Compulsory Sterilization: Is it Humane? Biologically speaking, it is a primary goal to pick out reproductive partners with favorable characteristics and having those characteristics inherited in future offspring. Both animals and humans work the same way using favorable traits as physical representations good genes. During the nineteenth century, Gregory Mendel, a monk with a passion for nature, conducted experiments with pea plant reproduction to observe physical traits to offsprings, thus concluding
Originally, sterilization was a medical procedure used to make women sterile whose life would be put at risk by future pregnancies. An estimate of 700,000 sterilizations are performed every year here in America (Zurawin, 2012). Eleven million women in America have used it as a means to avoid pregnancy, while one hundred ninety couples worldwide have used it to permanently take pregnancy out of the equation. Despite the purity of sterilization’s original intended use, it has been abused over the years
Voluntary Abortion or Compulsory Sterilization? Starting in the mid-1960s, some erosion of the anti-abortion laws began to take place. But these efforts have not been supported by many of the more vocal groups who are trying to do something about excess population growth; to them, compulsory birth control and compulsory sterilization are apparently more palatable than voluntary abortion. The result is legal chaos--which has been the situation with reference to abortion since it was first
Eugenicists carried out a series of IQ tests that oddly enough showed African Americans as the weakest link in society. Interestingly the frame for these tests would later be used to format wh... ... middle of paper ... .... Eugenics: Compulsory Sterilization in 50 American States. University of Vermont. March 4. Accessed April 09, 2014. http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/. Laughlin, H. H. “Eugenics in America.” The Eugenics Review 17, no. 1 (Apr 1925): 28-35. Accessed April 04, 2014. http://www
History, Race, and Violence in the Arena of Reproduction Enslavement. In 1997, Dorothy Roberts wrote a salient book titled Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. Roberts explicates the crusade to punish Black women—especially the destitute—for having children. The exploitation of Black women in the U.S. began in the days of slavery and, appropriately enough, Roberts introduces her first chapter with an illustrative story: When Rose Williams was sixteen years
In addition to restrictive immigration laws that barred ‘undesirables’ entry into society, compulsory sterilizations were enacted to pursue a genetically pure society. The infamous Buck v. Bell case, which led Virginia to the legalization of compulsory sterilization and the Virginia Sterilization law of 1924, was upheld 8-1 by Justice Oliver Holmes (Buck v Bell, 1927). Study of the Buck v. Bell case serves the purpose of exposing the proliferation of Eugenic rhetoric. Scans of original congressional
US than Eugenics. Eugenics in America were the compulsory sterilization laws adopted by over 30 states which led to more than 60,000 sterilizations. The people that were subject to the sterilizations were the mentally disabled or in some cases criminals and socially disadvantaged people. In Europe as well the National Socialist compulsory sterilization program was responsible for about 350,000 sterilizations in 1934-1945. The European Sterilizations in the words of University of Vermont professor
inmates from passing these defects to other generations. May 2nd 1927, the court ordered Buck Carrie, whom it referred as a feebleminded daughter to get sterilization following the 1924 Virginia act of Eugenical Sterilization. Carrie had a feebleminded daughter and her mother was feebleminded too. The case determined that obligatory sterilization laws did not infringe the due process given by the US constitution 14th amendment. It established the legal mandate and bolstered US eugenics movement for
Court: sterilisations issues. Australian Journal of Public Health, 6, (2),196-201. Report on Consent to Sterilisation of Minors: Project No. 77 Part n. (1994). Law Reform Commission of Western Australia. Silver, M. G. (2003). Eugenics and Compulsory Sterilization Laws: Providing Redress for the Victims of a Shameful Era in United States History. Geo. Wash. L. Rev., 72, 862. Wilkinson, J.E. & Cerreto, M.C. (2008). Primary care for women with intellectual disabilities. J Am Board Fam Med. 21:215-222
Eugenics is defined as human improvement by genetic means to improve the hereditary qualities of a race or breed and it was coined by Francis Galton in 1869. Throughout history, the World has borne witness to such atrocities as genocide, where the roots of these movements have been to eliminate the undesirables to allow the “strongest” and “purest” an opportunity to thrive and exist. Many would believe that the eugenics movement first started in Europe when the Nazi’s tried to eradicate Jews, Gays