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DISABILITY, EUGENICS, AND THE CULTURE WARS
PAUL A. LOMBARDO*
I. INTRODUCTION: EUGENICS AND DISABILITY
Eugenics is an old word and an old idea, but because of its historical
role it demands attention in this Symposium issue on legal and cultural
responses to disability. Francis Galton’s formal definition of eugenics in
1883 created a field that would study and advocate for “well-born”
children, emphasize heredity, and exert a powerful impact on social
policies.1 Lawmakers were seduced by the idea that people are marked with
the genetic residue of their ancestors. Government, they said, could sort the
fit and the unfit and decide which citizens are worthy to have children. But
history shows that instead of improving society, eugenics merely provided a
cover for abusing the poor and the disabled. Many eugenicists shared a
fear of people with mental disabilities and a desire to rid the world of them.
As Henry Goddard proposed in 1927, “[p]erhaps our ideal should be to
eventually eliminate all the lower grades of intelligence and have no one
who is not above the twelve-year old intelligence level.”2 This article should
serve as a reminder that the eugenics movement was rightfully notorious for
its pointed stigmatization of people with disabilities—particularly those with
mental disorders.
One of the key focal points of eugenic contempt was the ill-defined trait
of “feeblemindedness.”3 According to Massachusetts physician Walter
Fernald, those defined as feebleminded endured “all degrees and types of
* Paul A. Lombardo, Ph.D., J.D., is a Professor of Law at the Georgia State University College
of Law in Atlanta, Georgia.
1. FRANCIS GALTON, INQUIRIES INTO HUMAN FACULTY AND ITS DEVELOPMENT 17 n.1
(1883).
2. Henry H. Goddard, Who Is A Moron?, 24 SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY 41, 45 (1927); see
also HENRY HERBERT GODDARD, FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS: ITS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 573-74
(1914) (arguing that people with lower intelligence should be placed in a special environment
separate from the rest of society).
3. Walter E. Fernald, The History of the Treatment of the Feeble-Minded, in
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NAT’L CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES AND CORRECTION 203, 211-13 (Isabel
C. Barrows ed., 1893).
57
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congenital defect”.4 The feebleminded ranged from “the simply backward
boy or girl . . . to the profound idiot, a help-less, speechless, disgusting
burden, . . . “.5 Or as Charles Davenport, the dean of American eugenics,
said, “[o]ne may even view with satisfaction the high death rate in an
institution for low grade feeble-minded.”6 Feeblemindedness was also
linked to feeble inhibitions,7 and every manner of disability, from a man’s
premature decline caused by syphilis, to his son’s blindness and his
daughter’s withered limb. These conditions were bundled as if all of a
piece—results of immoral living, evidence of an intergenerational curse that
cascaded through families from parents to children as part of an hereditary
legacy. The feebleminded were regularly described by eugenicists as a
menace to society, considered to include the “great mass of defectiveness”
in institutions, and marked for genetic prophylaxis though the process of
sterilization.8
The dark history of eugenics makes it tempting, in our hurry to distance
ourselves from its shadow, to couple the word “eugenics” exclusively with
attitudes that most of us would find unacceptable today. But I will argue
instead that we should be careful how we invoke eugenic history—and
parsimonious in the way we use the very term “eugenics.” Some
combatants in the ongoing “culture war” that pits the world views of people
on different ends of the political spectrum against each other are attempting
to manipulate and reshape our understanding of the history of eugenics and
the word itself. In this article I will show how that manipulation has
developed in the press and within popular culture, and explore how the
picture it fosters is at odds with the any accurate history of eugenics. If we
use the term solely as a rhetorical weapon within a political debate, we flirt
with deceit and demagoguery, and run the risk of divorcing eugenics from
the historical context in which it developed. When we intentionally debase
history, we forfeit whatever opportunities there are for learning from it.
II. EUGENIC HISTORY
What is the history of eugenics? Every account of the origins of the field
starts with Francis Galton, who coined the term “eugenics” in 1883.9 His
4. Id. at 213.
5. Id.
6. Charles B. Davenport, Presidential Address Before the Third International Congress of
Eugenics, August 22, 1932, 17 EUGENICAL NEWS 89, 92.
7. See CHARLES B. DAVENPORT, THE FEEBLY INHIBITED: NOMADISM, OR THE WANDERING
IMPULSE, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO HEREDITY 24-25 (1915).
8. H. H. Laughlin, Calculations on the Working Out of a Proposed Program of
Sterilization, in PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON RACE BETTERMENT 478,
478 (1914).
9. GALTON, supra note 1.
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science of the “well-born” would focus study on “ . . . all influences that
tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or
strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable
than they otherwise would have had.”10 Galton’s ideas were eventually
assimilated into a movement that also relied on the laws of heredity
formulated in the 1860’s by Gregor Mendel.11 Mendel’s discoveries
remained an obscure episode in the history of science until after his death,
and were only widely noticed after Mendel’s work was translated in the first
decade of the 20th Century.12 Galtonian eugenics flourished in England
and focused on using statistical tools to quantify biological insights.13 The
field of biometrics grew out of Galton’s early work on statistics,14 with further
development by his disciple Karl Pearson.15
In America, eugenics
developed with more attention to Mendelian genetics, and this difference
prompted sometimes raucous disagreements between the transatlantic
eugenic camps.16
When eugenics finally took root in America, the ideas that it was
founded upon led to a national movement that had many diverse facets.
There was what could be called the happy face of eugenics, shown to the
public as “Better Baby Contests,” which claimed to identify particularly gifted
tots and in some rare cases actually arrange a future marriage between
10. Id.
11. See generally GREGOR MENDEL, FUNDAMENTA GENETICA (Jaroslav Krizenecky ed. &
trans., 1965).
12. DONALD PICKENS, EUGENICS AND THE PROGRESSIVES 46-48 (1968).
13. See DANIEL J. KEVLES, IN THE NAME OF EUGENICS: GENETICS AND THE USES OF HUMAN
HEREDITY 37-40 (1985) (discussing the eugenics movement in England); see also NICHOLAS
WRIGHT GILLHAM, A LIFE OF SIR FRANCIS GALTON: FROM AFRICAN EXPLORATION TO THE BIRTH OF
EUGENICS 251 (2001) (explaining Galton’s use of statistics to determine whether “regression
toward the mean applied in people as well as in sweet peas.”).
14. GILLHAM, supra, note 13, at 258 (noting that the science of biometrics grew out of
Galton’s statistical analysis of heredity).
15. Id. at 263 (Karl Pearson’s formula, named Galton’s Law of Ancestral Heredity, was
the result of Galton’s initial efforts in biometrics).
16. Hamish G. Spencer & Diane B. Paul, The Failure of a Scientific Critique: David Heron,
Karl Pearson and Mendelian Eugenics, 31 BRIT. J. FOR HIST. SCI. 441, 441 (1998). An
extensive public debate between the biometricians and the Mendelians broke out in both the
lay and scientific press. See David Heron, English Expert Attacks American Eugenic Work,
N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 9, 1913, at SM2; Charles B. Davenport, American Work Strongly Defended,
N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 9, 1913, at SM2; Chas. B. Davenport, A Reply to Dr. Heron’s Strictures, 38
SCIENCE 773, 773-74 (1913); David Heron, A Rejoinder to Dr. Davenport, 39 SCIENCE 24,
24-25; see generally C. B. DAVENPORT & A.J. ROSANOFF, REPLY TO THE CRITICISM OF RECENT
AMERICAN WORK BY DR. HERON OF THE GALTON LABORATORY, EUGENICS RECORD OFFICE
BULLETIN NO. 11 (1914); David Heron, English Eugenics Expert Again Attacks Davenport, N.Y.
TIMES, Jan. 4, 1914, at SM14.
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them.17 A later iteration of a similar contest sought “Fitter Families for
Future Firesides.”18 These contests eventually morphed into a vehicle of the
official eugenics movement, as they were designed to identify the bearers of
prized “germ plasm,” the eugenicists’ term for what is now known as DNA.19
The darker, more negative side of eugenics has been explored
extensively by historians, and as a result is more widely known.20 The
energies devoted to negative eugenics often found an expression in the law.
