Summary
Eugenics is often associated with centuries-old laws and racist beliefs. Despite the annulment of explicit eugenics laws, eugenics continues to be reframed and perpetuated in modern society. This blog addresses the history of eugenics, current patterns that emulate eugenics practices of the last century, and the danger of current eugenics rhetoric in the political lexicon.
By: Emilie Kahn-Boesel, JHBL Staffer
Introduction
Society generally understands eugenics as a faulty “race science” of the past.[1] Notably, the Supreme Court legally affirmed the forced sterilization of 70,000 Americans in Buck v. Bell.[2] Due to this decision in 1927 and the passage of the last eugenics legislation in 1937, eugenics is considered removed from modern times.[3] A century later, eugenics is still prevalent through the pressured sterilization of women of color and political rhetoric around “bad genes.”[4]
History of Eugenics in the United States
Eugenics is the pseudoscientific theory that selective breeding and genocide of populations can improve the human race.[5] Francis Galton, an English statistician, demographer, and ethnologist, coined the term “eugenics” in 1883.[6] He claimed that health and disease, as well as social and intellectual characteristics, were based upon heredity and race.[7] Proponents of this belief in scientific racism determined that individuals and population groups were either superior or inferior based on their race.[8] Eugenics became a globally accepted movement by the 1920s.[9]
Eugenics gained popular governmental support in the United States.[10] In 1895, Connecticut passed a eugenics-like law prohibiting marriage among the “feeble-minded.”[11] Indiana was the first state to pass an explicit eugenics law in 1907, providing for the involuntary sterilization of “confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists.”[12] This first eugenics law focused on sterilizing poor white men.[13] From 1907 to 1932, thirty-two states passed explicit eugenics laws.[14] In the 1930s, women became the victims of eugenics laws due to a rise in concern about their fitness to parent and the development of a safer sterilization procedure for women.[15] The shifting focus of sterilization toward women was affirmed by the Supreme Court’s holding that Virginia had the right to sterilize Carrie Buck, a poor 20-year-old white woman, in Buck v. Bell.[16] Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously stated in the decision, “[t]hree generations of imbeciles are enough” in support of eugenics.[17] Post-Buck, states could legally “breed out” undesirable traits in those who were deemed unfit to parent.[18] Buck v. Bell has never been overturned.[19] Skinner v. Oklahomalimited Buck v. Bell in holding that forced sterilization of habitual criminals is unconstitutional.[20] Constitutional questions around forced sterilization remain unaddressed by the Supreme Court.[21]
State sterilization mandates most often victimized the disabled, poor, racial minorities, women, and those with intersecting marginalized identities.[22] States eventually repealed most of these laws, but local governments still continued to sterilize women of color.[23] Medical professionals continued to sterilize poor Black women in the South without their consent during unrelated surgery and through questionable consent by asking illiterate women to read and sign consent forms.[24] Although states repealed eugenics laws in the 1970s and 1980s, forced sterilizations still occurred under the guise of “family-planning laws.”[25] Doctors injected Black women and girls with non-FDA approved contraceptives, inserted IUDs, and surgically sterilized them without consent or through questionable consent.[26] Authorities threatened others with removal from public welfare if they did not undergo “temporary” tubal ligation, only to learn after that the procedure was permanent.[27]
Eugenics Today: Forced and Pressured Sterilization
While these practices of forced and coerced sterilizations under federally-funded programs have mostly ceased and states have repealed eugenics-related laws, pressured contraception and sterilization still persist in the twenty-first century in carceral and routine medical settings.[28] In 2013, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized 150 female inmates through tubal ligation without required state approval.[29] In 2017, a Tennessee judge offered 30-day sentence reductions to incarcerated men and women who agreed to receive vasectomies or birth-control implants.[30] In 2020, a nurse at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Georgia reported that unnecessary gynecological procedures, including hysterectomies, were being performed by the detention center’s primary gynecologist on undocumented migrant women who did not fully understand or consent to these procedures.[31] Many of the women did not report gynecological problems, but the doctor recommended surgery, so they felt pressured to consent because they trusted the doctor and could not obtain a second opinion.[32]
Coerced sterilization still occurs in routine medical settings.[33] For example, some Black women with sickle cell disease report that doctors pressured them into receiving tubal ligation, and some have claimed that physicians “tied their tubes” during other procedures without their consent.[34] These recent reports evoke parallels to the “Mississippi appendectomies” of the last century as sickle cell is a disease that affects mostly Black people—90% of the 100,000 Americans with sickle cell disease are Black.[35] The stigma that people with sickle cell disease carry “bad blood” or “defective genes” is rooted in racism.[36] There are valid reasons for people with sickle cell disease to be cautious about pregnancy due to high maternal mortality rates of Black women with sickle cell disease compared to Black women without sickle cell disease.[37] The answer, however, is not to encourage sterilization, but instead to provide safer and more ethical medical care.[38]
The Danger in Eugenics Rhetoric
These practices of forced and coerced sterilization remain an important issue, as current political rhetoric about “bad genes” is another evocation of eugenics.[39] Former President Donald Trump has described immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country” and that “we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”[40] Politicians and others weaponize this rhetoric against disabled, poor, Black, immigrant, and Indigenous communities and it has violent consequences.[41] In El Paso, Texas, a 2019 mass shooter posted online that his motivation to kill people he believed were Hispanic immigrants was because of an immigrant “invasion” in the United States.[42] A 2022 mass shooter in Buffalo, New York was motivated by his misinterpretation of genetic studies in believing that white people had a genetic intellectual advantage over Black people.[43] Scientific racism has resurged and been reframed as a justification for violence toward marginalized communities.[44] Whether through mass shootings or pressured sterilization on those still societally deemed to be unfit parents due to their disability, poverty level, or immigration status, this reframing must be addressed.[45]
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHBL or Suffolk University Law School.
