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.