There were, for example, immigration restrictions based on the supposed
genetic superiority of some ethnic and racial groups and the inferiority of
others,21 and “racial integrity” laws to prevent interracial marriage.22 We
should also recall that taking care of disabled people was expensive, and
the economic motive for many eugenic laws was never far from the
surface—better breeding through tax cuts was a common eugenic mantra.23
There was even a small group of supporters for eugenic euthanasia, who
argued that “defective” newborns should simply be killed.24
A powerful feature of eugenic ideology was contained in the
mythologies of the so-called problem families—the Jukes and the
Kallikaks—told via popular books to generations of school-age children and
college students as parables of the generational curse heredity could
transmit in the form of criminality, poverty, mental defect, and general moral
17. Steven Selden, Transforming Better Babies into Fitter Families: Archival Resources and
the History of the American Eugenics Movement, 1908–1930, 149 PROC. AM. PHIL. SOC’Y
199, 206-10 (2005) [hereinafter Selden, Transforming Better Babies into Fitter Families]; see
also Editorial, Perfect Babies to Mate for Good of the Race, L.A. TIMES, Mar. 13, 1915, at 1.
18. STEVEN SELDEN, INHERITING SHAME: THE STORY OF EUGENICS AND RACISM IN AMERICA 3033 fig.2.5 (1999).
19. See id.
20. See, e.g., MARK H. HALLER, EUGENICS: HEREDITARIAN ATTITUDES IN AMERICAN THOUGHT
111 (1963); KENNETH M. LUDMERER, GENETICS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY: A HISTORICAL APPRAISAL
7, 19-20 (1972); ALLAN CHASE, THE LEGACY OF MALTHUS: THE SOCIAL COSTS OF THE NEW
SCIENTIFIC RACISM 2-6 (2d ed. 1980) (1977); KEVLES, supra note 13, at 46-48.
21. See, e.g., JOHN HIGHAM, STRANGERS IN THE LAND: PATTERNS OF AMERICAN NATIVISM,
1860-1925, at 97-116 (1955).
22. Paul A. Lombardo, Miscegenation, Eugenics, and Racism: Historical Footnotes to
Loving v. Virginia, 21 U.C. DAVIS L. REV. 421, 423 (1988) (hereinafter Lombardo,
Miscegenation, Eugenics, and Racism).
23. See SELDEN, supra note 18, at 27 (noting that during a Fitter Families Contest, the
advocates of eugenics circulated propaganda claiming that “every 11 seconds crime cost [sic]
America $100,000. And of those who are committed to jail—one every 50 seconds—very
few were found to be normal.”); Scrutator, Breeding Better Folks Held Way to Lower Taxes,
CHI. DAILY TRIB., Dec. 30, 1923, at A10; Harper Leech, Sees in Eugenics Way to Cut Cost of
Government, CHI. DAILY TRIB., Sept. 14, 1926, at 24.
24. See MARTIN S. PERNICK, THE BLACK STORK: EUGENICS AND THE DEATH OF "DEFECTIVE"
BABIES IN AMERICAN MEDICINE AND MOTION PICTURES SINCE 1915, at 23 (1996); IAN
DOWBIGGIN, A MERCIFUL END: THE EUTHANASIA MOVEMENT IN MODERN AMERICA 17-18 (2003).
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decay.25 The Jukes and the Kallikaks were depicted as a lower species of
humankind.26 They were thought to be the products of hereditary
degeneracy, and portrayed in scientific pedigrees that highlighted
feeblemindedness and sexual excesses.27 Eugenic propagandists proclaimed
that all such characteristics could be “bred out” of the population if
marriages were eugenic. Marriage restriction laws were adopted to enforce
this sentiment.28 But the most popular vehicle for cleaning up the gene
pool, and the one with the most widespread legal mandate in the United
States, was eugenic sterilization.
III. UNLUCKY SEVENS: EUGENIC CENTENNIAL (2007), THE INDIANA STERILIZATION
LAW (1907), BUCK V. BELL (1927), THE GEORGIA STERILIZATION LAW (1937),
AND THE TRIAL OF THE NAZI DOCTORS (1947)
We recently had an opportunity to reflect on the history of eugenics
during the centennial of the first eugenical sterilization law in America.29 Its
strongest proponents were Dr. Harry Sharp, physician to the Indiana State
Reformatory,30 and his colleague, public health reformer John N. Hurty, a
seven time secretary of the Indiana State Board of Health and one time
President of the American Public Health Association.31 Together they
engineered the first eugenic sterilization law in America in 1907.32 Dr.
Sharp’s surgeries were controversial, and for twenty years during which
about a dozen other states passed their own eugenic laws,33 a legal
25. See ROBERT L. DUGDALE, THE JUKES: A STUDY IN CRIME, PAUPERISM, DISEASE, AND
HEREDITY 8, 13-23 (4th ed. 1910) (1884); HENRY HERBERT GODDARD, THE KALLIKAK FAMILY: A
STUDY OF THE HEREDITY OF FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS (1912); NICOLE HAHN RAFTER, WHITE TRASH: THE
EUGENIC FAMILY STUDIES, 1877-1919, at 1-2 (1988) (collecting several of the other early
family stories).
26. See RAFTER, supra note 25, at 1.
27. Id.
28. Molly Ladd-Taylor, Eugenics, Sterilisation and Modern Marriage in the USA: The
Strange Career of Paul Popenoe, 13 GENDER & HIST. 298, 301 (2001).
29. IND. CODE ANN. § 22-4-2232 (1908) (repealed 1974); see also Richard Feldman &
Jeff Bennett, The Most Useful Citizen of Indiana: John Hurty and the Public Health Movement,
TRACES OF INDIANA AND MIDWESTERN HISTORY, Summer 2000, at 34, 42.
30. See Feldman & Bennett, supra note 29, at 42.
31. Indiana Dep’t of Env’t Mgmt., John N. Hurty Award, at www.in.gov/idem/5146.htm
(last visited Feb. 3, 2009); see Am. Pub. Health Ass’n, APHA Past Presidents, at
www.apha.org/about/aphapastpresidents.html (last visited Feb. 3, 2009); see also Feldman &
Bennett, supra note 29, at 42.
32. IND. CODE ANN. § 22-4-2232 (1908) (repealed 1974).
33. See HARRY HAMILTON LAUGHLIN, EUGENICAL STERILIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES ch.1,
at 15-31 (1922) (summarizing sterilization laws enacted prior to 1922 in Indiana,
Washington, California, Connecticut, Nevada, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota,
Michigan, Kansas, and Wisconsin).
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question hovered over sterilization: could eugenic surgery be a tool of
constitutional statecraft? That question was answered in 1927 in the case of
Buck v. Bell,34 which reminded us that 2007 was not only an anniversary
year with reference to the pioneering Indiana legislation, but it seemed to
echo as the last of a strange coincidence with years ending in seven.
Carrie Buck was the subject of a Supreme Court case that tested a
Virginia sterilization law.35 In Buck, the theory that poverty, disease, and
unruly sexuality could be wiped out by state mandated surgery was applied
to a young Virginia woman, whose family history was represented in court by
the evidence captured in a pedigree showing hereditary moral degeneracy
and illicit sex, as well as mental defect reappearing through three
generations of her family.36
What resulted was one of the most shameful Supreme Court opinions
ever written. Said Senior Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.:
It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate
offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can
prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The
principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover
cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.37
As I have argued elsewhere, the real story of the Bucks was much more
complex: Carrie herself had been raped, her daughter Vivian was perfectly
normal, and the case itself was a fraud.38 Nevertheless, in 32 states, there
were more than 65,000 surgeries in the U.S. alone from 1907 until at least
1979.39
It took ten years after Buck before the nation’s last sterilization law was
passed in the state of Georgia in 1937.40 Agitation for a sterilization law in
Georgia, like in many states, revolved around the cost of supporting
institutionalized populations.41 Sterilization was sold in Georgia as it had
been in other states, as a prudent part of state budget management and a
34. Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927).
