Salon has a good essay on Charles Davenport, a prominent American biologist from the first half of the 20th century who was one of the loudest voices promoting the eugenics movement. Oh, let’s call it what it was: the Wealthy White Racist movement. It begins with the tale of Carrie Buck, as was previously told by Stephen Jay Gould (pdf) — a young woman, raped by the nephew of her foster parents, who was then punished by sterilization for being one of the shiftless, ignorant and worthless class of anti-social whites of the South
. It’s all part of the ongoing war on women, especially poor, minority women, that has been going on for a long, long time.
Davenport’s awful and influential work is discussed — read it and gag — but one thing that jumped out at me as particularly creepy was Davenport’s Eugenics Creed.
I believe in striving to raise the human race to the highest plane of social organization, of cooperative work and of effective endeavor.
I believe that I am the trustee of the germ plasm that I carry; that this has been passed on to me through thousands of generations before me; and that I betray the trust if (that germ plasm being good) I so act as to jeopardize it, with its excellent possibilities, or, from motives of personal convenience, to unduly limit offspring.
I believe that, having made our choice in marriage carefully, we, the married pair, should seek to have 4 to 6 children in order that our carefully selected germ plasm shall be reproduced in adequate degree and that this preferred stock shall not be swamped by that less carefully selected.
I believe in such a selection of immigrants as shall not tend to adulterate our national germ plasm with socially unfit traits.
I believe in repressing my instincts when to follow them would injure the next generation.
Oh, my, his precious germ plasm — it must be promulgated to fend off the brown hordes. Blech. Must take a shower now. It’s like reading vdare.com…it just incites extreme disgust.
“Purity” is pretty much, whenever used outside of chemicals, is – oddly but somehow properly – the filthiest, most corrupting and sickest idea that has ever perverted a human mind. “Racial purity” may well be the worst use ever of that twisted, inhuman idea.
Wow. *shudder* So many wrong things can be derived from this (subjugation of women, rape, no abortion, etc.). Wow.
@1: “Radial purity” – or, as we call it in any other species, “inbreeding”…
The Tea Party is in favor of this idea..
If you could produce a superior human by careful breeding then you could explain Prince Charles.
Is this like precious bodily fluids and life essence?
This guy is no doubt, um, odd but we should be careful about our understanding of the eugenics movement. It was remarkably popular in the early part of the 20th century and not only with racists. Many first wave feminists and early social progressives were in favour of eugenics as well. Until the 2nd World War exposed what state sponsored eugenics really looked like and we, as a civilization, refined the concept of individual human rights (still refining, I think it’s safe to say) eugenics seemed to make a lot of sense to some people.
If nothing else, eugenicists of the period were the only people seriously advocating for the proliferation of birth control.
Anyway, eugenics is horrific and everyone with any sense had completely abandoned it by 1945, of that there is no doubt. I wouldn’t even have posted this sort of mewling defense of some eugenicists except that recently, in Canada, our terrible, right-wing, pro-God and controlling women party, the Conservatives tried throwing serious shade on Tommy Douglas, the Greatest CanadianTM. Tommy is the father of Canadian healthcare (and the grandfather of Keifer Sutherland,but I digress) but back in the 1920s and 30s, as a Baptist minister in Saskatchewan, Tommy supported eugenics. He abandoned and repudiated the theory and practice early but that doesn’t stop intellectually and historically dishonest fuck nuts like Stephen Harper’s Cons from acting all “holier than though” about it.
I seem to recall a document related the the Discovery Institute’s wedge strategy that listed this as one of the “evils” caused by a belief in evolution. Darwin was reported as saying that we humans breed indiscriminately, something no good farmer would allow in his stock. My response to the religious on this has always been to ask if people have misused Scripture over the ages to justify evil acts, and if so does that make Christianity evil? I know what the answer would be in this forum, but against the religious it seems to work as an argument.
Here is a more interesting question, one perfect for this forum. Where are the moral lines in someone with a potentially debilitating genetic disease wanting to have children? With modern medicine, they may survive, potentially even prospering, but they and their descendants may live dependent on medical intervention. This places a burden on the medical infrastructure. Do we as a society have any right to tell them not to reproduce? Should we allow medicine to skew the frequency of some deleterious alleles in the human gene pool?
