A Weapon of Eugenics:

Sterilization as a Means to Better the Race
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It was no coincidence that modern sterilization procedures were developed as the science of eugenics emerged in Western thought. Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, coined the term “eugenics” in 1883. This pseudo-science, an outgrowth of social Darwinism and Gregor Mendel’s laws of inheritance, stressed that heredity was law and that those with good genes should be harnessed while those with “defective” genes should be eliminated. Positive eugenics was the science of nourishing those fit to reproduce while negative eugenics developed methods to eradicate undesirable elements. This elitist science, which targeted the poor, the mentally and physically handicapped, and certain racial groups, found fertile ground in the United States where upper and middle class professionals feared "race suicide" among the fit. Indeed, the United States shaped and transformed eugenics into a movement which was mimicked all over the world—including in Nazi Germany.12
          The mid to late nineteenth century was a time when birth control knowledge and use was still very taboo and very illegal, thus doctors were not interested in developing sterilization for middle and upper class Americans but rather for those elements causing “degeneracy.” At a time when many American scientific and medical circles believed criminality, poverty, depravity, and mental illness were genetically inherited, a technique to prevent reproduction of these qualities was greatly desired. Sterilization offered the "surgical solution." With a perceived sense that defective Americans reproduced much faster than normal ones, eugenicists, like Ochsner and others, viewed sterilization as a panacea.13 Sterilization become an integral part of a population control system where eugenicists, doctors, and politicians worked together to ensure the sterilization of the unfit. Eugenic sterilization laws legalizing the involuntary sterilization of the mentally ill, criminals, and other defectives, came to being in close to thirty states with more than 70,000 Americans losing the ability to reproduce by the mid-twentieth century. 

The Eugenic Sterilization God: Harry Sharp
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Eugenicists idealized Dr. Harry Sharp of Indiana as the first eugenic sterilizer in America. Sharp was a physician at the Indiana Reformatory at Jeffersonville and had received his medical degree in 1893. Sharp was part of an institution proud of its progressive nature. After reading about Ochsner’s first vasectomy operation, he decided to begin a campaign to end the reproduction of defective Americans.14

          Sharp had already been performing castrations on criminals as a means to cure masturbation and in 1899, he become the first to sterilize, by vasectomy, a patient in custody. Sharp explained his actions in an article he wrote for the New York Medical Journal and he became an instant medical celebrity. By 1904, Sharp had performed 176 vasectomies as a eugenic solution to American racial degeneracy. Sharp also pushed for the first eugenic sterilization law in Indiana in 1907.15 Dozens of states would follow Indiana’s example. Eugenicists hailed Dr. Harry Sharp as a eugenic God and “father” of the modern eugenic sterilization procedure.16

The Eugenic Sterilization Champion: Harry Laughlin
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Eugenics established a solid foothold in America and by 1910 the eugenics movement was well-organized and well-supported. Eugenics organizations such as the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) and American Eugenics Society (AES) were financed by the Carnegie Institution and Harriman Railroads. Eugenic sterilization laws passed in dozens of states. By 1920, doctors used vasectomies and tubal ligations to sterilize 3,233 institutionalized Americans.17 Around this period, Charles Davenport, the leader of American eugenics, promoted Harry Laughlin as his right-hand man at the ERO. Laughlin, a fervent eugenic sterilization proponent, became the champion and face of involuntary sterilization in America.
          
          Harry Laughlin, a native of Missouri, had been interested in animal breeding his entire life. By 1907, he came into correspondence with Charles Davenport and became fascinated with the prospects of breeding better Americans through eugenics. By the time Laughlin joined the ERO at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, he tirelessly obsessed over data gathering and analysis—leading him to develop a model sterilization program for the United States.18 By 1922, Laughlin published Eugenical Sterilization in the United States, an exhaustive study of sterilization statutes and operations throughout the country. The book also included Laughlin’s own model sterilization law and proposals to use sterilization to solve America’s degeneracy problem. In arguing for more compulsory sterilization, Laughlin explained:

The sum total of human freedom and human happiness will be greatly promoted, in the long run, by eugenical processes which call for the elimination of degenerate and handicapped strains, from the racial stocks, and the increase of numbers of citizens highly endowed by nature with splendid mental, physical, and moral qualities. The state, then, must exercise its undoubted right and duty to control human reproduction along the lines of race betterment, and in so doing is fully justified in putting into effect such measures as, in keeping with the Bill of Rights and human principles, will bring about the desired ends.19
         
          Laughlin became the champion of eugenic sterilization as states consulted him for aid with their own eugenic sterilization programs. The United States Government also turned to Laughlin as a special advisor for the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 and he served as a witness for the infamous Buck vs. Bell Supreme Court trial in 1927 when the court upheld involuntary sterilization in the United States.20 The Buck vs. Bell case tested the Virginia sterilization statute as it was about to be used against Carrie Buck, an apparently feebleminded woman who gave birth to a feebleminded child. On May 2, 1927, the Supreme Court voted 8 to 1 to uphold sterilization laws, giving eugenicists around the country a tremendous victory.21
           Some eugenicists became almost too confident after the Supreme Court decision. Leon Whitney, eugenic radical and secretary of the American Eugenics Society (AES), even called for the sterilization of ten million defective Americans in 1934. Despite such drastic and poorly receievd calls, negative eugenics in the form of sterilization was profoundly successful in the United States, much more so than positive eugenics.22 After the Buck decision and spurred by the Great Depression, eugenic sterilizations increased dramatically from 8,000 in 1927 to more than 38,000 in 1941. California and Virginia led the way in involuntary sterilizations. Through the 1970s, another 30,000 Americans would lose the ability to reproduce under state sterilization programs.23

 Click here to read a section of Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s decision in the Buck vs. Bell case.

          

Page Created By: Noah Cincinnati               Email Address: ncinc5ce@umw.edu              Page Updated: 3/16/05