35. Id.; see 1924 Va. Acts 569 (repealed by Act of Apr. 2, 1974, ch. 296).
36. HARRY H. LAUGHLIN, THE LEGAL STATUS OF EUGENICAL STERILIZATION 18 (1930) (chart
showing the history of feeblemindedness in Buck’s family).
37. Buck, 274 U.S. at 207 (citations omitted).
38. PAUL A. LOMBARDO, THREE GENERATIONS, NO IMBECILES: EUGENICS, THE SUPREME COURT
AND BUCK V. BELL 104, 116 (2008).
39. See id. at 294 app. c (Laws and Sterilizations by State).
40. 1937 Ga. Laws 414 (repealed 1970).
41. See, e.g., ANNE MOORE, THE FEEBLE MINDED IN NEW YORK: A REPORT PREPARED FOR THE
PUB. EDUC. ASS’N OF NEW YORK 86 (1911) (“To support a feeble-minded person in one of the
state institutions costs the state, on the average, $161.20 a year.”).
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step on the road to lower taxes.42 In the depths of the Great Depression,
civic leaders pressed for a medical solution that would rid the state of
people deemed “generally defective in any way.”43
In 1934 the Chairman of the State Board of Control for Charitable
Institutions announced a twenty-five percent reduction in the budget
appropriation—based on reduced state revenues—and maintained that
“insanity and mental deficiency appear to be rapidly increasing.”44 His
remedy for this rapid increase in insanity was sterilization.45 Supporters of
sterilization applauded the Nazis, whose own eugenic policy was already in
operation.46 They judged Hitler’s project as “a step in the right direction.”47
The proposed Georgia law targeted anyone with a “physical, mental, or
nervous disease or deficiency” who might have children with similar
problems, and created a state board of eugenics that directed
superintendents of state asylums to name candidates for sterilization
surgery.48 Chain gang wardens could also recommend cases.49 When
Georgia’s law passed through the legislature, the press declared that
sterilization appealed to “the common sense and reason of the people.”50
The bill was vetoed by the Georgia governor, but it reappeared, was again
passed in the legislature, and was signed by a new governor following the
1937 legislative session.51 Some 3,300 Georgians endured surgery under
this law until its repeal in 1974.52 Between Indiana’s 1907 sterilization
statute and Georgia’s 1937 act, thirty other states adopted laws that would
42. See Lindsey Urges Sterilization as Insanity Ban, ATLANTA CONST., Mar. 29, 1934, at
1A [hereinafter Lindsey].
43. Atlanta Doctors to Drive for Sterilization Bill, ATLANTA CONST., Feb. 4, 1934, at 1A
[hereinafter Atlanta Doctors].
44. Lindsey, supra note 42.
45. Id.
46. The German sterilization law of 1933 resulted in approximately 400,000 sterilizations
by 1945. Over 5,000 deaths resulted from the surgeries that were directed towards
“feeblemindedness,” schizophrenia, genetic epilepsy, genetic blindness, and severe deformity,
among others. Susan Bachrach, In the Name of Public Health—Nazi Racial Hygiene, 351
NEW ENG. J. MED. 417, 418 (2004).
47. Atlanta Doctors, supra note 43.
48. 1937 Ga. Laws 415 (repealed 1970); House Approves Sterilization Bill, ATLANTA
CONST., Feb. 10, 1937, at 11.
49. House Approves Sterilization Bill, supra note 48; Edward Larson, Belated Progress:
The Enactment of Eugenic Legislation in Georgia, J. HIST. OF MED. & ALLIED SCI. 44, 54-59
(1991) [hereinafter Belated Progress].
50. Sterilization Bill Passes the House, ATLANTA CONST, March 9, 1935; Belated Progress,
supra note 49, at 59-63.
51. Edward J. Larson, Breeding Better Georgians, 1 GA. J. S. LEGAL HIST. 53, 66-70
(1991).
52. Belated Progress, supra note 49, at 44.
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eventually lead to surgery for more than 65,000 people.53 Different states
chose to eliminate childbirth in different kinds of people. Some named the
“crippled, blind, degenerate, and deficient,”54 while others picked “paupers
and the criminalistic.”55 But in all states those most likely to be sterilized
were poor people living in state institutions.56 From the end of World War II
until the law was repealed in 1970, more operations were performed in
Georgia than any state except North Carolina.57 Even though the law was
in force for fewer years than any other state, the 3,300 operations made
Georgia fifth in the U.S. in the number of eugenic surgeries.58
The economic motive for sterilization also resonated in other countries.
As one of the first acts of the new Nazi government, Germans adopted an
expansive sterilization law that went into effect in 1933.59 Propaganda in
Germany focused on the lifelong costs of supporting any “genetically ill”
person.”60 The German law eventually provided the legal justification for
over 400,000 sterilizations.61 In 1946, the Nuremburg war trials were
convened.62 While prosecutors at Nuremberg were hesitant to condemn
German sterilizations that occurred under the rubric of domestic law, they
53. LOMBARDO, supra note 38, at 294 app. c (Laws and Sterilizations by State).
54. See, e.g., 1921 Wash. Sess. Laws 162 (statute targeting the “feeble minded, insane,
epileptic, habitual criminals, moral degenerates, and sexual perverts….”); 1913 N.D. Laws 63
(where the statute targets “[c]onfirmed criminals, [i]nsane, [i]diots, [d]efectives and [r]apists”).
55. See e.g., 1917 S.D. Sess. Laws 378 (where the law focuses on the “[i]diot, [i]mbeciles
and [f]eeble-[m]inded persons. . . . ”).
56. Alexandra Minna Stern, Sterilized in the Name of Public Health, 95 AM. J. PUB. HEALTH
1128, 1131-32 (2005) (explaining that most of those sterilized in California were “either
working class or lower middle class.”).
57. S. Res. 247, 149th Gen. Assemb. (Ga. 2007); see also LOMBARDO, supra note 38 at
294 app. c (Laws and Sterilizations by State).
58. LOMBARDO, supra note 38 at 294 app. c (Laws and Sterilizations by State). Another
Georgia eugenic law involved race. See 1927 Ga. Laws 272. In 1927, the language of
“racial integrity” was borrowed from states with laws that prohibited interracial marriage. See
Comment, Intermarriage with Negroes. A Survey of State Statutes, 36 YALE L.J. 858, 858-60,
862-63 (1927) (discussing state laws prohibiting intermarriage between Caucasians and
African-Americans, current in twenty-nine of the states in 1927); Lombardo, Miscegenation,
Eugenics, and Racism, supra note 22, at 423. Under the pretense that it was acting with
scientific precision, the state tried to define the purity of a white bloodline, marking “negroes,
mulattoes, mestizos,” and those with “African, West Indian, or Asiatic Indian blood in their
veins” as unfit. 1927 Ga. Laws 272 (“An Act to define who are persons of color and who are
white persons, to prohibit and prevent the intermarriage of such persons[.]”).
59. See ROBERT J. LIFTON, THE NAZI DOCTORS 23-27 (2000) (1986).
60. See ROBERT PROCTOR, RACIAL HYGIENE: MEDICINE UNDER THE NAZIS 182-83, figs.36-37
(1988).
61. Bachrach, supra note 46, at 418.
62. See generally TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS BEFORE THE NUERNBERG MILITARY TRIBUNALS
UNDER CONTROL COUNCIL LAW NO. 10 (U.S. Gov. Prtg. Office 1949) [hereinafter TRIALS OF
WAR CRIMINALS].
