From the notes on the map by Cornell:
The collection includes three folding pamphlets issued in the mid-1940s supporting the forced sterilization of criminals and variously defined “mental deficients.”
Included is a chart of state laws and a set of four maps dramatically demonstrating how widespread the practice had become in America.
Forced sterilization is a manifestation of “eugenics,” the “science” of improving the population by preventing those deemed to be “inferior” from reproducing.
Toward the end of the 19th century, some medical and scientific works proposed that criminal behaviour, mental illness, alcoholism, epilepsy, and other diseases were largely inherited.
These reports coincided with a number of societal concerns: increased crime; difficulty in assimilating larger immigrant populations; growth in the number of those in prisons and mental institutions; and the lack of effective treatments of mental disability.
In 1907, Indiana adopted the nation’s first law providing for the involuntary sterilization of “confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists” in state institutions.
A number of other states followed, particularly after 1927, when the Supreme Court upheld state involuntary sterilization laws.
In that case, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes concluded for the majority that:
“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207.
The three pamphlets in the collection were published by the ironically-named “Birthright Inc.,” a well-funded organization that fostered new programs across the country and maintained sterilization statistics.
The first pamphlet, (which you can see here) discusses the number of “mental deficients” and “insane,” along with academic studies regarding their criminality and disease, and concludes that “Society cannot continue to support an ever-increasing number of socially inadequate persons.”
Accordingly, Birthright, Inc. “adopts selective sterilization as the only immediate and effective method of checking the increase of those who are least qualified to exercise the privilege of parenthood.”
Here’s the full text:
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PLATFORM OF BIRTHRIGHT, INC.
“There should be no child in America that has not the complete birthright of a sound mind in a sound body, and that has not been born under proper conditions.” THE CHILD’S BILL OF RIGHTS.
THE SITUATION
We are now supporting 1,500,000 mental deficients of whom only 100,000 are under institutional care while the remainder shift for themselves and receive some sort of help outside of institutions. There are 500,000 insane, and their care costs more than that of the mental deficients. Society cannot continue to support an ever-increasing number of socially inadequate persons. In a highly civilized community their presence gives rise to grave social and economic disturbances.
“The marked association between intelligence and infertility is bigger than has usually been thought. The very bright child whose father is in the lowest occupational group comes from just as small a family as does the very bright child of prosperous parents. The very gifted are, on the average, very infertile and this is true of ALL social classes. The dying out of the very gifted in the higher social categories cannot be partly compensated by greater fertility amongst the very gifted poor, who are themselves just as infertile.” (“Intelligence and Family Size” by J. A. F. Roberts, Eugenics Review, January 1939.)
“Low intelligence, low economic status, high incidence of disease and criminality, as well as high frequency of morons are associated in families of high fertility.” (“Heredity and Social Problems” by L. L. Burlingame, page 271.) This association of low intelligence with high fertility is neither a necessary nor a universal relation. It has arisen because the birth rate among this class has not fallen so rapidly as that among the more intelligent classes who are able to learn and to apply methods for controlling their fertility.
Professor C. C. Zimmerman of Harvard University said in 1941, “No American economic group with an income of over $1,000. a year is reproducing itself.” Yet this is the group upon whom we must depend to carry those who are too deficient to carry their own weight in a social order such as we are trying to maintain.
We cannot hope to put those able to plan their parenthood into competitive breeding with those who are unwilling or unable to restrict their fecundity. There remains but one realistic remedy and that is to place a check upon the ever mounting flood of human life that is produced in violation of the BIRTHRIGHT OF A SOUND MIND IN A SOUND BODY. To continue attempting to rectify the results of the fatal differences in our American birth rates merely by extended social services, socialized medicine, etc., will result in automatically raising the fertility of the lowest third in the population and thus hastening the deterioration we are trying to check. Emotionalism in our remedies only increases our problems.