My opinion is that we as a society do not have that right, but we do have an obligation to properly educate people on the science and on the implications. Unfortunately, that is something we do not do well in many places, either because our schools are poorly funded or the science classes have been crippled due to religious beliefs.
Arseholes like that would love nothing more than to be parthenogenetic.
I hate that the word eugenics is so tied to these profoundly stupid, racist ideas…the word means good genes! Natural selection is an eugenic phenomenon, genetic therapy is an eugenic phenomenon…nothing bad or disgustingly racist about those! It´s all about what the criteria are…if your criteria are eye colour and lack of melanin, you are a stupid piece of shit that´s inadvertedly plotting for your own demise as a gene pool (so much for your delusions of superiority), but if your criterion is the elimination of genetic diseases like huntington´s disease, through voluntary involvement, your offspring AND the gene pool will benefit and we get to preserve all the wonderful variation without the lethal genes. Now that´s the eugenics that deserves its name.
I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence.
It’s sobering how support for eugenics crossed political boundaries in the early 20th century. It’s no surprise (to me) that someone like Winston Churchill was an enthusiastic supporter, but it also had support from many influential thinkers on the left, such as Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes, H G Wells and George Bernard Shaw.
Looking back on that era, and reading supporters of contraception and women’s rights call for forced sterilisation, while the Catholic church denounced this as evil, it feels strange to find myself agreeing with the pope and vehemently disagreeing with progressive figures.
Hmmmm… that sounds familar. Oh, that’s right:
“MY SEED IS LIQUID FUCKING GOLD!”
(Still the funniest thing I’ve listened to in ages.)
#1 ““Purity” is pretty much, whenever used outside of chemicals, is – oddly but somehow properly – the filthiest, most corrupting and sickest idea that has ever perverted a human mind. “Racial purity” may well be the worst use ever of that twisted, inhuman idea.”
That reminds me of something I read once about conservatives and liberals having different moral foundations. One of the differences was that conservatives (generally) have a “purity” metric that is (again generally) absent in liberals.
Ah, the Moral Foundation Theory. Here’s the wiki:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Foundations_Theory
sambarge @ 7
This is why it’s best to hold up ideas as worthy and not people. People are messy and complicated and imperfect. We can admire some things a person did and said and abhor others.
American Indian and Black women were still being sterilized in significant numbers into the 1970s. The last official forcible sterilization under US law took place in Oregon in 1981, IIRC. There are people who are still alive–and they’re only in early middle age!–who were the victims of this movement.
A lot of people who did otherwise fantastic things supported eugenics. We can admire the good they did, but there is absolutely no reason to give them slack on this particular issue. The response when someone tries to smear a historical figure because they supported eugenics is not to defend eugenics. Don’t support the figure. Support the specific good they accomplished, and then you too can decry their shitty inhumane beliefs and the horrific fucking nightmare those beliefs inflicted on others.
Please, please tell me this excrescence never married or otherwise got the chance to ruin some unfortunate woman’s life, or had kids …. but I’d be so unsurprised if he did. Revolting. rq called it at #2.
‘I believe in repressing my instincts when to follow them would injure the next generation.’
Those instincts, you should pay more attention to them. They may be telling you that it’s time to extend the gene pool. Or just that people can arouse your instincts regardless of race or optimum plasm. No injury.
Moggie
Shaw was a pretty much horrible person who does the left no credit. Wells, maybe less so but still presents problems.
We must preserve our precious bodily fluids, otherwise the preverts might do something.
re @9:
Oh, I agree, BUT, be careful with the use of dictionaries. What’s most important is not the definition of words but how they are *used*, that is the real *meaning* of words. EUGENICS has become a ‘euphemism’ for “kill all the defective genes” [with all the racist implications of “defective”] as well as “Only these genes [mine] are worth propagating into the future”. (Godwin, stay away) Regardless of its ‘true meaning’, Eugenics has become a trigger word for racism. I too, lament its degradation to a trigger word, but that’s how we use words, as shortcuts for “concepts”. [having a hard time using words to talk about how awful we are at using words. See, I’m getting meta already…]
I think we will always have those people who will latch on to and accept ideas that appear to make them better/more privileged than others. Racism provides a default population that one is always better than. Religion makes you one of the “chosen ones”. Eugenics was popular with those society elites that assumed their position (based on privilege, primarily) was because they were genetically superior. Misogyny gives some males a sense of natural superiority to half the population.