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did choose to pursue concentration camp doctors and others for performing
sterilizations on camp prisoners.63 Those procedures were often done using
experimental means, such as caustic chemicals or radiation, and were
condemned as torture that occurred under the guise of medical research.64
Thus, a full four decades after the 1907 “Indiana Experiment,”65 the
international community condemned experimental sterilization as a war
crime.66
IV. EUGENIC APOLOGIES
In 2002, in an attempt to highlight one of the more notorious episodes
of eugenic history that has special significance for disability advocates, a
marker was erected to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the
Buck case in Carrie Buck’s hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia.67 In
2007, scholars gathered with public officials in Indianapolis, Indiana to put
up a second marker as a permanent remembrance of the one hundred year
old Indiana sterilization law.68 After a public symposium that explored the
history of eugenics,69 the marker was unveiled by Linda Sparkman, who had
herself been a litigant in a Supreme Court case that challenged the judge
who ordered her sterilization.70 The Indiana marker now sits outside of the
63. See PROCTOR, supra note 60, at 117.
64. See TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS, supra note 62, at 37, 48-50.
65. See R. Newton Crane, Experiments in Eugenics by American State Legislatures, 10 J.
SOC’Y COMP. LEGIS. 120, 122 (1909).
66. See generally TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS supra note 62, at 37.
67. Paul A. Lombardo, Taking Eugenics Seriously: Three Generations of ??? are Enough?,
30 FLA. ST. U. L. REV. 191, 199-201, & n.56 (2003) (hereinafter Lombardo, Taking Eugenics
Seriously).
68. 1907 Ind. Acts 377; see also Indiana Historical Bureau, 1907 Indiana Eugenics Law,
at www.in.gov/history/markers/524.htm (last visited Feb. 3, 2009).
69. See Indiana Eugenics: History and Legacy, 100th Anniversary Symposium (Apr. 12,
2007), at www.iupui.edu/~eugenics/events.htm (last visited Feb. 3, 2009) (symposium
schedule); Press Release, Indiana University School of Medicine, Symposium and Exhibit
Recognize 100 Year Anniversary of Indiana Eugenics Legislation: Hoosier State Led World in
Enactment of Involuntary Sterilization Laws (Feb. 28, 2007), at http://medicine.indiana.edu/
news_releases/viewRelease.php4?art=646 (last visited Feb. 3, 2009).
70. See generally Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349 (1978); Shari Rudavsky, Looking at
the History of Eugenics in Indiana, INDIANAPOLIS STAR, Apr. 13, 2007, at Metro & State 1.
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state capitol, where a resolution denouncing eugenics was passed, based
on the Virginia model.71
71. The text of the Indiana resolution read:
A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION to mark the centennial of Indiana's 1907
eugenical sterilization law and to express the regret of the Senate and House of
Representatives of the 115th Indiana General Assembly for Indiana's experience with
eugenics.
Whereas, On April 27, 1907, Indiana enacted our nation's first eugenical
sterilization law, which mandated the sterilization of persons who were physically or
developmentally disabled, mentally ill, or who had committed crimes;
Whereas, The goal of the now-discredited eugenics movement was to provide a
simple solution to the complex issues of physical disorders, mental illness,
developmental disabilities, and changing social conditions by eliminating what the
movement's supporters considered to be hereditary flaws through selective
reproduction;
Whereas, In the 1921 case of Smith v. Williams, the Indiana Supreme Court
declared the state's 1907 law unconstitutional;
Whereas, In a landmark 1927 decision, the United States Supreme Court upheld
Virginia's involuntary sterilization statute in an opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes;
Whereas, Following the U.S. Supreme Court precedent, Indiana enacted a new
sterilization law in 1927 authorizing the compulsory sterilization of persons living in a
state institution;
Whereas, Indiana involuntarily sterilized some 2,500 people, while more than
65,000 people were sterilized under similar laws in 30 other states during the same
period;
Whereas, Eugenics legislation devalued the sanctity of human life, placed claims of
scientific benefit over human dignity, and denied the inalienable rights recognized by
our Founding Fathers;
Whereas, Eugenics legislation targeted the most vulnerable among us, including
the poor and racial minorities, wrongly dehumanizing them under the authority of law
and for the claimed purpose of public health and the good of the people;
Whereas, In the past five years, several other states, including Virginia, Oregon,
North Carolina, and California, have publicly repudiated their involvement in the
eugenics movement; and
Whereas, 2007 marks the centennial of Indiana's eugenical sterilization law, the
first such law in the United States: Therefore,
Be it resolved by the Senate of the General Assembly
of the State of Indiana, the House of Representatives concurring:
SECTION 1. That the Indiana General Assembly hereby expresses its regret over
Indiana's role in the eugenics movement in this country and the injustices done under
eugenic laws.
SECTION 2. That the General Assembly urges the citizens of Indiana to become
familiar with the history of the eugenics movement in the belief that a more educated
and enlightened population will repudiate the many laws passed in the name of
eugenics and reject any such laws in the future.
S. Con. Res. 91, 115th Gen. Assemb., 1st Reg. Sess. (Ind. 2007) (enacted).
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About the same time as the Indiana events were taking place, Georgia
State Representative Mary Margaret Oliver introduced a resolution
condemning her state’s involvement with eugenics.72 Similarly, North and
South Carolina had already officially repudiated eugenics.73 Virginia,
Oregon, and California had done so as well.74 A legislative statement from
Georgia would put the last state to pass a sterilization law on the record
renouncing eugenics.75
72. See Mary Margaret Oliver, MMO Third Email Newsletter – 2007 General Assembly
Session, Feb. 12, 2007, at marymargaretoliver.org/media.html (last visited Feb. 3, 2009); see
also Jeremy Redmon, Apology Asked for Sterilizations State Required, ATLANTA JOURNALCONST., Feb. 2, 2007, at 1A [hereinafter Redmon, Apology Asked for Sterilizations]; Jeremy
Redmon, Legislature Considers Apology for State’s Role in Eugenics Movement, ATLANTA
JOURNAL-CONST., Feb. 1, 2007, at www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/georgia/
entries/2007/02/01/legislature_con.html (last visited Feb. 3, 2009) [hereinafter Redmon,
Legislature Considers Apology].
73. See Kevin Begos et al., Easley Apologizes to Sterilization Victims, WINSTON-SALEM J.,
Dec. 13, 2002, at A1; Tim Smith, Hodges Offers Apology to Sterilization Victims, GREENVILLE
NEWS, Jan. 9, 2003, at 2B.
74. See Paul A. Lombardo, Facing Carrie Buck, HASTINGS CTR. REP., Mar.-Apr. 2003, at
14, 16, 17 & nn.19-20; Lombardo, Taking Eugenics Seriously, supra note 67, at 200 & n.56
(quoting the text of Virginia Governor Mark Warner’s apology).
75. The text of the original eugenics apology introduced by Representative Oliver read:
A RESOLUTION
Expressing profound regret for Georgia´s participation in the eugenics movement
in the United States and marking the centennial of eugenic sterilization in the United
States; and for other purposes.
