“To End the Degeneration of a Nation”: Debates on Eugenic Sterilization in Inter-war Romania

Abstract

Among various programmes of biological engineering developed in the twentieth century eugenic sterilization is one of the most notorious. The reasons are numerous, ranging from its application under the Nazi regime to its post-1945 application in the Scandinavian countries, the recent sterilization of the Roma in the Czech Republic, and China's birth planning policies.1 Yet it is only in the past two decades that our knowledge about sterilization policies and practices has improved—both in their historical context, and with respect to their practical implementation.2 After the First World War, the prospect of introducing coercive eugenic measures gained acceptance, especially in Northern and Western Europe. Within the economic crises and political instability that characterized the late 1920s, eugenic sterilization attracted considerable attention from both the medical profession and social reformers interested in protecting the nation from alleged biological degeneration and social decline.3 Many of their justifications were then taken over by intellectuals and government officials, and used in support of the biopolitical projects of the 1940s. Supporters of eugenic sterilization maintained that they were rendering the utmost service to society: defending future generations from social and biological degeneration. Whether such authors thought in terms of purifying the nation of “defective genes”, or protecting it from mixing with “racially inferior” elements, there was widespread agreement that sterilization practices were necessary. The extensive acceptance of eugenic sterilization is also reflected in its geographical diffusion: it was as passionately debated in Britain, the United States and Germany as in Brazil, Poland and Romania. Yet, while the Western European, North American and Latin American cases are well researched, little is known about debates in Eastern European countries.4 As Maria Bucur, Kamila Uzarczyk and Magdalena Gawin suggest, the history of eugenics in Eastern Europe has not only been unfairly neglected but has much to offer in terms of understanding the connection between science, political ideals and national contexts.5 This article hopes to enrich this emerging scholarship by concentrating on a hitherto neglected topic: eugenic sterilization in inter-war Romania. The Romanian case meaningfully demonstrates the increasingly intertwined relationship between eugenic sterilization as medical praxis and eugenic sterilization as political discourse geared towards the political engineering of a biologically defined community. This relationship came about as a result of both international and domestic circumstances, including the wide diffusion of eugenic ideas throughout most European countries and the US following the First World War. The practices of sterilization in these countries indicate an overwhelming preoccupation with women's reproductive rights, combined with concerns about social categories such as criminals and/or medical categories such as the mentally ill. In inter-war Romania, on the other hand, debates on eugenic sterilization were predominantly stimulated by a particular fear of the degeneracy of the Romanian nation. For many supporters of sterilization, the concept of the nation served as a unifying principle linking their preoccupation with hygiene to concepts of eugenics, social progress and economic sustainability. Not to inquire into the debate on sterilization would not only render the history of Romanian eugenics during the inter-war period incomplete but would also leave the relationship between concepts of national health and totalitarian biopolitics unexplored.