Without these mental crutches, one has to go to the trouble of actually learning what the other person is like to judge their character, or for that matter to acknowledge that they are fully human. With them, one can blithely discount the achievements of others, because they literally “don’t count”. One can justify denying others access to opportunities, because they don’t deserve it by definition. One can even justify removing them from the gene pool, either by sterilization or by gas chamber, because of their “natural” inferiority.
FWIW, quite a few xians were supporters of eugenics as well.
This is relevant because creationists today frequently blame eugenics on Darwin, “Darwinists” and atheists.
I don’t believe that Rosen’s statement that it was just liberal xians is true. The current torch bearers of eugenics in disguised form are mostly fundie xians. Many of them in the south still think miscegnation, interaccial marriage, is a perverted idea and many white supremacists are part of xian identity, including of course, the Ku Klux Klan.
[Don’t get my Kubrick fanboy started…]
He was “impotent”, he only “claimed” to withhold it, to appear always in control of everything, but still blamed his impotence on Flouridation [and Ant-Flouridation is still an issue], so he only drank rainwater or vodka [iirc] to restore his “manly essence”. And the secret code he used to keep us from recalling the bombers was P.O.E. (Purity Of Essence). How ironic, that “Poe” is so often an issue on these interwebs (o_O)
[Kubrick was a genius prophet] /fanboy
The staggering mediocrity of the House of Windsor does more to discredit the notion of eugenics than anything the Nazis did.
One of the drivers for opposing interracial marriage was and is…eugenics. The idea that this dilutes precious white blood with that of inferior races.
And it is still alive and well in fundie areas. 29% of Mississippi and 21% of Alabama GOPers still oppose it.
The staggering mediocrity of the House of Windsor does more to discredit the notion of eugenics than anything the Nazis did.
Some of the Roman emperors appear to have also been trying to argue against eugenics in the same sort of way…
(I suppose the eugenics fans think “leadership” is an inheritable trait?)
So that’s why there were people talking about it on the radio today. It does appear to have been one of those things that straddled the political divide, there were eugenicists on the Left and the Right. With some believing that the current aristocracy had been marrying for beauty and wealth rather than fecundity which was why they wanted to replace the current lot.
When selection is not at random, but directed, you might get some better effects (don’t have kids with someone with a recessive gene that is going to combine rather lethally with one of yours) but the trouble is that genetics can be somewhat of a crapshoot. Especially with the ‘what exactly are you selecting for?’ problem. Sure selective breeding can bring out characteristics considered valuable on farms, but it can also produce ‘purebred’ dogs with significant health problems where appearance has been prioritised over working hips.
It’s interesting to see animal husbandry used as a rationalisation for eugenics when you see the results of breeding for very specific traits in dogs and cats. You have Persian cats who have breathing problems because of the shape of their faces, and bull dogs that in most cases can’t give birth naturally. I suspect that a concerted effort to breed for say human intelligence would also have unintended consequences. And of course the racist asshats who tend to be the folks today would balk at breeding the most intelligent non-white people with the most intelligent non-white people, which is what you’d want to do to select for highest intelligence.
Ooops, should have been a “who support eugenics today” after “the folks.”
Meh, and one of those “non-whites” should have been a “white.”
azhael @ 9 Natural selection is an eugenic phenomenon…
Not really, natural selection is gene neutral except so far as it adapts a species to its environment. The natural selection that helped adapt African populations to malaria by making them susceptible to sickle-cell anemia would hardly be called the result of “good” genes (except with regard to that specific environment)
Eugenics is still alive and well in the Dark Side of our society. This wasn’t written in 1920, it was in 2007.
Says it all above. Al Mohler wants to genetically get rid of gays.