WHEREAS, in the early 20th century, a pseudo-scientific movement called eugenics
gained popularity in the United States and advocated the improvement of the human
race by using selective breeding to eliminate supposed hereditary flaws such as mental
disability and physical deformity; and
WHEREAS, in 1907, Indiana became the first state to enact a eugenics based
sterilization law, mandating the sterilization of "confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists, and
imbeciles"; and
WHEREAS, eventually more than 30 states enacted similar compulsory sterilization
laws resulting in the involuntary sterilization of more than 65,000 individuals in the
United States; and
WHEREAS, the Supreme Court sanctioned the practice of compulsory sterilization
in an infamous 1927 decision by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in which the court
upheld Virginia´s sterilization of a young woman in a mental health facility on the
grounds that "three generations of imbeciles [were] enough"; and
WHEREAS, in 1937, Georgia created a State Board of Eugenics and authorized
the involuntary sterilization of Georgia´s patients in state mental health facilities, as
well as Georgia inmates in state prisons and reformatories; and
WHEREAS, even though Georgia was the last state to enact a sterilization law, it
performed the fifth largest number of sterilizations in the nation, sterilizing
approximately 3,300 of its citizens between 1937 and 1970, the year the law was
repealed; and
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The Atlanta Journal Constitution joined in the public education on
eugenics with a series of articles surveying the history of eugenics in
Georgia.76 Cynthia Tucker, who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for
Commentary, supported the legislative measure in one of her columns.77
But the resolution hit a snag when partisan considerations surfaced.78
Sharon Cooper, the Republican chair of the Georgia House of
Representatives committee to which the resolution was referred, announced
that she would not hold hearings nor take a vote on the eugenics measure,
WHEREAS, more compulsory sterilizations were performed in Georgia between
1937 and 1970 than in any other state in the nation except North Carolina; and
WHEREAS, in addition to compulsory sterilization, Georgia and many other states
enacted eugenics related legislation that attempted to preserve "racial integrity" by
banning interracial marriage; and
WHEREAS, Georgia prohibited interracial marriages for 40 years, from 1927,
when it enacted its antimiscegenation law, to 1967, when the Supreme Court
invalidated all such laws in its landmark Loving v. Virginia decision; and
WHEREAS, eugenics legislation targeted the most vulnerable populations in the
United States, including the disabled, the incarcerated, the poor, the members of racial
and ethnic minorities, and all others viewed as "genetically unfit" and provided a false
scientific rationale for discriminatory and racist practices; and
WHEREAS, despite the harm done to many thousands of Americans in the name of
eugenics, the eugenics movement is largely forgotten today; and
WHEREAS, in the past five years, several other states, including Virginia, Oregon,
North Carolina, and California, have publicly repudiated their involvement in the
eugenics movement; and
WHEREAS, the year 2007 marks the centennial of eugenic sterilization in the
United States and the 70th anniversary of the passage of Georgia´s sterilization law.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES that
the members of this body express their profound regret for Georgia´s participation in
the eugenics movement and the injustices done under eugenics laws, including the
involuntary sterilization of Georgia citizens.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the members of this body hereby support the full
education of Georgia citizens about the eugenics movement in order to ensure that a
more enlightened population repudiates the intolerance and bigotry that formed the
basis of American eugenics laws and rejects similar laws in the future.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Clerk of the House of Representatives is
authorized and directed to transmit an appropriate copy of this resolution to the public
and the press.
H.R. Res. 122, 149th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Ga. 2007).
76. See, e.g., Gayle White, The Horror of Forced Sterilization, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONST.,
Feb. 4, 2007, at Metro.
77. Cynthia Tucker, Editorial, Apology for Sterilizations Is Necessary, ATLANTA JOURNALCONST., Feb. 7, 2007, at 15A.
78. Redmon, Apology Asked for Sterilizations, supra note 72; Redmon, Legislature
Considers Apology, supra note 72.
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and that the measure would likely die in committee.79 In fact, most bills
authored by Democrats like Oliver stood a poor chance of making it
through the Republican dominated legislature.80
But before public
discussion of the eugenics resolution had settled, Republican Senator David
Shafer decided to join the campaign to highlight Georgia’s eugenic
history.81 His resolution repeated much of the same historical information
that Oliver’s bill had contained, with two interesting differences.82
First, Shafer eliminated any mention of the then eighty year old Georgia
law that outlawed interracial marriage on eugenic grounds.83 More
surprising yet was the background information that Shafer chose to
emphasize in his measure. He highlighted the origins of eugenic theory as
an “outgrowth of Darwinian evolutionary theory” crafted by Darwin’s
relative, Francis Galton.84 The eugenicists crafted methods to eliminate
unwanted people in future generations, Shafer claimed, including “selective
breeding and birth control”.85 Building on the Darwin/Galton link, Shafer
then emphasized what he called “the application of Darwinian principles” as
a hallmark of eugenic advocacy, and faulted “so-called ‘progressive’
academicians, scientists, politicians, and newspaper editors” for lending
their endorsement to eugenic legislation.86 Eugenic legislation was often
79. See Redmon, Apology Asked for Sterilizations, supra note 72; Redmon, Legislature
Considers Apology, supra note 72.
80. See, e.g., Legislature 2007: Legislative Briefs, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONST., Feb. 7,
2007, at 4B; 149th General Assembly of the State of Georgia (showing that the legislature
was sixty-one percent Republican).
81. Jeremy Redmon, Legislature 2007: Resolution ‘Regrets’ Role in Sterilization, ATLANTA
JOURNAL-CONST., Feb. 20, 2007, at 5B.
82. S. Res. 247, 149th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Ga. 2007).
83. Compare H.R. Res. 122, 149th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Ga. 2007) (“WHEREAS, in
addition to compulsory sterilization, Georgia and many other states enacted eugenics related
legislation that attempted to preserve ‘racial integrity’ by banning interracial marriage; and
WHEREAS, Georgia prohibited interracial marriages for 40 years, from 1927, when it enacted
its anti-miscegenation law, to 1967, when the Supreme Court invalidated all such laws in its
landmark Loving v. Virginia decision”); with S. Res. 247, 149th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Ga.
2007) (Shafer’s Resolution, which only discusses Georgia’s sterilization law).
84. S. Res. 247, 149th Gen. Assem., Reg. Sess. (Ga. 2007) (“WHEREAS, the so-called
science of eugenics emerged in the late 19th century as an outgrowth of Darwinian
evolutionary theory, first advanced by anthropologist and geneticist Francis Galton, a cousin
of Charles Darwin…”).
85. Id. (“WHEREAS, in the early 20th century, this pseudo-scientific movement gained
popularity in the United States and advocated the improvement of the human race by the
application of Darwinian principles to eliminate supposed hereditary flaws such as mental
disability and physical deformity and to alleviate human suffering through selective breeding
and birth control . . . ”).
86. Id. (“WHEREAS, in the early 20th century, this pseudo-scientific movement gained
popularity in the United States and advocated the improvement of the human race by the
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adopted, Shafer noted, despite “religious objections that such matters
‘ought to be left to God’”.87
Critics emerged to dispute Shafer’s concentration on Darwin as the
fount of eugenic motives.88 Blaming eugenics almost entirely on Darwin
seemed historically simplistic, and ignored the many ways that the eugenics
movement became popular by borrowing from existing lines of thought,
including nativism, racism, the temperance movement, the anti-prostitution
movement, or even religious sentiment.89 But Shafer’s language won the
support of his colleagues in the Georgia Senate and was adopted in a
2007 resolution.90
application of Darwinian principles to eliminate supposed hereditary flaws such as mental
disability and physical deformity and to alleviate human suffering through selective breeding
and birth control; and
WHEREAS, eugenics was endorsed by so-called ‘progressive’ academicians, scientists,
politicians, and newspaper editors, often over religious objections that such matters ‘ought to
be left to God’…”).
87. Id. (“WHEREAS, eugenics was endorsed by so-called ‘progressive’ academicians,
scientists, politicians, and newspaper editors, often over religious objections that such matters
‘ought to be left to God’…”).
88. See, e.g., Lee Raudonis, Editorial, Slavery Apology: Slap at Charles Darwin Goes Way
Out on a Limb, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONST., Mar. 13, 2007, at 11A.
89. It was common, for example, for eugenicists to quote the Bible as a justification for
eugenic laws, saying that the declaration from the Book of Exodus that the sins of the father
are visited upon the children was a perfect summary of how bad heredity created generations
of faulty families. See Exodus 34:6-7 (“[6]Thus the Lord passed before him and cried out,
“The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and
fidelity, [7] continuing his kindness for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness and
crime and sin; yet not declaring the guilty guiltless, but punishing children and grandchildren
to the third and fourth generation for their fathers’ wickedness!”). According to Dennis L.
Durst, Edith Smith Davis, Superintendent of The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
(WCTU) Scientific Temperance Department, declared: "[t]hat there is nothing new under the
sun receives confirmation in the fact that the law of Moses is the law of Eugenics—that the sins
of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Likewise
the children shall have health and happiness whose parents have lived according to the law of
life which is the law of God." Dennis L. Durst, Evangelical Engagements with Eugenics, 19001940, ETHICS & MEDICINE, Summer 2002, at 52 n.6 (quoting EDITH SMITH DAVIS, A
COMPENDIUM OF TEMPERANCE TRUTH 116 (1916)).
90. Senator Shafer’s Eugenics Resolution, as passed by the Georgia Senate on Mar. 27,
2007:
A RESOLUTION
Expressing profound regret for Georgia´s participation in the eugenics movement
in the United States and marking the centennial of the first eugenic sterilization law in
the United States; and for other purposes.
