{"id":12257,"date":"2016-01-29T01:51:09","date_gmt":"2016-01-29T01:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=blog&p=12257"},"modified":"2024-02-01T14:42:39","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T22:42:39","slug":"unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenics-programs-in-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenics-programs-in-the-united-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Unwanted Sterilization and Eugenics Programs in the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coerced sterilization is a shameful part of America\u2019s history, and one doesn’t have to go too far back to find examples of it. Used as a means of controlling \u201cundesirable\u201d populations \u2013 immigrants, people of color, poor people, unmarried mothers, the disabled, the mentally ill \u2013 federally-funded sterilization programs took place in 32 states throughout the 20th century.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As historian <\/span>William Deverell explains<\/span> in a piece discussing the \u201cAsexualization Acts\u201d that led to the sterilization of more than 20,000 California men and women,<\/span>\u201cIf you are sterilizing someone, you are saying, if not to them directly, \u2018Your possible progeny are inassimilable, and we choose not to deal with that.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0<\/span>Andrea Estrada at UC Santa Barbara<\/span>,<\/span> forced sterilization was particularly rampant in California<\/span>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Beginning in 1909 and continuing for 70 years, California led the country in the number of sterilization procedures performed on men and women, often without their full knowledge and consent. Approximately 20,000 sterilizations took place in state institutions, comprising one-third of the total number performed in the 32 states where such action was legal. (from The UC Santa Barbara Current<\/a><\/em>)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

—<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is today one state,\u201d wrote Hitler, \u201cin which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of citizenship] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.\u201d (from The L.A. Times<\/a><\/em>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Researcher Alex Stern, author of the new book\u00a0Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in America<\/em>, adds:<\/span><\/p>\n

“In the early 20th century across the country, medical superintendents, legislators, and social reformers affiliated with an emerging eugenics movement joined forces to put sterilization laws on the books. Such legislation was motivated by crude theories of human heredity that posited the wholesale inheritance of traits associated with a panoply of feared conditions such as criminality, feeblemindedness, and sexual deviance. Many sterilization advocates viewed reproductive surgery as a necessary public health intervention that would protect society from deleterious genes and the social and economic costs of managing ‘degenerate stock’.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eugenics\u00a0<\/strong>was a commonly accepted means of protecting society from the offspring (and therefore equally suspect) of those individuals deemed inferior or dangerous \u2013 the poor, the disabled, the mentally ill, criminals, and people of color.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Eugenical

Eugenical Sterilization Map of the United States, 1935<\/p><\/div>\n

More recently, California prisons are said to have authorized sterilizations of nearly 150 female inmates between 2006 and 2010<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span>The Center for Investigative Reporting<\/span> reveals how <\/span>the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform tubal ligations that former inmates say were done under coercion.<\/span><\/p>\n

But California is far from being the only state with such troubled practices. For a disturbing history lesson, check out\u00a0<\/span>this comprehensive database<\/span><\/a> for <\/span>your state\u2019s eugenics history. You can find out more information on state-by-state sterilization policies, the number of victims, institutions where sterilizations were performed, and leading opponents and proponents<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n\"Sign<\/a>\n

While California\u2019s eugenics programs were driven in part by anti-Asian and anti-Mexican prejudice, Southern states also employed sterilization as a means of controlling African American populations.\u00a0<\/span>\u201cMississippi appendectomies\u201d<\/span><\/a> was\u00a0another name for unnecessary hysterectomies performed at teaching hospitals in the South on women of color as practice for medical students.<\/span><\/p>\n

For a closer look, see Belle Bogg\u2019s \u201cFor the Public Good<\/span><\/a>,\u201d with\u00a0<\/span>original video by Olympia Stone that features Willis Lynch, who was sterilized at the age of 14 while living in a North Carolina juvenile detention facility.<\/p>\n