Al Mohler is a leader of the Southern Baptists and a small case monster who is always good for a laugh.
Moggie @ 11:
Well, console yourself in the fact that the church wasn’t opposing for good reasons – they simply didn’t want there to be any reproductive control in place whatsoever. That’s god’s business, y’know. Besides, it was the poor and downtrodden who filled pews.
The Mellow Monkey #15
Indeed, a lot of people who did fantastic things in one area were utter shitheads in a lot of others. This is because a)everyone’s a shithead about something, some of the time, and b) most times and place have been pretty shitty for a whole lot of people in a whole lot of ways, and as products of those times and places, those who grow up in them tend to be inculcated with a lot of shitty ideas, beliefs and attitudes. Pretty much all of recorded history was notably shittier than the present, and part of that was because of really, really shitty cultures, which produced people with really shitty attitudes, and those people definitely included the ones working to make things less shitty in some way or another.
timgueguen #28
That, all by itself, is the refutation for the idea of eugenics from any humanistic perspective. We breed animals for very specific traits; a very good draft horse will lose every race it’s ever put in, while a thoroughbred champion will fall down in the traces inside a month if you made it pull a dray all the day. When you breed for certain traits, there’s a trade-off, and you lose other capacities. Eugenics, in practice, would be a Brave New World, as it were; a caste system as bad or worse than any in history. And that would be the case regardless of whether it ‘worked’ or not.
@27:
But of course — peahens love flamboyantly colored peacocks and that must be true for girls going for rich guys who are exceedingly wealthy. :(
Dalillama:
Yes, with much culling. Even so, there are way too many people who don’t see that as a problem in any way.
“It does appear to have been one of those things that straddled the political divide, there were eugenicists on the Left and the Right.”
Goes to show how narrow that divide can be and has been in the USA, when the power players on the “Left” and “Right” are mostly straight white able-bodied able-minded people. Differences of opinion about funding schools and regulating business don’t create real diversity in politics.
I remember seeing some news report on a woman who liked cats with this little kink in their forelegs. She ended up selectively breeding for it until they had a 90 degree inward bend, which, of course, made it very difficult for them to move around. Neighbors wanted her charged with animal cruelty, but apparently intentionally breeding cruel traits into them didn’t count.
I’m never going to have a purebred pet. I’ll take mongrel vitality any day. It’s sadly ironic that notions of genetic purity lead to all those genetic defects in pets. Yet there are still people who think doing it to humans is fine and dandy.
@twas brillig:
Euphemism is the right word. I think ‘racist dog whistle’ is another appropriate term. As a euphemism, it attempts to whitewash the ‘cull the weak’ part. As a racist dog whistle, it attempts to disguise the motivation as a health issue rather than punishing minorities and reinforcing privilege.
Inaji #36
I know. That’s why I specified a humanistic perspective. There’s a whole lot of philosophies and ideologies out there that haven’t got one of those, and don’t like the idea of one either. I like to make this fact clear about them whenever I get the chance, in hopes that it will lead other to the same revulsion I feel towards them.
Opposablethumbs @ 16:
I had to do some digging, but finally found this – seems old Charles’s germ plasm didn’t live on:
http://www.strangescience.net/davenport.htm
Bronze Dog:
Awww, that’s a bit sad. One of our monster dogs is a purebred, that’s not his fault. Jayne is a rescue – he’s very large (120 lbs) and developmentally delayed. For all that, he’s still a happy, healthy, loving sort of guy, and deserves a good home.
It’s sobering how support for eugenics crossed political boundaries in the early 20th century. It’s no surprise (to me) that someone like Winston Churchill was an enthusiastic supporter, but it also had support from many influential thinkers on the left, such as Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes, H G Wells and George Bernard Shaw.
Off hand, the only 19th Century figure I can think of who opposed eugenics for secular reasons was Peter Kropotkin.
