similar enactment in Nevada provides for sterilization, at the discretion of the Court, in certain cases of rape and for persons who are adjudged habitual criminals. The Oklahoma law, passed as recently as 1931, presumes, with ultra-scientific boldness, that third-term criminals, regardless of the offense, are afflicted with inheritable defects of behavior. It is evident that the motive of such legislation is no less punitive than the medieval laws prescribing castration or other forms of mutilation. Indiscriminate sterilization, without careful inquiry into the specific social question of transmissible defects, is no more logical than the plan of a school teacher of my acquaintance who applied the rod to every palm in his class, in the certainty that the unknown boy who had stolen a gross of pencils from his desk would not escape without a punitive whack. In other states, the new statutes ignore the right of the patient to "due process of law," by prescribing a summary procedure that deprives him of his day in court. It goes without saying that the final decision, in all cases where the treatment is resisted by the subject, should be based upon the testimony of competent physicians, and ordered by a judge after a regular trial. There is no doubt that the operation, as a measure of public welfare, and based on the power of the state, does not contravene any provision of the Constitution. Such a law, in fact, was positively affirmed by the United States Supreme Court (1927) in Buck v. Bell. An order of sterilization was being opposed in behalf of Carrie Buck, aged eighteen, an inmate of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-minded. That the patient suffered from an hereditary form of mental deficiency was beyond question. Her mother was similarly afflicted, and her illegitimate child was likewise abnormal. Mr. Justice Holmes, writing the opinion of the Court, very aptly remarked: [extract] The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting of the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles is enough. 123 [end]

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