Emilie Kahn-Boesel is a second-year law student at Suffolk University Law School with an interest in civil litigation. She received a bachelor’s degree in politics with a minor in economics from Brandeis University in 2018.
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[1] See Eugenics and Scientific Racism, Nat’l Hum. Genome Rsch. Inst. (May 18, 2022), https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism [https://perma.cc/GR44-PHUP].
[2] See The Supreme Court Ruling That Led To 70,000 Forced Sterilizations, NPR (Mar. 7, 2016), https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/07/469478098/the-supreme-court-ruling-that-led-to-70-000-forced-sterilizations [https://perma.cc/XVL8-JSSG].
[3] See Linda Villarosa, The Long Shadow of Eugenics in America, N.Y. Times (June 8, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/magazine/eugenics-movement-america.html [https://perma.cc/3ZPJ-ANDF].
[4] See Eric Boodman, How doctors are pressuring sickle cell patients into unwanted sterilizations, STAT News (May 21, 2024), https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/21/sickle-cell-patients-steered-toward-sterilization-for-decades/ [https://perma.cc/3LEL-GN93]; see also Anil Oza, Trump’s talk of ‘bad genes’ is rooted in eugenics. Experts explain why it’s making a comeback. STAT News (Oct. 28, 2024), https://www.statnews.com/2024/10/28/eugenics-in-political-rhetoric-open-science-movement-expert-analysis/ [https://perma.cc/3UK7-7X8U] (drawing connections between “bad genes” rhetoric and eugenics movement).
[5] See Nat’l Hum. Genome Rsch. Inst., supra note 1 (discussing eugenics-based belief in selective breeding); see also Oza, supra note 4(explaining eugenics policies of forced sterilization and genocide).
[6] See Nat’l Hum. Genome Rsch. Inst., supra note 1.
[7] See id.
[8] See id.
[9] See id.
[10] See Nat’l Hum. Genome Rsch. Inst., supra note 1.
[11] See Mercedes G. Molina, The Shadow of Buck v. Bell: How Ignoring the United States’ History of Forced Sterilization Has Fostered an Environment Ambivalent to Widespread Abuse, Minn. J. of L. & Inequality: Inequality Inquiry Blog (Nov. 11, 2021), https://lawandinequality.org/2021/11/11/the-shadow-of-buck-v-bell-how-ignoring-the-united-states-history-of-forced-sterilization-has-fostered-an-environment-ambivalent-to-widespread-abuse/ [https://perma.cc/G6WU-NURX].
[12] See Villarosa, supra note 3.
[13] See id. The first eugenics law was aimed to vasectomize men deemed to be “sexually deviant.” Id. This included gay men. Id.
[14] See id. In Germany in 1933, the Nazis passed the “Law for the Prevention of Offspring and Hereditary Diseases”, which was based on eugenics laws of the United States. Id. Under this law, the Nazis forcibly sterilized 400,000 Jewish children and adults and other people deemed likely to pass on disability to a child. Id.
[15] See id.
[16] See Villarosa, supra note 3. Carrie Buck was born in 1906 to a single mother. Id. She was sent to a foster home where she was raped at the age of sixteen. Id. The foster parents took custody of Buck’s daughter and had Buck institutionalized at the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, where she was sterilized without her consent. Id. See generally Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927) (allowing forced, government-mandated sterilization for eugenic purposes).
[17] See Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. at 207 (1927) (affirming state-mandated forced sterilization).
[18] See NPR, supra note 2.
[19] See The Right to Self-Determination: Freedom from Involuntary Sterilization, Disability Just., https://disabilityjustice.org/right-to-self-determination-freedom-from-involuntary-sterilization/ [https://perma.cc/FQ79-BW5P].
[20] See Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942); Buck, 274 U.S. at 207 (1927); see also Molina, supra note 11 (pointing out that Buck v. Bell still stands today).
[21] See Molina, supra note 11; see also Disability Just., supra note 19 (noting Skinner did not address constitutional questions around forced sterilization of disabled people).
[22] See NPR, supra note 2 (describing impact of state-mandated sterilization). Seventy-thousand Americans were forcibly sterilized through state mandates during the twentieth century. Id.; see also Jasmine E. Harris, Why Buck v. Bell Still Matters, Harv. L. Sch., Bill Health (Oct. 14, 2020), https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2020/10/14/why-buck-v-bell-still-matters/ [https://perma.cc/7HH8-LCWE] (discussing current impact of Buck v. Bell).