Mykroft:
Before that could even begin to be answered, you’d have to decide just who gets to make the judgment on what constitutes a debilitating disease. Once you hand that power to someone[s], it’s all over. And if you’re going to go that far, you might as well go all the way – I’m one of millions who was not born with a debilitating disease, however, I have developed one. So, are we now to report to a center for euthanization? After all, I’m sure we wouldn’t wish to be a burden.
re Mellow Monkey @15:
“Under US law” – but women were still being forcibly sterilized very recently. California was sterilizing female prison inmates up to 2010, in breach of its own rules: Guardian source
And a more subtle approach: Quinacrine, Depo-Provera, Norplant & Women of Color Reproductive Justice
Thanks, Giliell!
Did any of the eugenics crowd ever consider hybrid vigour? (Yes, PZ, I know that “hybrid vigour” is not a term in favour in modern biology but it is a useful slogan to use against the persons supporting purity of essence)
Building on sambarge at 11
It’s important to note that there were a LOT of ideas about how eugenics could be implemented, some of which were entirely monstrous and some of which have actually become part of our modern public health programs. “Eugenics” is a surprising place to find shades of grey, but they exist even here.
Example: Margaret Sanger, while she believed in a quest for racial improvement, believed that “it must be autonomous, self-directive, and not imposed from without” (1921). Her idea was to give every woman of child-bearing potential education about the science of eugenics and access to safe, effective birth control, and that this would lead to self-directed racial improvement from the ground floor.
Seize:
Right, because you could, of course, trust the untrustworthy classes to make a decision to voluntarily take themselves out of the breeding race.
Even when couched in somewhat more humanistic terms, the eugenics Sanger believed in were mighty ugly.
@ Inaji @ 45 is great information about why even great public health advancements must be implemented centered on a sense of ethics.
While the off-label use of quinicrine is unsafe and should not be considered except in circumstances where no other option for voluntary sterilization is available, Norplant and Depo are both very good forms of birth control for many women. However, just like the month-long doses of antipsychotic medication which are now available, these long-acting methods of birth control are predisposed toward involuntary administration and use as extrajudiciary forms of social control.
@ Inaji: agreed. I think it’s interesting and important, as a pro-choice women who believes in ready availability of contraceptives, to know the history of this kind of movement in the past. Knowing this history helps us not cross ethical boundaries when providing contraceptive options and services to historically disadvantaged populations today.
I’m one of millions who was not born with a debilitating disease, however, I have developed one.
Me too. Personally I think the human race as a whole benefits from a degree of neurodiversity.
How about that, eh. Thanks for the curious bit of info, Inaji!
The UV lights of history were not kind to that germ plasm.
Inaji
Hehe, I was just digging that link up again.
+++
It’s a part of reproductive justice us privileged folks often forget: The right to actually have kids without people interfering and not to be seen as a public threat for having the audacity to reproduce
Better to call Davenport’s dogma The Eugenic Screed.
Not really, natural selection is gene neutral except so far as it adapts a species to its environment. The natural selection that helped adapt African populations to malaria by making them susceptible to sickle-cell anemia would hardly be called the result of “good” genes (except with regard to that specific environment)
Natural selection selects for fitness, whatever that happens to be in the specific context the gene finds itself in. What is fit is what i would call good in this particular case. I see your point, though, but i was equating fit with good.
Oh, I agree, BUT, be careful with the use of dictionaries. What’s most important is not the definition of words but how they are *used*, that is the real *meaning* of words. EUGENICS has become a ‘euphemism’ for “kill all the defective genes” [with all the racist implications of “defective”] as well as “Only these genes [mine] are worth propagating into the future”. (Godwin, stay away) Regardless of its ‘true meaning’, Eugenics has become a trigger word for racism. I too, lament its degradation to a trigger word, but that’s how we use words, as shortcuts for “concepts”. [having a hard time using words to talk about how awful we are at using words. See, I’m getting meta already…]
I know, i know, that´s why i said that i hate that this potentially wonderful word has been so thoroughly attached to the horrors of racist motivated genocide. The greek roots sound quite beautiful (as greek usually does) and the word could have been associated with something amazing but the word is lost to a concept that disgusts me to my core.
Shit, i used the blocquote thingies….sorry everybody :S
Giliell
QFT. I am still haunted by an early experience in my research where I met a woman, 26 years old, black, three kids, tubal ligation. I myself was 23 and had been trying to get a tubal ligation for years, and could not get one because I was “too young.” When I asked her how she got it she told me that she has needed C-section for her third child and that the ob-gyn had nonchalantly offered to do the tubal during the C-section and she’d agreed. No counseling, no nothing, and she agreed to a life-altering surgery while dealing with labor pains.
