Sixty Years of Compulsory Eugenic Sterilization: ‘Three Generations of Imbeciles’ and the Constitution of the United States

23 Pages Posted: 12 Oct 2014

Date Written: 1966

Abstract

Are the lessons of compulsory sterilization still relevant today? This article originally was published by the author in Volume 43 of the Chicago-Kent Law Review. To the extent that it raises issues about the power of government to regulate private reproductive choices it still has relevance. While the practice of compulsory eugenic sterilization has largely disappeared from state statutes, policy debates continue in the United States in connection with other attempts to regulate or prohibit private choice in regard to abortion, sterilization, surrogacy arrangements, implantation of multiple embryos, restriction of reproductive choice by persons in penal confinement, regulation of fertility clinics, the use of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for gender selection, prohibition of reproductive cloning, etc. In each of these examples there are people who argue in favor of state power and regulation, and others who argue for maximum private choice independent of government control. The issue of compulsory state-sponsored sterilization to promote the perceived good of protecting the gene pool in the name of the larger community was raised in the Supreme Court decision in Bell v. Buck, 274 U.S. 200 (1925). The question of individual choice versus state regulation was raised in that case, and in other reproductive contexts that problem continues to exist. Justice Holmes, the author of the Bell decision spoke in favor of the overriding power of the state even if it meant diminishing the power of individual choice. Holmes, perhaps influenced by his service as a soldier in the Civil War seemed convinced that the right of individuals to preserve and use their reproductive power had to give way to the right of the state to take that choice away from the individual. While subsequent decisions in cases such as Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942), called some of that reasoning into question, the Bell decision has never been overruled and remains the law of land. In thinking about the historical issues raised by the article the reader may consider how these issues could play out in a contemporary legal setting.

Charles Kindregan teaches family law and assisted reproduction law at Suffolk University Law School.

Suggested Citation

Kindregan, Jr., Charles P., Sixty Years of Compulsory Eugenic Sterilization: ‘Three Generations of Imbeciles’ and the Constitution of the United States (1966). Chicago-Kent Law Review, Vol. 43, p. 123, 1966, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2508291

Charles P. Kindregan, Jr. (Contact Author)

Suffolk University Law School ( email )

120 Tremont Street
Boston, MA 02108-4977
United States

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