The Eugenics Movement in the U.S. – Following the scientific, legal, and social ramifications of the eugenics movement in the U.S. from the 19th century to today.

What Does This Mean For Our Future?

With current social, political, and legal turmoil reinforcing attitudes of racism, nationalism, elitism, sexism, and prejudice today, one could say that society embraces a modern form of eugenics. People in power reinforce these attitudes and manipulate others in a repressive manner for their beneficial gain. If we as a country continue to go in this direction, our social, economic, and political problems will escalate and envelop our society. If we let the stress from these problems build, our sensitivity to moral and ethical values will decrease and citizens will continue to have their rights infringed upon.

What we need to do to combat this downward spiral is to place importance on finding real solutions to issues in our society instead of placing blame on individuals and repressing their actions. People must lobby and persuade our government to exhaust their resources towards remedying the issues that plague society today and towards promoting a balance of power among individuals of every class and status.

Applications to Today

Eugenics ideology has altered social thinking in a way that perceives people with certain differences in social, economic, or intellectual status as lesser beings in society. The concept of genetic determinism is still promoted heavily today. “The National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse has allocated $25 million for research on the genetic origins of alcoholism” and the “National Institute of Mental Health has awarded even larger sums for the study of the genetics of schizophrenia and manic depression” (Allen). There has been much dispute scientifically on claims of human behavior genetics, but a large amount of evidence points away from inheritable personality traits. Yet, there is still a large amount of money and time being allocated for research to find a link rather than expending the resources towards real solutions for societal issues.

Instances of eugenics in the form of coerced sterilization still occur as well. In Tennessee, Judge Sam Benningfield issued an order that reduces jail sentences for inmates who agree to undergo birth control procedures. For male inmates, a credit of just 30 days is offered in exchange for vasectomies. Female inmates receive a Nexplanon implant, which is effective for up to four years (Holloway). Advocates of this program might say that the inmates are given a choice to whether they want to participate, however, there isn’t much choice involved when they are basically bartering their fertility for a reduced sentence. These inmates are coerced into choosing a lesser sentence as a step towards their physical freedom, but they are sacrificing their mental and psychological freedom in the process. This is a modern form of eugenics: a way for the government to control “undesirable” individuals and promote their elimination from society in hopes of finding a solution to social problems.

The reproductive rights of the victims of the eugenics movement were violated (usually without knowledge or consent) for the perceived benefit of the government and people in power. Reproductive justice is still very relevant in society today, with state laws continuing to restrict people’s access to forms of birth control and abortion procedure. The rights a person has to dictate what they do with their own body should ultimately and solely be up to that person. However, American society continues to let social beliefs and prejudice corrupt people’s freedom.

Social Ideology, Problems, and Prejudice

(Ad published by the Sterilization League of New Jersey-October, 1937)

The period where the eugenics movement became popular (from 1900 to 1940), was called the Progressive Era. This era was one of great social and economic instability, and progressivist policy “supported the ideology of scientific planning and management” of economic, political, and social processes and was “devoted to the ‘cult of efficiency,’ that is, among other things, preventing problems before they occurred rather than letting them take place and then having to deal with catastrophic consequences” (Allen). This political ideology cultivated the American government’s increasing power of social control over its citizens. They looked at eugenics as a preventative and efficient measure: those with defective genes cause a variety of social problems, so the efficient solution is to prevent these genes from being passed on to future generations.

America’s rapid economic shift from an agricultural to an industrial society around this time brought about a variety of social and economic problems that plagued society. The Great Depression, monopolies, unsafe/unfair working conditions, increasing racial tensions, increasing immigration, segregation, disease, social discrimination, and poverty were just some of the problems that the government looked to solve with progressive policy. Eugenics ideology explained these problems as a result of poor genetics and implemented various programs to eliminate these genes from the population instead of actually trying to fix the problems.