The gibberish, it hurts.
You know, you can basically start doubting any enterprise the minute they have a “creed” which adherents are supposed to swear to and/or repeat ad nauseum. The whole idea is “you shouldn’t think about these things, let us do the thinking for you in advance” — which automatically suggests that the whole enterprise has something dodgy about it, and the people writing the creed know it on some level. Nicene Creed? Pledge of Allegiance? The Catholic Mass? It’s all to get these things wired into your brain in one phrasing.
I’m not even necessarily exempting things like the Hippocratic Oath — the original form was an oath to Apollo, and included a section about not helping anyone seek out an abortion. Stop those brains from thinking! Loyalty is more important!
@59, vaiyt:
It’s technically grammatically correct. He believes that immigrants should be chosen to avoid the “unfit”. It’s just wrapped up in the kind of language people use when they’re writing this kind of thing.
Recently I read an entry in TV Tropes about outfits with good stats but appearances that would make someone think twice about wearing them (mostly videogame stuff). One example involved an alien offering a super powered uniform to a human so he could do great heroic deeds. Unfortunately, the alien wasn’t up to date with 20th century history, so he was surprised to find the human turned down the opportunity to be “Captain Swastika.”
This sounds exactly like the “Liquid Fucking Gold” guy. There really is nothing new under the sun isn’t there…
And I’m the impatient idiot who didn’t read the comments before posting what many others already did.
Somewhat to her credit, Margaret Sanger pushed back against the “women who are deemed “fit” should have oodles of babies” part of eugenics. She also – for all her flaws – decided to center educating women in her programs.
That is not to diminish her racist views or excuse them in any way.
We should always talk about our noted predecessors’ flaws when we talk about their achievements. No gods, and no heroes.
Serena, the “Skip to comment field” linkie is a legitimate secular temptation to sin.
In almost no cases is that true.
John A:
Except in the case of atheistic polemics, eh? Why don’t you just right to your religious point, Cupcake?
*sigh*
just get right to your religious point.
Funny I didn’t see the part in that link about atheists always spouting the same thing. Maybe you could quote it?
My point? Ohhh where to begin.
Start at the beginning, and evidence your way throughout.
John A
Translation: “Watch as I stall for time while I start finding things to pull out of my ass until I finally settle on something that I feel is important enough for me to sincerely defend”
anteprepro:
This should be somewhat interesting, as John A exhibits a need to hide in the deepities of serious vagueness.
I’m amused that Davenport’s name is an insult on Archer
Have you checked the top of your head?
Wasn’t this the era that gave us the large scale “improvement” of dog breeds by breeding for “conformation” instead of utility?
(Yes, that old term “Notorious Crime Against Nature” has real meaning. But only if you read it as AKC instead of sodomy. I quite literally cried the day those ham-fisted holdovers recognized Border Collies and Australian Shepherds. Two more wonderful types of dogs will be ruined in my lifetime)
Inaji @43:
My intent was to start a discussion, in a forum with many lurkers who might learn from the debate. I am NOT for any form of society control on human reproduction, which I had stated.
Sorry if my raising the question as a trigger for you. I shall go back into lurking mode.
mykroft
Have a nice day.
Eugenics Land is always set up with a few assumptions:
1) Genetic advantages are self-evident by performance outcomes.
2) The superiority of individuals within the white men group is evidence of superiority for white men as a whole.
3) The average performance of people within a group that’s not white men is evidence of inferiority for any individual within the not white men groups.
Coupling 1 and 3 already excludes women and most minorities from the breed-greater-intelligence programs beforehand.
Davenport’s “creed” sounds like a long-winded version of “the fourteen words”.
And as for his plans for his descendents, Davenport reminds me of Shelley’s “Ozymandias”. It would be funny if his children hadn’t suffered so.
@pterryxx #44
Please, please tell me that someone, somewhere was punished for that. Please? I genuinely don’t think my residual faith in humanity can survive the knowledge that people were being coerced into being sterilised, and everyone involved got away with it.