[23] See Villarosa, supra note 3. The last eugenics law in the United States was passed in Georgia in 1937. Id. Eight states have issued official apologies to victims, and some have set up compensation funds for survivors. Id. Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina have created historical markers to remember those sterilized through government programs. Id.
[24] See id. The practice became known as “Mississippi appendectomies.” Id.
[25] See id. President Nixon signed the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970 to control population growth. Id. The idea behind this federal program was that poverty bred more poverty, so a solution could be to keep the poor from having babies. Id.
[26] See id.
[27] See Villarosa, supra note 3.
[28] See id.
[29] See id. Prison staff coerced women to have this procedure that they deemed likely to return to prison. Id.
[30] See id.
[31] See Caitlin Dickerson et al., Immigrants Say They Were Pressured Into Unneeded Surgeries, N.Y. Times (Sept. 29, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/us/ice-hysterectomies-surgeries-georgia.html [https://perma.cc/A26A-QBT3]. The doctors who provide medical treatment to ICE detainees are independent doctors who are paid by the Department of Homeland Security for each procedure they perform. Id.; see also Molina, supra note 11 (noting how perpetuation of eugenics resulted in sterilization of women at Georgia detention center).
[32] See Dickerson et al., supra note 31. The doctor listed symptoms of heavy bleeding with clots or chronic pelvic pain in almost every woman’s chart, which could be treated with surgery, but some of the women said they did not experience or report those symptoms to him. Id. Even if women did report symptoms that could justify surgery, there are many treatment options to pursue before resorting to surgery. Id.
[33] See Boodman, supra note 4.
[34] See id.
[35] See id.; see also Gina Kolata, First patient begins newly approved sickle cell therapy, N.Y. Times (May 7, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/health/sickle-cell-cure-first.html [https://perma.cc/8WZ8-XN9Z] (noting sickle cell disease is passed genetically). Sickle cell disease is caused by a recessive gene that causes debilitating pain and other medical problems. Kolata, supra.
[36] See Boodman, supra note 4.
[37] See id.
[38] See id.; see also Kolata, supra note 35. New technologies are beginning to create more treatment options for patients with sickle cell disease. Kolata, supra note 35. In 2023, the FDA approved two Massachusetts-based companies to sell gene therapy to people with sickle cell disease. Id. The process is long and expensive—it takes at least three months to take the stem cells from a patient, genetically modify the mutated cells that are causing the sickle cell disease, and then reinsert the modified cells back into the patient. Id. Bluebird Bio is charging $3.1 million for its gene therapy, which insurance may or may not cover. Id.; Nat’l Hum. Genome Rsch. Inst., supra note 1. While these advances in technology are great for the patients who can receive these therapies, there are also cautions related to advances in genomic screening technologies. Nat’l Hum. Genome Rsch. Inst., supra note 1. For example, there is concern that the increased amount of genomic information in the prenatal setting could lead to societal pressure to terminate pregnancies where the fetus is at a heightened risk for genetic disorders such as Down Syndrome and spina bifida. Id. There is the possibility that genomic-based screening could be used to screen embryos for behavioral, psychosocial, or intellectual traits. Id. Some geneticists view genomic screening and genetic counseling as continuations of eugenics. Id.
[39] See Oza, supra note 4.
[40] See id.; see also Ginger Gibson, Trump says immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’ Biden campaign likens comments to Hitler., NBC News (Dec. 17, 2023), https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-says-immigrants-are-poisoning-blood-country-biden-campaign-liken-rcna130141 [https://perma.cc/7NN6-75TN] (connecting Trump’s use of “blood poisoning” to Hitler’s use of “blood poisoning” in criticizing immigration).
[41] See Daphne O. Martschenko, The Alarming History Behind Trump’s “Bad Genes” Comments, The Hastings Center (Oct. 15, 2024), https://www.thehastingscenter.org/the-alarming-history-behind-trumps-bad-genes-comments/ [https://perma.cc/887P-2FVV].
[42] See Marlene Lenthang, El Paso Walmart shooter who targeted Hispanics agrees to pay families more than $5 million, NBC News (Sept. 25, 2023), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-shooter-targeted-hispanics-2019-walmart-rampage-agrees-pay-5-mil-rcna117235 [https://perma.cc/7DWW-EUUZ] (noting motivations of mass shooter who killed twenty-three people in racist attack).
[43] See Martschenko, supra note 41; see also Robbee Wedow et al., Scientists Must Consider the Risk of Racist Misappropriation of Research, Sci. Am. (May, 26, 2022), https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-must-consider-the-risk-of-racist-misappropriation-of-research/ [https://perma.cc/4U89-MVH6] (discussing history of using genetics to uphold white supremacy). While new genetic research and technologies can usher in life-changing benefits for those affected by diseases, there is also the potential for violence against those considered to be “genetically inferior” when the research is misinterpreted. Wedow et al., supra.
[44] See Wedow et al., supra note 43.
[45] See id. Scientists should weigh risks and benefits of genomic studies and should mitigate any risks of the research being misinterpreted. Id.