WHEREAS, the so-called science of eugenics emerged in the late 19th century as
an outgrowth of Darwinian evolutionary theory, first advanced by anthropologist and
geneticist Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin; and
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WHEREAS, in the early 20th century, this pseudo-scientific movement gained
popularity in the United States and advocated the improvement of the human race by
the application of Darwinian principles to eliminate supposed hereditary flaws such as
mental disability and physical deformity and to alleviate human suffering through
selective breeding and birth control; and
WHEREAS, eugenics was endorsed by so-called "progressive" academicians,
scientists, politicians, and newspaper editors, often over religious objections that such
matters "ought to be left to God"; and
WHEREAS, in 1907, Indiana became the first state to enact a eugenics based
sterilization law, mandating the sterilization of "confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists, and
imbeciles"; and
WHEREAS, eventually more than 30 states enacted similar compulsory sterilization
laws, resulting in the forced sterilization of more than 65,000 individuals in the United
States; and
WHEREAS, the Supreme Court sanctioned the practice of compulsory sterilization
in the infamous 1927 decision by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in which the court
upheld Virginia´s sterilization of a young woman in a mental health facility on the
grounds that "three generations of imbeciles [were] enough"; and
WHEREAS, with the editorial support of The Atlanta Constitution, the Georgia
General Assembly passed a eugenics law in 1935, but that law was vetoed by
Governor Eugene Talmadge; and
WHEREAS, in 1937, after Governor Talmadge had left office, Georgia enacted a
new law creating the State Board of Eugenics and authorizing the compulsory
sterilization of Georgia´s patients in state mental health facilities as well as Georgia
inmates in state prisons and reformatories; and
WHEREAS, Georgia´s eugenics law remained on the books until 1970; and
WHEREAS, more compulsory sterilizations were performed in Georgia between
1937 and 1970 than in any other state in the nation except North Carolina; and
WHEREAS, eugenics legislation devalued the sanctity of human life, placed
claimed scientific benefit over basic human dignity, and denied the God given rights
recognized by our Founding Fathers; and
WHEREAS, eugenics legislation targeted the most vulnerable among us, including
the poor and racial minorities, wrongly dehumanizing them under the color of law and
for the claimed purposes of public health and good; and
WHEREAS, in the past five years, several other states, including Virginia, Oregon,
North Carolina, and California, have publicly repudiated their involvement in the
eugenics movement; and
WHEREAS, the year 2007 marks the centennial of the first eugenic sterilization in
the United States and the 70th anniversary of the passage of Georgia´s sterilization
law.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE that the members of this
body express their profound regret for Georgia´s participation in the eugenics
movement and the injustices done under eugenics laws, including the forced
sterilization of Georgia citizens.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the members of this body hereby support the full
education of Georgia citizens about the eugenics movement in order to foster a
respect for the fundamental dignity of human life and the God given rights recognized
by our Founding Fathers.
71
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V. DARWIN, EUGENICS, AND THE CULTURE WARS
Senator Shafer’s focus on Darwin was not an isolated event. Close
attention to internet commentary during this time revealed an interesting
trend. One feature of that trend is represented by the writing of John G.
West, former professor of political science and now Senior Fellow at the
Discovery Institute in Seattle.91 West’s book, Darwin Day in America: How
Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science,
is an attempt to link proponents of the Darwinian theory of evolution with
eugenics and many other modern ills, such as abortion.92 West’s argument
describes Darwin as the source of modernist “materialism,” which excludes
the spiritual from the public sphere and pits evolution against “creation
science” and theories of intelligent design.93 West also credits early 20th
Century Progressive movement with much that was wrong with eugenics.94
West attacks the use of Darwinism as the wellspring of eugenics, and he
regularly invokes the case of Buck v. Bell as a dramatic example of how the
eugenics movement employed evolutionary theory to achieve horrific ends.95
In early 2008, West discussed the Buck case during a lecture at the
Washington,
D.C.
Family
Research
Council
on
Darwinian
96
He
described
the
Buck
case
as
an
“example
of
Darwin’s
Fundamentalism.
theories applied destructively,” and repeated the sordid details of the case,
including Carrie Buck’s early life in foster care, her mother’s
institutionalization, her rape, and her subsequent diagnosis as
“feebleminded.”97 One sympathetic reviewer summarized West’s
presentation, noting how he offered “numerous illustrations of how
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Secretary of the Senate is authorized and
directed to transmit an appropriate copy of this resolution to the public and the media.
S. Res. 247, 149th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Ga. 2007); for status history and information
on voting, see SR 247 – Eugenics; Express Profound Regret for Georgia’s Participation, at
www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2007_08/search/sr247.htm (last visited Feb. 3, 2009).
91. See generally Darwin Day in America – About the Author, Biography of John West, at
www.darwindayinamerica.com/author/ (last visited Feb. 3, 2009); Discovery Institute, About
Discovery, at www.discovery.org/about.php (last visited Feb. 3, 2009); Center for Science and
Culture, Top Questions, at www.discovery.org/csc/topQuestions.php (last visited Feb. 3,
2009).
92. See JOHN G. WEST, DARWIN DAY IN AMERICA: HOW OUR POLITICS AND CULTURE HAVE
BEEN DEHUMANIZED IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE 128-33, 156-60 (2007).
93. Id. at xiv-xvii, 225-30, 234-38.
94. Id. at 123-26.
95. Id. at 137-39; Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927).
96. John G. West, Darwin Day in America? Witherspoon Lecture at the Family Research
Council (Feb. 12, 2008) [Hereinafter Darwin Day], webcast at http://www.frcblog.com/2008/
02/video_of_john_g_wests_lecture_1.html (last visited Jan. 16 2009).
97. West, Darwin Day, supra note 96; see also WEST, supra note 92, at 137-39
(describing the plight of Carrie Buck).
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Darwinian advocates, such as former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes Jr., have taken Darwin’s theories and applied them over the years to
situations they did not necessarily relate to.”98
The recent Ben Stein documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence
Allowed, a polemic on the purported exclusion of the so-called “intelligent
design” perspective and other religious viewpoints from public debate,
provided another vehicle for tying Darwin to the origins of eugenics.99
Conservative activist and one-time Presidential candidate Gary Bauer100
noted that
[t]he most compelling part of ‘Expelled’ is its investigation into the historical
and intellectual link between Darwinism and the eugenics movement.
Eugenics attempts to ‘assist’ evolution in order to move the human race
forward into a new and improved world. Central to social Darwinism are
the ideas of natural selection and survival of the fittest, which eugenicists
believe can be helped along by controlling birth patterns. Stein offers a
striking reminder of where such utilitarian thinking can lead when he visits a
death camp in Hadamar, Germany, where thousands of disabled people
and other ‘undesirables’ or ‘useless eaters’ were exterminated during the
Nazi regime.101
Comments like Bauer’s typify a pattern of argument that relies on
several simple declarations to link Darwin with everything evil. First, it is
said, Charles Darwin believed in a godless creation, and his theory of
evolution is the foundation of an atheistic ideology.102 Second, his
likeminded cousin, Francis Galton, launched the eugenics movement from a
Darwinian perspective. Third, others like Margaret Sanger supported
eugenics and tried to force birth control onto the poor and disabled as a
98. Katherine Kipp, Author Critiques Darwin’s ‘Terrible Ideas’, FLORIDA BAPTIST WITNESS,
Feb. 14, 2008, at www.floridabaptistwitness.com/8431.article (last visited Feb. 3, 2009).
99. EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED (Premise Media Corporation 2008).
100. Gary L. Bauer is the president of American Values. The American Values website
describes the organization as ”a non-profit organization committed to uniting the American
people around the vision of our Founding Fathers. . . . American Values serves to remind the
public of the conservative principles that are so fundamental to the survival of our nation and
to bring support and ideas to policy makers and empower our elected officials to have the
support they need to do what is right, noble and good. . . . American Values is deeply
committed to defending life, traditional marriage and equipping our children with the values
necessary to stand against liberal education and cultural forces.” American Values, About
American Values, at www.amvalues.org/about.php (last visited Feb. 3, 2009).