Lets not blame the South for Eugenics – that was mostly the privy of California Universities and Feminists who spread it to the Nazis:
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Eugenics-and-the-Nazis-the-California-2549771.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman
@Thumper: Token Breeder
Here in California we didn’t coerce, we just did it. We spread our enlightened views of gas chambers for the genetically unfit from California Universities to Nazi Germany where it took hold in ways the U.C. Board of Regents couldn’t have dreamed possible in the United States:
http://hnn.us/article/1796
Why do you think Joss Whedon portrays the University of California as evil, sociopathic, human rights violators in Dollhouse, Buffy, and Angel? Anytime he writes a show he will directly target the California University system and portray them as human rights violators.
Thumper:
I’m sorry, but the news isn’t good so far. These forced sterilizations only came to light in July 2013 because a reporter followed up a tip from prisoner advocates. Until then nobody had bothered to notice all these sterilizations going on without the legally required permission or oversight. People got angry, California lawmakers started hearings to get to the bottom of it, and as far as I could determine they’re still in progress. There’s quibbling over missing records and sloppy oversight, and the physician responsible for the majority (but not all) of the questionable surgeries has been put out to pasture as of Dec 2012.
Source – Aug 2013
In February, Jackson introduced a bill to ban prisoner sterilizations outright unless medically indicated: Source
The Center for Investigative Reporting broke the initial story in July. Jackson intends her legislation to be up for a hearing in the spring.
CIR’s follow-up on this doctor shows he has a history of malpractice suits, botched treatments and unsanitary practices, such as performing vaginal exams without gloves; and besides the illegal tubal ligations, he also sterilized hundreds more inmates through other procedures such as hysterectomies and endometrial ablations: Source
And this is his attitude about it: Source
A former inmate speaking to CIR: (emphasis mine)
@Pteryxx
Oh :( at least it looks as though something is being done. An enquiry, the suspension of the performing physician, introduction of a bill to ban the procedure at prisons (not sure about that one; surely those women should have the option? It’s the coercion that bothers me, if they’re having it done in full possession of the facts and with full consent then that’s fine); this, to me, shows someone somewhere gives a shit.
Regarding Heinrich himself (how ironic is it that he has that name?), this phrase:
“My guess is that the only reason you do that is not because you feel wronged, but that you want to stay on the state’s dole somehow.”
is a dead fucking give away.
@Devilsadvocate #83
Yeah Pteryxx’s initial link gave a brief history. Forced up until the ’70’s, coercion thereafter. It fucking sucks on every possible level, and has genuinely upset me a bit.
I’m going to read up on the history of California’s contribution to global eugenics. It promises to be a fucking depressing read, but I genuinely had no idea of the connection.
Thumper
Coercion vs. consent for things like this can become pretty murky in a situation of imprisonment. I tend to favor this bill, and my few reservations would be entirely satisfied if I knew that full reprorductive (and other, but that’s beside the point) were available without charge outside the prison. That is to say, women who want the procedure (or an equivalent one) currently often have difficulty getting it, for financial and other access reasons. In a situation where that wasn’t the case, a total ban on doing any such thing while someone was in prisons would have no downsides, really(The downside in the current situation being that some people who want the procedure and are imprisoned can’t get it elsewhere, which is a pretty small downside on my view given the reasons it’s being passed in the first place) . Even people who want to be sterilized/ not reproduce don’t,typically have opportunities for potentially reproductive sex while incarcerated, making their current state of fertility rather a moot point.
To whomever commented to the effect that everyone of note had abandoned Eugenics by 1945, I offer this:
http://books.google.com/books?id=UBJWsbEHmT4C&pg=PA188&lpg=PA188&dq=margaret+sanger+eugenics+1945&source=bl&ots=pml6sZZvyh&sig=TyEkJY24KJcLs3Nq86Hb1YKwZf0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=pOkyU-G1MMPMsQTfzoDAAw&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=margaret%20sanger%20eugenics%201945&f=false
On the page you will find that by 1950 Margaret Sanger was still a committed believer.