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The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity
by Harry Bruinius
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Sterilization, by contrast, was humane. It was simple and relatively
painless. It took nothing from the patient but the ability to pass on
the causes of human misery. Far from cruel, forced sterilization
represented science and altruism at their most advanced, with goals
heroic and noble. Sterilizing Carrie today marked a return to pursuing
those natural laws of "elimination"—not in an arbitrary and brutish way,
but in a way ordered by science and guided by reason. If science had
revealed the congenital, hereditary nature of human imperfection, it was
now revealing a path toward restoration.
"It is not foolish to hitch one's wagon to a star, for the unbelievable
theory of today becomes the proven laboratory fact of tomorrow," Dr.
Bell would explain. "And while perhaps a Utopia may never arise out of
our efforts to better our brother's condition in this world in which we
live, nevertheless, much that is practical and useful and elevating to
all can be developed and carried to a successful conclusion by the
simple formula of all who are interested in these things pulling
together towards a common goal: a citizenry purged of mental and
physical handicaps."
This was his faith, a faith in science and progress, and a faith
informed by a long-held vision of American destiny. After putting
Carrie's chart in order, Dr. Bell could pick up the day's newspaper and
read about the throngs of people in Baltimore cheering Charles
Lindbergh, the great American airman who had flown across the ocean
alone and was now making a triumphant tour of all forty-eight states. It
was indeed a momentous day. But beyond those cheers, Dr. Bell believed
America's greatness was much more evident here in the calm, quiet
infirmary at the Virginia Colony. America, more than any other nation,
held the promise of being a land of innocence, free from the defects of
the past. This land could be, as so many others had believed, a city
upon a hill, a beacon to all civilizations, so long as its citizens
remained vigilant, persevered in virtue, and held to their sense of
civic duty. Now the Supreme Court had recognized the wisdom gleaned from
science and declared this harmless procedure a constitutionally valid
means to combat the country's social ills. Forced sterilization would be
effective, Dr. Bell knew, and would help purge from American society
those defects found deep within human nature. Today was surely the dawn
of a new era, not only for the country, but for all the world.
An Epic Quest in the Modern World
In the early decades of the twentieth century, not long after the
technology of surgical sterilization had been devised, state governments
throughout the United States began a quest for racial purity that would
change the lives of thousands of their citizens. By 1927, before Carrie
Buck lay prostrate beneath Dr. Bell's surgical blade, almost 8,500
American citizens had been forcibly sterilized. This "official" figure,
taken from informal surveys by proponents of the procedure and
representing only what surgeons chose to report, would reach well over
65,000 in the decades to come.
Ill-educated and poor, these people were operated upon and mostly
forgotten. But they were first the subjects of methodical research
programs in which scientists tried to trace and then eradicate the gene
pool that caused what they casually referred to as "the three D's":
dependency, delinquency, and mental deficiency. Hundreds of fieldworkers
fanned out into the country to visit prisons, mental institutions, and
the poor rural hamlets where many of their research subjects dwelled.
They collected tens of thousands of pages of data on these subjects'
family pedigrees. Armed with this data, which appeared to show a genetic
predisposition toward moral deviance and mental deficiency handed down
through generations, scientists persuaded state legislatures—and, in the
case of Carrie Buck, the U.S. Supreme Court—to enact laws giving states
the power to sterilize these genetically "defective" Americans.
Excerpted from Better for All the World by Harry Bruinius Copyright © 2006 by Harry Bruinius. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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