101. Gary Bauer, Intelligence ‘Expelled’ from Evolution Debate, HUMAN EVENTS.COM, Feb.
18, 2008, at www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25046 (last visited Feb. 3, 2009). For a
dramatically contrasting review of Expelled by movie critic Roger Ebert, see Win Ben Stein’s
Mind, http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind.html (Dec. 3, 2008,
12:25 CST).
102. See, e.g., WEST, supra note 92, at 37-41.
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way of carrying out eugenic aims. Finally, Hitler also believed in eugenics.
Thus, the argument in a nutshell is that the ideas of Darwinian evolution led,
via eugenics, to the Holocaust. Moreover, a new eugenics movement has
yielded a second Holocaust in the form of pro-abortion politics that are an
outgrowth of Sanger’s eugenic propensities and other Progressive era trends
that emphasize science over religion.
This attempt at a thesis is clearly based on a selective memory of the
past and a distorted account of eugenic history. This brief essay does not
permit a more extensive refutation of the line of argument I have described,
but a few examples of what is absent from this account will suggest how
deficient it is. For example, the anti-Darwinians could have pointed out that
the first six presidents of the twentieth century—Theodore Roosevelt, William
Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and
Herbert Hoover—all had taken positions supporting some kind of eugenic
policy.103 Coolidge signed a federal statute that remained in place for over
forty years, limiting immigration of Jews and southern Europeans on eugenic
grounds.104 American laws limiting immigration on “racial” grounds were
praised by Hitler in his book, Mein Kampf.105 And Herbert Hoover was one
of the most prominent supporters of the 1921 Second International
Congress of Eugenics.106 But whatever other shortcomings they may have
had, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover are hardly responsible for the
Holocaust.107
103. See Paul A. Lombardo, Medicine, Eugenics, and the Supreme Court: From Coercive
Sterilization to Reproductive Freedom, 13 J. CONTEMP. HEALTH L. & POL’Y 1, 1 & n.1 (1996);
see, e.g., THOMAS F. GOSSETT, RACE: THE HISTORY OF AN IDEA IN AMERICA 404-05 (1965)
(discussing Harding’s 1920 campaign speech enunciating racial differences in the context of
immigration restriction laws, and Coolidge’s popular 1921 article, when he was VicePresident, where he argued “that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races.”); JAMES
W. TRENT, JR., INVENTING THE FEEBLE MIND: A HISTORY OF MENTAL RETARDATION IN THE UNITED
STATES 173 (1994) (discussing then New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson’s enthusiastic
support of the legislature’s authorization of mandatory eugenic sterilization for “certain
categories of adult feeble minds.”); Lombardo, Taking Eugenics Seriously, supra note 67, at
208-09, n.114 (discussing an article written by Roosevelt embracing eugenics); CHASE, supra
note 20, at 19-20 (discussing then Secretary of Commerce Hoover’s involvement with the
Second International Congress of Eugenics, held in New York in 1921).
104. Immigration Act of 1924, ch. 190, 43 Stat. 153 (1924); see CHASE, supra note 20,
at 300-01.
105. Hitler railed against automatic citizenship for “every Jewish or Polish, African or
Asiatic child” born in Germany as “thoughtless” and “hare-brained”. ADOLF HITLER, MEIN
KAMPF 438-39 (Ralph Manheim trans., 1943) (1925). America’s policy of “excluding certain
races from naturalization” was a law that Hitler could endorse. Id. at 440.
106. CHASE, supra note 20, at 19-20 (discussing then Secretary of Commerce Hoover’s
involvement with the Second International Congress of Eugenics, held in New York in 1921).
107. Charles Darwin’s son Leonard Darwin was on the sponsoring committee of the
Second International Congress of Eugenics in New York City in 1921. See CHASE, supra note
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Theodore Roosevelt’s eugenic sentiments are well documented and he
agreed with the leaders of the movement that “society has no business to
permit degenerates to reproduce their kind.”108 But there is no call among
the anti-Darwinians for chiseling his face from Mount Rushmore.
Psychologists like Louis Terman, Robert Yerkes, and Leta Hollingworth
argued for using the tools of psychometrics such as IQ tests to sort school
students, and all three were well know as advocates of eugenics.109 But the
anti-Darwinians are not heard to argue that the mental testing movement
was the gateway to the Holocaust.110
What the anti-Darwinians didn’t say was that Herbert Spencer, not
Darwin, coined the terms “survival of the fittest” and “Social Darwinism.”111
Nor did they note that the proponents of sterilization in the Buck case did
not rely once on Darwin in their arguments in court, but repeatedly invoked
the theories of heredity outlined first by Gregor Mendel, a Roman Catholic
monk.112 Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., author of the Buck opinion, based his
eugenic sentiments not on Darwin, but on the writings of Thomas
20, at 277. The committee also included then secretary of commerce and later President
Herbert Hoover, who presided over the stock market crash on “Black Monday” that ushered in
the Depression. See id. West, Bauer, and their colleagues might have said that these
associations prove that Darwin was responsible for the Great Depression, but that would have
been similarly inaccurate.
108. Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Charles Davenport (Jan. 3, 1913), at
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/image_header.pl?id=1242&detailed=1 (last
visited Feb. 3, 2009).
109. See, e.g., LEWIS M. TERMAN, THE MEASUREMENT OF INTELLIGENCE: AN EXPLANATION OF
AND COMPLETE GUIDE FOR THE USE OF THE STANFORD REVISION AND THE EXTENSION OF THE BINETSIMON INTELLIGENCE SCALE (1916); LEWIS M. TERMAN, THE INTELLIGENCE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN:
HOW CHILDREN DIFFER IN ABILITY, THE USE OF MENTAL TESTS IN SCHOOL GRADING, AND THE
PROPER EDUCATION OF EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN (1919); Robert M. Yerkes, A Point Scale for
Measuring Mental Ability, 1 PROC. NAT’L ACAD. SCI. 114 (1915); Robert M. Yerkes, The Benet
Versus the Point Scale Method of Measuring Intelligence, 1 J. APP. PSYCHOL. 111 (1917);
LEON J. KAMIN, THE SCIENCE AND POLITICS OF IQ 10 (1974) (noting that Lewis Terman and
Robert Yerkes were both pioneers of the Mental Testing Movement and supporters of the
Eugenics Movement); LETA S. HOLLINGWORTH, GIFTED CHILDREN: THEIR NATURE AND NURTURE
(1926); LETA S. HOLLINGWORTH, CHILDREN ABOVE 180 IQ (1942); Selden, Transforming Better
Babies into Fitter Families, supra note 17, at 204-05 (noting how “Hollingworth framed the
causes of varying levels of student performance in eugenic terms”).
110. The federal No Child Left Behind legislation, for example, is also based on extensive
reliance on testing, yet that legislation is not condemned by the anti-Darwinians. See No
Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-110 § 1116, 115 Stat. 1425, 1478 (2002)
(detailing the academic assessment procedures required under the Act).
111. HERBERT SPENCER, THE PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY 530-31 (1910) (1864); see WEST, supra
note 92, at 106-07.
112. Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927); see generally MENDEL, supra note 11.
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Malthus,113 who complained a century before Darwin that imprudent charity
was a drag on civilization.114 An accurate account of U.S. eugenics could
also have quoted Frederick Winslow Taylor, whose ideas of industrial
efficiency were extremely important to the Progressive era and were often
recited as justification for eugenic measures.115
Blaming Margaret Sanger for the eugenics movement is similarly
misleading. Certainly Sanger supported some eugenic aims, and was not
above voicing her contempt for the poor, disabled and minorities.116 But
she never held a leadership post within the eugenics movement, because
leaders like Charles Davenport117 were fearful of associating with someone
so radical, and for years had argued strenuously against her primary
objective: widespread availability of birth control.118
Moreover, identifying eugenics with abortion ignores the near complete
absence of support for abortion among leaders in the eugenics movement.
