Eugenical Sterilization in the United States: A Report of the Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago

Gault, Robert H.; Laughlin, Harry Hamilton

doi:10.2307/1134274

Cited by 12 publications

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“…Men of high scientific attainments are prone … to lose sight of broad principles outside of their domain … To permit such an operation would be to inflict cruelty upon a helpless class … which the state has undertaken to protect. 8 Colorado Governor William H. Adams (Democrat, 1927) listed his own motives for a veto, noting that it applied only to people who were wards of the state, and…”

Section: Summary Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Republicans, Democrats, & Doctors: The Lawmakers Who Wrote Sterilization Laws

Lombardo

2023

J. Law. Med. Ethics

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During the 20th Century, thirty-two state legislatures passed laws that sanctioned coercive sexual sterilization as a solution to the purported detrimental increases in the population of “unfit” or “defective” citizens. While both scholarly and popular commentary has attempted to attribute these laws to political parties, or to broad or poorly defined ideological groups such as “progressives,” no one has identified the political allegiance of each legislator who introduced a successfully adopted sterilization law, and the governor who signed it. This article remedies that omission.

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Section: Summary Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Republicans, Democrats, & Doctors: The Lawmakers Who Wrote Sterilization Laws

Lombardo

2023

J. Law. Med. Ethics

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Proponents of eugenics blamed “bad genetics” for social issues, including criminality ( Gault and Laughlin 1924 ; Stern et al. 2017 ), sexual deviancy ( Gault and Laughlin 1924 ; Kline 2001 ; Stern 2005 ), and poverty ( Gault and Laughlin 1924 ; Price and Darity 2010 ). Eugenicists advocated for a wide array of eugenic measures, encouraging those considered “genetically fit” to reproduce more and using policies of social exclusion and reproductive control to prevent people considered “genetically unfit” from having children ( Stern 2016 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Racialization and Reproduction: Asian Immigrants and California’s Twentieth-Century Eugenic Sterilization Program

et al. 2023

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During the twentieth century, state health authorities in California recommended sterilization for over 20,000 individuals held in state institutions. Asian immigrants occupied a marginalized position in racial, gender, and class hierarchies in California at the height of its eugenic sterilization program. Scholars have documented the disproportionate sterilization of other racialized groups, but little research exists connecting the racist, gendered implementation of Asian immigration restriction to the racism and sexism inherent in eugenics. This study examines patterns of coercive sterilization in Asian immigrants in California, hypothesizing higher institutionalization and sterilization rates among Asian-born compared with other foreign- and US-born individuals. We used complete count census microdata from 1910 to 1940 and digitized sterilization recommendation forms from 1920 to 1945 to model relative institutionalization and sterilization rates of Asian-born, other foreign-born, and US-born populations, stratified by gender. Other foreign-born men and women had the highest institutionalization rates in all four census years. Sterilization rates were higher for Asian-born women compared with US-born [Incidence Rate Ratio (IRR) = 2.00 (95% CI: 1.61, 2.48)] and other foreign-born women (p < 0.001) across the entire study period. Sterilization rates for Asian-born men were not significantly higher than those of US-born men [IRR 0.95 (95% CI 0.83, 1.10). However, an inflection point model incorporating the year of sterilization found higher sterilization rates for Asian-born men than for US-born men prior to 1933 [IRR 1.31 (95% CI 1.09, 1.59)]. This original quantitative analysis contributes to the literature demonstrating the health impact of discrimination on Asian-Americans and the disproportionate sterilization of racial minorities under state eugenics programs.

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“…British polymath Francis Galton had coined the term in 1883 "to express the science of improving stock… which especially in the case of man, takes cognizance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable"; over the next decades the terms of this improvement came to be attached to reproductive interventions ranging from involuntary sterilization to population arms races (Laughlin, 1922;Bund, 1910;S. F. Galton, 1883).…”

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confidence: 99%

From Right to Responsibility: Resonance and Radicalism in Feminist‐Led Reproductive Control Movements, 1905‐1942

Eby¹

2023

Sociology Lens

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How do leaders of social movements leverage resonance and radicalism to achieve movement goals? As eugenics gained prominence from the end of the 19th century through World War II, feminist leaders of contraceptive access movements pushed for the acceptance of birth control simultaneously as a right for women and as a tool to further racist, ableist and ethnonationalist eugenic interventions. This paper analyzes the trajectories of two feminist birth control activists in the United States and Germany to trace the development and divergence of their movements alongside eugenics through three general framings over the first half of the 20th century: advocating the individual, advancing humanity, and augmenting the state. This research uses personal papers and social movement records to show that these cases present a kind of double resonance through which movement leaders could reframe reproductive control as a solution not only to the problems of their audiences, but also legitimize their politics and identities. By contextualizing eugenics alongside neo-Malthusianism, birth control, abortion, and reproductive governance, this analysis helps to map reproductive control as a device historically wielded by white feminists to organize broader political support to fit varying and contradictory ideological projects.From whatever standpoint you may regard the question of marriage and sexual reform, from that of mothers' protection, of race hygiene, of the reformation of the social and domestic status of the woman, without the clear knowledge that love and procreation are to be separated no progress is possible. One of the most difficult responsibilities of man-the procreation of new human beings-

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Eugenical Sterilization in the United States: A Report of the Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Republicans, Democrats, & Doctors: The Lawmakers Who Wrote Sterilization Laws

Republicans, Democrats, & Doctors: The Lawmakers Who Wrote Sterilization Laws

Racialization and Reproduction: Asian Immigrants and California’s Twentieth-Century Eugenic Sterilization Program

From Right to Responsibility: Resonance and Radicalism in Feminist‐Led Reproductive Control Movements, 1905‐1942

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