Involuntary Sterilization?

Susan Lauter — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:13:42 +0000

A North Carolina-based charity’s initiative to pay drug and alcohol abusers to be sterilized or choose long-term birth control (IUD) has popped up recently in my Google “eugenics” news alert. Once an addict proves they have had a procedure to prevent pregnancy, they are given $300. Several thousand individuals have participated in the program in the US. The group argues that the policy will prevent the birth of children that will likely become a societal burden or at the very least be raised in an unstable environment. Those who oppose the initiative argue that often addicts get clean with the appropriate support when they become parents. The organization is now setting up a base in London, sparking further controversy in the UK.

Though the majority of sterilizations endorsed by eugenicists in the last century were involuntary, this initiative isn’t far from involuntary. An individual suffering from addiction and desperate to maintain it is not capable of weighing the decision to be sterilized. The program also likely eliminates any hope an addict may have for change and improvement. The funding for this program, which is mostly by donation, would be better put to use improving public health and programs that provide rehabilitation assistance to addicts.

The Progress of Eugenical Sterilization

Explore the Archive for reasons for sterilizations, especially the topic “Sterilization Laws.”

Positive Eugenics?

Susan Lauter — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:53:28 +0000

Recently a campaign by a Georgia anti-abortion group featured billboards that depicted a black baby and the text “Black children are an endangered species.” [See this Associated Press article.] As you may imagine, the billboards were instantly controversial and provoked heated discussion among abortion-rights and anti-abortion activists. Motivated by the desire to promote an agenda, the group that initiated the campaign argued that abortion is linked to race, and has been since the founding of Planned Parenthood by Margaret Sanger in the early 1900s. Others say they are trying to bait African Americans into opposing abortion through shame and fear.

Population control was a key aspect of the eugenics movement. Not only did eugenicists encourage population control (both by sterilization as well as abortion) of classes of people they deemed genetically inferior, but they discouraged its application among the intellectual families that were the most likely to practice it, which was known as positive eugenics. Explore the topic “Birth and Population Control” in the Eugenics Archive to discover some of the arguments made by the eugenicists. Margaret Sanger even makes a guest appearance.

New York

DNALC Blogs » birth control

Involuntary Sterilization?

Positive Eugenics?