Charles Davenport himself, in one of first and most widely read texts of the
eugenics movement, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, explained
unequivocally that while his eugenic program encompassed “control by the
state of the propagation of the mentally incompetent”, it also ruled out the
“destruction of the unfit either before or after birth.”119 Harry Laughlin,
Davenport’s first lieutenant in the eugenics cause, and author of the Model
Sterilization Act that provided the foundation for the law upheld in Buck v.
Bell, voiced similar sentiments. “Preventing the procreation of defectives
rather than destroying them before birth, or in infancy, or in the later periods
113. Holmes told his friend Harold Laski: "I am a devout Malthusian as you know." Letter
from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. to Harold J. Laski (Sept. 16, 1924), in HOLMES-LASKI LETTERS:
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF MR. JUSTICE HOLMES AND HAROLD J. LASKI, 1916-1935, 658, 658
(Mark DeWolfe Howe ed., 1953).
114. See generally T. R. MALTHUS, AN ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION (1992)
(1798); CHASE, supra note 20, at 74-77.
115. See FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR, THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT (1915)
(1911); see also Amy L. Fairchild, Policies of Inclusion: Immigrants, Disease, Dependency, and
American Immigration Policy at the Dawn and Dusk of the 20th Century, 94 AM. J. PUB. HEALTH
528, 529-30 (2004).
116. For example, Sanger states that "the most urgent problem today is how to limit and
discourage the overfertility of the mentally and physically defective." Margaret Sanger, The
Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda, BIRTH CONTROL REV., Oct. 1921, at 5, reprinted in
THE SELECTED PAPERS OF MARGARET SANGER, VOLUME 1: THE WOMAN REBEL, 1900-1928, at 321
(Esther Katz ed., 2003).
117. See generally CHASE, supra note 20, at 114-18.
118. Id. at 55 (noting that Davenport declined Sanger’s formal invitation to participate as
vice-president in 1925’s Birth Control Conference, not wishing to appear as a supporter of the
Birth Control League or the conference, lest it confuse the distinction between eugenics and
birth control).
119. Charles Benedict Davenport, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics 4 (1915) (1911).
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of life, must be the aim of modern eugenics” said Laughlin.120 Harvey
Jordan, an acolyte of Davenport’s, argued strenuously for eugenic
sterilization, with no less vehemence and contempt for the poor and
disabled than Sanger.121 Yet Jordan also argued just as strongly against
eugenic euthanasia,122 and Jordan never spoke out in favor of abortion.123
Claiming that all who put on the mantle of eugenics are responsible for
social movements that crystallized long after they were dead requires a
cramped idea of eugenics and asks us to believe that anyone who was
identified as a “eugenist” was equivalent to everyone else who welcomed
that label. Such an assertion is clearly false. But focusing on Darwin,
Galton, and Margaret Sanger is more useful for the anti-Darwinians. That
focus allows them to link evolution, abortion, and eugenics and taunt
liberals who adopt the reform posture of old Progressives.124
We need to remember that although it is true that Margaret Sanger
spoke in favor of eugenics, echoing eugenic themes was also a ploy of
evangelist preacher Billy Sunday, who at one point was described at a
particularly successful revival, having spent so much time on the influences
of heredity that talk of science “almost overshadowed the denunciations of
sin.”125 Neither Sanger nor Sunday can be blamed for the historical
footprint left by Hitler.
120. Henry H. Laughlin, Report of the Committee to Study and to Report on the Best
Practical Means of Cutting off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the American Population, EUGENICS
REC. OFF. BULL. NO. 10A, at 55 (1914); HENRY HAMILTON LAUGHLIN, EUGENICAL STERILIZATION
IN THE UNITED STATES 446-51 (1922) (detailing the Model Eugenical Sterilization Law).
121. Jordan believed that those “grossly and obviously unfit” should not be able to
reproduce. See, e.g., Plan Nation-Wide Eugenics Society, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 16, 1913, at 15
(quoting Harvey E. Jordan during the American Association for the Study and Prevention of
Infant Mortality (AASPIM) 1913 organizational meeting in Washington, D.C.). Jordan’s
extensive eugenical writings included: Harvey Ernest Jordan, Eugenics: Its Data, Scope and
Promise, as Seen by the Anatomist, in EUGENICS: TWELVE UNIVERSITY LECTURES 107 (1914);
H.E. Jordan, The Eugenical Aspect of Venereal Disease, 3 TRANSACTIONS AM. ASS’N FOR STUDY
& PREVENTION INFANT MORTALITY 156 (1912-1913); H.E. Jordan, The Place of Eugenics in the
Medical Curriculum, in PROBLEMS IN EUGENICS: PAPERS COMMUNICATED TO THE FIRST
INTERNATIONAL EUGENICS CONGRESS 396 (1912); H.E. Jordan, Heredity as a Factor in the
Improvement of Social Conditions, 2 AM. BREEDERS’ MAG. 246 (1911).
122. See Plan Nation-Wide Eugenics Society, supra note 121 (quoting Harvey E. Jordan as
stating that “[e]very child born into the world . . . must be saved, if possible” during the
AASPIM 1913 organizational meeting in Washington, D.C.).
123. H.E. Jordan, Eugenics: The Rearing of the Human Thoroughbred, 12 CLEV. MED. J.
875 (1912).
124. See, e.g., WEST, supra note 92, at 120-22.
125. 35,000 Hear Sunday Talk to Men Only, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 30, 1917, at 20; see Rev.
Wm. A. Sunday, Sermon: Chickens Come Home to Roost (Apr. 29, 1917).
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VI. CONCLUSION
We have had occasion in recent years to rediscover the history of
eugenics, and it is an ugly history. The history of eugenics reminds us how
fear and greed and hate can be exploited to enable bigotry to flourish
against the poor, the disabled, and the merely different—and in some of the
worst cases bigotry can be delivered at the point of a surgeon’s scalpel or in
a death camp gas chamber. Studying that history has also made it possible
to revisit some of the mistakes of the past and make amends—to repudiate
unjust laws once used against disabled people, and to apologize to some of
the victims of those laws. Thus it is appropriate to argue for increased
sensitivity to the history of disability and to point out troubling trends today
suggesting that some of that history is not yet past. We may, at such times,
have occasion to invoke the dark shadow of eugenics or even Hitler himself.
But particularly when we are acting in service of what we would hope are
our own most noble motives, we should be careful that we are not distorting
history merely to make debating points, or redefining eugenics as a
bludgeon to be used in crushing the political opposition.
There is a danger when we take that rediscovered history and cynically
manipulate the facts it provides us with in order to run up the rhetorical
score. It is possible to have reasoned arguments and heated debates about
topics as controversial as race, abortion, crime, and religion—those
arguments are not likely to go away any time soon. But in the ocean of
ideas, eugenics was a bottom feeder, taking whatever it needed to make the
case against social welfare programs, expensive institutions, and the people
who lived in them. Many ideas were swept into the mix, none of them alone
sufficient to account for the laws passed to advance the eugenic cause, or to
explain the crimes committed in the name of eugenics. There is no
inevitable link between Darwin, Sanger, or even Galton and the Holocaust,
any more than there is a simple causal relationship between support for
immigration restriction, sterilization, or I.Q. testing and the worst crimes of
the Nazis. The moment we begin intentionally distorting historical fact to get
an edge in the ongoing culture wars, we risk repeating the tactics of some
master manipulators of the past. When someone wants too glibly to shout
the name of Hitler as the epithet of choice with which to tar all opponents,
we should remember that Hitler’s own propaganda minister, Joseph
Goebbels,126 was the author of many such big lies, and the man who did
the most in the twentieth century to rewrite history to fit his own agenda was
Joseph Stalin. Treating eugenics merely as one of history’s dirty words,
without accurately exploring the context in which it came to be used, or the
variety of ideas that played a part in its career, can lead to a debasement of
126. See, e.g., PROCTOR, supra note 60, at 79.
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history itself. Such a strategy yields no long term benefit to people with
disabilities or to those who would advocate for them.
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