The eugenics movement had “lingering associations with racism, fascism and elitism,” (Allen) in that eugenicists provided scientific justification for and promoted such attitudes already present in society. The eugenics movement largely distracted from social solutions and placed blame on the “genetically unfit” individuals in society in hopes of providing a quick fix for these deeply-rooted issues. The victims of eugenics policy were “socially inadequate” individuals… people who were the victims of social prejudice for being poor, diasbled, mentally ill, colored, etc.

Landmark Cases

Naturally, when someone’s rights are being infringed upon, they might seek legal action and retribution for the injustice. Victims of the eugenics movement took such action, but the law has rarely been on their side. Several landmark cases dictated the justification and enforcement for compulsory sterilization laws in various states:

Buck v Bell (1927): Carrie Buck, a white woman from Virginia, argued against the Court of the constitutionality of a Virginia law that enforced her sterilization after she gave birth. Her mother was committed to a mental institution for “feeblemindedness” and Carrie was believe to have inherited the trait. The opinion of the court was in support of the law: “the health of the patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, chief justice of the time, famously remarked about Carrie’s family that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” The decision of this case still stands today… (Buck v Bell)

The video below highlights the Buck v Bell case and sterilization:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8df38lQX7A&t=200s

Relf v Weinberger (1974): Poor, mentally disabled African American sisters from Alabama, Mary Alice and Minnie Relf, were sterilized at young ages without their knowledge or consent. Their illiterate mother signed an “X” on a document she believed to be administering birth control to her daughters, but in reality it authorized their sterilization. During 1974 “the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Relf sisters, revealing that 100,000 to 150,000 poor people were being sterilized each year under federally-funded programs” (Ko).
Madrigal v Quilligan (1975): 10 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County USC Medical Center claiming that the hospital performed sterilizations on Spanish- speaking mothers who gave birth from Cesarian sections. California federal judge Jesse W. Curtis ruled that the “case is essentially the result of a breakdown in communications between the patients and the doctors” and that the plaintiffs’ “emotional distress at being sterilized was caused by their ‘cultural background’ as immigrants from rural Mexico who believed that a woman’s worth is tied to her ability to raise a large family — not by their sterilizations” (Valdes).

It wasn’t until recently, 2015 to be exact, that the U.S. government has considered their eugenic action to be wrongful and offered compensation to the victims. With the “Eugenics Compensation Act,” the US Senate “voted unanimously to help surviving victims of forced sterilization” (Ko). Various states have offered monetary compensation for surviving victims of their eugenics programs. Even though they receive compensation, the victims of coerced sterilization can never be un-sterilized and gain their ability to create children back. These people are forever suffering at the hands of our unjust government, and the government’s version of apologizing is done through compensating whoever is still alive some 80+ years later.

Compulsory Sterilization Laws

Coerced sterilization “is a shameful part of America’s history…used as a means of controlling “undesirable” populations – immigrants, people of color, poor people, unmarried mothers, the disabled, the mentally ill – federally-funded sterilization programs took place in 32 states throughout the 20th century” (Ko). Genetically inferior people became victims of injustice such as forced sterilization due to the crude theories of gene heredity that governed the eugenics movement. In coordination with feeling genetically inferior, victims were also made to feel socially inferior– made to feel like, according to the government, they and their possible offspring are an inconvenience to society.

The idea of protecting society from the children of people deemed dangerous, crazy, or inferior became a popular notion, and California even “led the country in the number of sterilization procedures performed on men and women, often without their full knowledge and consent” (Ko). Not only were these poor individuals forced to comply with state sterilization procedures, but they also did so largely unaware of such procedures taking place. It is far below the ethical standard of the doctors not to inform the patients of the occurrence and the repercussions of these procedures.

By the end of the eugenics movement, “over 60,000 forced sterilizations were performed in the United States on mostly poor (and often African-American) people confined to mental hospitals” (Farber). Even though mass sterilizations have generally subsided, the continuance of government intervention in “improving” the human race has manifested through the coerced sterilization of Native Americans as well as inmates from after this period to present day. This is a pressing issue in American society, however, not much has been achieved judicially in eliminating eugenics ideology.

