Involuntary Sterilization: Eugenics and Public Policy

INVOLUNTARY STERILIZATION: EUGENICS AND PUBLIC POLICY

Heredity versus Environment

During the 1920s various social commentators argued that the population of the United States was being "corrupted" by the birth of too many individuals of inferior genetic quality. According to such observers, an alarming number of mentally retarded women had been allowed to give birth to off-spring who later displayed the same deficiency as their mothers. People who subscribed to such thinking were usually firm believers in eugenics, a science that deals with improving the hereditary quality of the human race by selective breeding practices. Eugenicists reject the premise that environment—especially socio-economic class—rather than heredity accounts for most personal differences among human beings.

Overcrowded Mental Institutions

During the first decades of the twentieth century public health officials in Virginia placed a large number of "feeble-minded" women of child-bearing age in state mental asylums, causing such institutions—including the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded in Lynchburg, Virginia—to be seriously overcrowded. In June 1922 the Virginia General Assembly passed a statute that permitted the involuntary sterilization and subsequent release of female inmates who seemed otherwise likely to require permanent confinement.

The Carrie Buck Case

In spring 1924 Carrie Buck, an eighteen-year-old white girl from an impoverished family living near Lynchburg, became pregnant as the result of a rape. The Buck family agreed to have the girl committed to the nearby State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, where her mother had been confined several years earlier. A subsequent intelligence test administered to Carrie Buck allegedly proved that she was mentally retarded. Dr. Albert Priddy, superintendent of the colony, described her as "morally delinquent/' making no allowance for the fact that she was a rape victim, and determined that upon the birth of her child, she should be promptly sterilized. Priddy died before Buck's daughter was born in January 1925, but his successor, John H. Bell, intended to proceed with the operation.

Attempts to Block the Surgery

In November 1924 a group of women social activists from Richmond, led by Lucy Mason Randolph, became concerned about the young woman's plight. They arranged for a noted Virginia attorney, Irving Whitehead, to represent Carrie Buck in a lawsuit that sought to block the scheduled surgery. In a civil trial held in April 1925 before a state judge in Lynchburg, Whitehead questioned the reliability of the original intelligence test. Noting that Priddy had publicly called Carrie Buck a scion of an "ignorant, worthless family of anti-social whites," Whitehead charged that social prejudice was the primary motive behind the decision to perform an involuntary surgical procedure on Buck. Furthermore, he argued, the procedure would violate her right to due process as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The judge, however, declared that the sterilization was legal and should proceed. Whitehead appealed the decision, and the case made its way through the Virginia judicial system. In October 1926, on the basis of writ of error, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider the case of Buck v. Bell.

The Supreme Court Ruling

On 2 May 1927 the Supreme Court ruled against Buck, and the majority opinion was read by Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. He contended that all procedural guarantees had been "scrupulously followed" by Virginia public-health authorities, and the majority of the court agreed that such forced sterilizations were necessary for the general public good. Holmes noted that if "the American republic can call upon its best citizens to sacrifice their lives in war" then it should also "demand a lesser sacrifice from those persons who habitually sap the strength of society." Only Justice Pierce Butler dissented from this ruling, but he declined to provide a written opinion.

Conclusions

Carrie Buck was finally sterilized in October 1927. Her daughter, Vivian, had already been put up for adoption. Contrary to all official predictions, Vivian later developed into a healthy, normal young woman. After this decision more than twenty states passed similar sterilization laws based on eugenic theory. It was four decades before the decision rendered in Buck v. Bell was finally reversed.

Sources:

Buck v. Bell, 273 U.S. 200 (1927);

Max Lerner, ed., The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes (Boston: Little, Brown, 1943);

Paul A. Lombardo, "Three Generations, No Imbeciles: New Light on Buck v. Bell" New York Law Review, 60 (April 1985): 30-62.