America’s History of Eugenics and Forced Sterilizations
America’s History of Eugenics makes it unsurprising the revelations obtained from the most recent reports of ICE abuses of human rights. ICE is under investigation for allegedly performing forced sterilizations on immigrant detainees.
Ironically, immigrants and refugees often come to the United States to flee persecution, torture, rape, and murder threats to only end up in ICE facilities that subjects them to further abuses of their human rights.
Thankfully, United States Representative Diana DeGette (D-CO) along with Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA), members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee– performed their duties, including overseeing the nation’s public health. The lawmakers sent a letter today to the Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf to investigate claims of unwanted or forced hysterectomies performed on immigrant women detained at an ICE facility located in Georgia.
On September 14, 2020, the claims come from a complaint that was filed to the Department of Homeland Security by Dawn Wooten, a licensed practical nurse employed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Georgia. In the complaint, Wooten describes the phenomenal rate of hysterectomies performed on women being held at that location and explains instances of alleged medical neglect that is occurring in privately-run ICE facilities.
According to the complaint released by the Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide, “This complaint and Ms. Wooten’s accompanying Declaration (which is incorporated by reference) document recent accounts of jarring medical neglect at ICDC including refusal to test detained immigrants for COVID-19 who have been exposed to the virus and are symptomatic, shredding of medical requests submitted by detained immigrants, and fabricating medical records. In addition, this complaint raises red flags regarding the rate at which hysterectomies are performed on immigrant women under ICE custody at ICDC.”
DeGette and the other lawmakers wrote to DHS, “If this complaint is true, it is absolutely unacceptable and horrific treatment of individuals under DHS detention. As the Committee of jurisdiction over public health and health care in the United States, we seek information as to what steps DHS has taken to investigate the conditions at ICDC and elsewhere, and what actions are being implemented to address and prevent such circumstances in other detention facilities.”
The allegations about the facility’s actions on immigrant women in custody immediately drew comparisons to America’s long history of Eugenics. The United States has actively chosen to allow states to perform forced sterilizations on various populations in the past. However, most notably, forced sterilizations were performed on people deemed ‘unfit to procreate’ and was used by authorities on mentally unstable and institutionalized people.
Since the complaint’s release, more women have come forward to share experiences of being pressured to undergo a hysterectomy while detained at the Georgia facility.
Let this article serve as a quick, packaged rundown of America’s History of Forced Sterilizations and Eugenics.
About Eugenics & Involuntary Sterilization
Let us start with defining Eugenics. Eugenics is a philosophy that has inspired entire social movements that believe it is impossible to breed out undesirable traits through systematic or medical processes and by discouraging reproduction by people with undesirable qualities. The idea behind Eugenics is to improve the genetic quality of the human population and ultimately creating the ideal human.
While widely motivated by improving genetic quality, it has been observed that eugenicists often have the additional motive to preserve the position of dominant groups within various societies. In Western Culture, Eugenics has been used to perpetuate White Supremacy, such as what was seen within World War II Nazi Germany. As we all know, the way the Nazis used Eugenics led to the genocide of minority groups, including Jewish, Romanian, LGBTQ, and the disabled.
The process in which Eugenics has been practiced in the United States mainly involved forced sterilizations and is attributed to have been an influence on Nazi Germany.
States and Territories Pass Involuntary Sterilization Laws
Between 1907 to around 1937, 32 states passed laws to have the right to forcibly sterilize people who were considered by authorities as unfit to procreate. During that time, 60-70k Americans for subjected to forced sterilizations. Often the term ‘feebleminded’ was used to determine some folks subjected to forced sterilization. Historians determined that laws allowing forced sterilization practices originally began to prevent people with disabilities from reproducing. Let us call involuntary sterilizations for what they were, population control.
