He was only one of some 20,000 Californians forced to undergo such a procedure. All told, some 60,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized in state-sanctioned procedures.Ĭalifornia forced Charlie Follett to undergo a vasectomy in 1945 at the age of 15, when Follett found himself abandoned by alcoholic parents. The bill was vetoed by then-Governor Samuel Pennypacker, only to return in 1911, ’13, ’15, ’17, ’19, and again in 1921.īy the height of the eugenics movement, some 30 states had passed legislation, legalizing the involuntary sterilization of individuals considered “unfit” for reproduction. On March 21, 1905, the Pennsylvania legislature passed “An Act for the Prevention of Idiocy”, requiring that every institution in the state entrusted with the care of “ idiots and imbecile children”, be staffed by at least one skilled surgeon, whose duty it was to perform surgical sterilization. In Pennsylvania, 270 involuntary sterilizations were performed without benefit of law, between 18. Colleges and universities delved into eugenics as academic discipline, with courses exploring the ethical and public policy considerations of eliminating the “degenerate” and “unfit”. The 1912 conference was followed by two more in 19, both held in New York City. Presiding over the conference was none other than Major Leonard Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin, with Harvard president emeritus Charles William Eliot serving as vice President.
The first such symposium convened in London in 1912, discussing papers on “racial suicide” and similar topics. Public policy and academic types conducted three international eugenics conferences to discuss the application of programs to improve human bloodlines. Madison Grant, the New York lawyer best known for his work in developing the discipline of wildlife management, was a leader in the eugenics movement, once receiving an approving fan letter from none other than Adolf Hitler. It is said that the aboriginal Australian, the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets”.Īdmire or detest the woman as you choose, Sanger’s work established organizations which later evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.Īround the world, eugenics policies took the form of involuntarily terminated pregnancies, compulsory sterilization, euthanasia, and even mass extermination. The lower down in the scale of human development we go the less sexual control we find. “Her courage, her tenacity, her vision…” Time Magazine points out that “Sanger opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States”, describing her as “An advocate for women’s reproductive rights who was also a vocal eugenics enthusiast…”ĭetractors have described Sanger as a “thoroughgoing racist”, citing her own words in What Every Girl Should Know, published in 1910 : “In all fish and reptiles where there is no great brain development, there is also no conscious sexual control.
“I admire Margaret Sanger enormously”, Clinton said. Margaret Higgins Sanger believed that birth control should be compulsory for “unfit” women, who “recklessly perpetuated their damaged genetic stock by irresponsibly breeding more children in an already overpopulated world.”Īn early advocate for birth control, Sanger has her supporters to this day, including former Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Careful, selective breeding would be required to preserve the nation’s “upper crust”. The higher classes of American society were being eroded by the lower class, he argued. After writing several books on the subject, Jordan became a founding member of the Eugenics Committee of the American Breeders Association. One of the leaders of the eugenics movement was the pacifist and Stanford University professor, David Starr Jordan. By the 20s, these events had evolved into “Fitter Family” competitions. “Better Babies” competitions sprang up at state fairs across the United States, where babies were measured, weighed, and “judged”. He called it his theory of “Eugenics”.Įugenics gained worldwide respectability in the early 20th century, when countries from Brazil to Japan adopted policies regarding the involuntary sterilization of certain mental patients. In the 19th century, Francis Galton studied the theories of his cousin Charles Darwin on the evolution of species, applying them to a system of selective breeding intended to bring “better” human beings into the world. In 380BC, Plato described a system of state-controlled human breeding in his Socratic dialogue “The Republic”, introducing a “guardian class” to watch over over his ideal society.
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