Eugenics and sterilization in the heartland.

Abstract

On May 2 2002 Mark Warner governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia apologized for participation in eugenics which he categorized as a shameful effort in which state government never should have been involved (Virginia Apologizes 2002). Governor Warners apology was issued on the 75th anniversary of the United States Supreme Courts decision in Buck v. Bell (1927) which opened the floodgates (Smith & Polloway 1993) for the wholesale sterilization of people with epilepsy or who were then classified as feeble- minded. It was also the anniversary of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes now infamous statement that three generations of imbeciles are enough Fittingly Virginia also dedicated a historical marker to the memory of Carrie Buck who became the first person to be forcibly sterilized under Virginias 1924 law on sterilization upheld by the 1927 Supreme Court decision. Virginia has received the lions share of publicity with regard to human sterilization in part due to the infamy of the Buck v. Bell case and its impact on the subsequent rate of sterilizations; in part because so many sterilizations were performed in that state after Buck v. Bell; and in part because the voices in our field that have most persistently and eloquently reminded us not to forget this portion of our past have often come from Virginia (Smith 1994 1995; Smith & Nelson 1989; Smith & Polloway 1993). It is worth noting however that in considering the appropriate response to the occasion of Virginias apology the stain of sterilization is not limited to the Commonwealth of Virginia but permeates the fabric of our country. There are undoubtedly many more apologies owed. Virginia was neither first to the sterilization scene nor perhaps the most enthusiastic of its enactors (although Kevless 1995 noted that by the end of the 1940s Virginia was second nationally in the total number of sterilizations performed accounting for roughly one seventh of all sterilizations in the country up to that time. (excerpt)