The following picture details the progress of the eugenics movement in affecting legislation for sterilization laws:

Scientists’ Role in Eugenics Policy

There were three major efforts by the 1920’s that “pushed the eugenic agenda in the United States and subsequently throughout Europe: (1) The Eugenics Research Association in affiliation with the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (2) The American Eugenics Society with the purpose of promoting the eugenics movement at both the scientific and popular level. (3) The Eugenics Records Office with the express purpose of providing the scientific data to support the eugenics movement” (Farber). With prominent scientists heading these operations, eugenics was soon brought to national and international attention, and the policies regarding eugenic genetic control began to flourish.

The Eugenics Record Office was headed by scientists Charles B. Davenport and Harry Hamilton Laughlin, and Harry “was appointed the Eugenics Expert Witness to the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization in 1921” where he testified three times arguing that “the ‘new’ immigrants from non-Anglo-Saxon countries such as Poland, Hungary, the Balkans, Turkey, Italy, and Russia were genetically inferior to the old native American stock and were, by continual assimilation and intermarriage ‘polluting’ the blood stream of America” (Allen). The eugenic-based arguments provided by Laughlin allowed American views of nationalism, prejudice, racism, and nativism to be supported scientifically and allowed eugenic ideology to thrive in all facets of society.

Eugenicists were also influential in the passage of compulsory sterilization laws as a means of preventing the inheritance of socially inferior genes to the population. Laughlin and others “lobbied in a number of state legislatures on behalf of compulsory sterilization laws for institutionalized individuals deemed to be ‘genetically inferior’” and in almost all of the cases “it was claimed that sterilization of genetic defectives now would save millions of dollars in the future” (Allen). The argument in favor of eugenics was largely one of efficiency: those deemed genetically inferior expend an inefficient amount of the government’s time, energy, and money, so lessening the amount of these individuals is beneficial to society and the state.

Genetic Determinism and Eugenic Theory

Genetic determinism, the belief that human behavior is determined by an individual’s genes, accompanied with the then-new science of Mendelian genetics gave rise to eugenic theory in the beginning of the 19th century. Human behavior genetics became the primary focus of eugenic ideology, with eugenicists promoting the belief that certain social traits such as intelligence, race, insanity, criminality, homosexuality, etc. are inherited. Eugenicists around the world believed that gene therapy, sterilization, and euthanasia were the solutions to limit these unfavorable traits from existence, and governing bodies agreed.

In reality, there was little scientific evidence to prove these claims, but most members of the scientific community did not speak up publicly about the tenuous and often-exaggerated claims of eugenicists. Many thought it was largely a political movement and that it did not behoove professional geneticists to get involved in political debates, however, what resulted was the general public receiving the impression that eugenics was an accepted belief due to limited challenge of it (Allen).

Background

Eugenics, which can be described as controlled reproduction to eliminate the genetically unfit and promote the reproduction of the genetically fit (Allen), was a worldwide movement to improve human heredity during the 19th century. The term eugenics was originally coined by Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton in 1883 to mean ‘truly’ or ‘purely’ born and was redefined by Galton’s American disciple Charles B. Davenport as “the science of the improvement of the human race by better breeding” (Allen). The American eugenics movement gained prominence in the progressive era from 1900-1940, but eugenic ideas have remained consistent in society ever since.

Eugenicists, advocates of eugenics, were active in promoting the movement in the scientific, political, and legal arenas of American society. Eugenic scientists developed research programs to find distinct genetic roots for the many problems of personality and society that alarmed their contemporaries: from “feeblemindedness” and “psychopathy” to “delinquency” and “hypersexuality.” The poverty and crime that pervaded society were comprehended as the offspring of hereditary “mental defects” and “racial mongrelization” (Willrich). Supporters of this movement advocated for immigration restriction and compulsory sterilization laws within the United States to weed out the “genetically unfit” and promote the development of a genetically improved populous.

The logical justification behind eugenics was that it was too inconvenient and inefficient for the state to be caring for “genetically unfit” individuals and the offspring of these individuals with unfavorable traits. Therefore, eugenics programs were a form of social control: a way to keep these traits from manifesting in a large portion of the population and from furthering the prominence of recurrent social problems in society.