Buck vs. Bell and the Sterilization of Women
In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to uphold the state’s rights to forcibly sterilize a person unfit and considered too feebleminded or promiscuous to reproduce. It was decided by a vote of 8 to 1 and referred to as Buck v. Bell. The justification for the case’s ruling was that “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
The case centered on Cassie Buck, who was ultimately forced into medical sterilization by Virginia’s state laws. Medical professionals deemed she was too ‘feebleminded.’ Buck was provided with a lawyer who was not a lawyer on her side, but more of someone to pretend to advocate for her while simultaneously working to further the interests of those seeking to sterilize Buck.
Dr. Albert Priddy sought to put up Cassie Buck as a test case as a model for developing precedence to allow for subsequent sterilizations. Dr. Priddy’s mindset reflected a 20th-century thought process that it was essential to monitor undesirable characteristics and traits (such as mental health, mental illness, habits of criminality, and low intelligence) within humanity things to inhibit further perpetuation of perceived negative traits.
The times’ mindset was one that dehumanized people with developmental disabilities, and there was broad public support for Eugenics. Eugenicists thought that the human race improved through reproductive evolution by cleansing the human gene pool of negative and less desirable traits. Unfortunately, female sexuality and promiscuity were often a target in addition to developmental disabilities. Alternatively, eugenicists and opinion of the time considered promiscuous women as having a mental illness.
Eugenics and Latino Population
America’s History of Eugenics and population control has long been an interest in the United States government and had been a significant effort throughout the country. The reach of the United States’ efforts in controlling populations even reaches into colonies and commonwealths such as Puerto Rico. Population control in Puerto Rico went deep, perpetuated through legislation with the passage of Law 116 in 1937. Law 116 was one of the last eugenics sterilization laws passed under a United States territorial jurisdiction. The law was in existence between 1937 to 1960. In 1965, a survey signified one-third of Puerto Rican mothers between the ages of 20-49 became sterilized after pregnancies.
White Supremacy is traced to being the cause and driving reason for Puerto Rican women forced to undergo forced sterilizations.
In California, over 20k people were sterilized by 1964 and were disproportionately Mexican, Mexican-American, and Chicana women. Incredibilibly, regardless of the current legal status of forced sterilizations, in California prisons, there have been 1400 people reportedly sterilized between 1997-2013. In 2013, the Center for Investigative Reporting reported that forced sterilization was still occurring to female inmates in California.
Eugenics and the African American Population
Believe it or not, in America’s History of Eugenics, it was not a philosophy supported only by influential white Americans. There was support for Eugenics within prominent African American intellectuals such as W.E.B Du Bois, Thomas Wyatt Turner, and black intellectuals/academics working at HBCUs like Tuskegee University, Howard University, and Hampton University.
I recommend readers take the time to research The Negro project, a 1939 proposal from Margaret Sanger that advocated for Black Americans to seek birth control options and used poverty and lack of education as reasons why breeding is careless and disastrous. President Lydon B. Johnson even supported black population control during the civil rights era. Many African Americans, specifically prominent members of the Black Power Movement, saw birth control and federal support of birth control as equating to black genocide under the guise as public service.
Finally, another angle to look at with Eugenics and its effect on the black community comes with this history of forced and coerced sterilization of African American women. While there are incomplete data regarding the rates in which black women became sterilized, historians use records from states such as North Carolina to base estimates. North Carolina had the most aggressive history of Eugenics of the 32 states that legalized it during the 1907-1937 time span. Black women were disproportionately the targets for forced or coerced sterilizations.
Related article: THE 22-WEEK ABORTION BAN ON COLORADO’S 2020 BALLOT
If the allegations set forth by Wooten and Project South are correct, it would not be surprising that these occurrences are happening in ICE facilities. It should be no surprise to anyone that a country with America’s History of Eugenics and population control would still practice that same dark and toxic philosophical ideas today. Just remember that American Eugenics inspired Nazi Germany to have committed the most massive genocide in history. The desire to keep American racial pools pure led to Anne Frank’s family being denied asylum into the United States.