The situation of an increasing proportion of defectives in our population rests on the difference in the fertility between those who constitute our social problems and those who carry them. The inadequacy of our present attempts to correct the results of this situation and the staggering and steadily mounting expenditures for the care of defectives demand prompt and vigorous measures for the good of the nation. Society can reverse this dangerous difference in the birth rates. The means to do it are available.
THE SOLUTION
There are but two ways to protect society from those who are too irresponsible or too defective to apply successfully the methods used by those who voluntarily restrict their parenthood.
- Segregation during their reproductive lifetime.
Though many defectives need the protection of an institution, there is a far larger number who could safely live in the community if the possibility of parenthood were removed. For these segregation entails needless cruelty by preventing normal living and it seldom would be the choice of those concerned.
Any individual improvement gained by an improved environment or by training cannot improve the quality of the offspring and therefore is powerless to check the increasing burden on the next generation, which should be our chief concern.
- Making parenthood impossible by means of a simple operation that is without danger.
This procedure leaves the personality intact and permits the full enjoyment of all the functions of normal living except parenthood. It is extensively used today by those able to pay a surgeon to perform the operation privately; it would be a boon to those less able financially if the county of their residence offered this service to them free of charge.
Treatment afforded the unfortunate should always have a two-fold aim; to increase the individual’s chances of living a useful and happy life and to protect the unborn from facing life with serious physical or mental handicaps. In so far as we succeed in this, society (which is merely the aggregate of the individuals composing it) will benefit and the future will be protected.
THE PLATFORM
Standing on the principle that procreation is not a right to be unrestrictedly exercised but that it is a responsibility to be assumed by those capable of producing normal offspring and of giving them necessary care, BIRTHRIGHT, INC., adopts selective sterilization as the only immediate and effective method of checking the increase of those who are least qualified to exercise the privilege of parenthood.
Since social security has been made an obligation of government, met by granting huge sums in subsidies, it is essential that we control the quality of life which is to be made secure.
Administration—The indication for sterilization should be considered in each case on its individual merits after careful study of the personal traits of the candidate AND THE FAMILY HISTORY.
It should apply to persons both in and out of institutions, thereby preventing the necessity of some people ever being committed to institutions and permitting the release of many now under confinement.
It should be administrated by state boards among whose members are those thoroughly trained in the fields of medicine, psychiatry, and the laws of heredity as they pertain to man; with the privilege provided of consulting with competent persons in related fields, such as social case workers, educators, and officers of institutions. Appeal to the courts should be provided.
Where sterilization is indicated for an individual but is objected to by any organization
BIRTHRIGHT, INC., recommends the sterilization bills introduced in New Jersey in March 1942 (Assembly No. 170 and No. 171) as being most carefully conceived and expertly drawn. Abstracts can be had free upon request, copies at ten cents.
which is conscientiously opposed to the principle of sterilization, the patient may be paroled to the organization so long as it shall exercise such supervised care as will effectively prevent parenthood, and at no cost to any municipality, county, state or federal budget.
Legal Status—The Supreme Court of the United States in 1927 used these words in upholding the Virginia law: “We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped by incompetence. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.”
Twenty-eight states and Puerto Rico and eleven foreign countries now have sterilization laws.
We are expending our utmost in defeating the enemies of our way of life. Every day our best blood is being sacrificed in defense of the very institutions which must perish if we fail to stop the multiplication of our weakest stock at home. Dr. Alexis Carrel warned that “Modern society must promote, by all possible means, the formation of better human stock.” The purpose of BIRTHRIGHT, INC., is to foster, by educational means, a nationwide program of selective sterilization in order that the cost of national preservation may not have been spent in vain.
Adopted October 5, 1943.
The second pamphlet (which you can see here) is a “Summary of the Sterilization Laws of 28 States and Puerto Rico.”
This folding chart contains a wealth of information as to each state, in some 35 categories, including the classes of persons and conditions covered; the administrative and surgical procedures; and the presence or absence of various protections.
Among other things, the data show that three states required no notice to the patient, parent or guardian; only three states allowed a jury trial on demand; and the grounds for involuntary sterilization in California included “syphilitic disease, insanity of pregnancy, families already too large.”
The final pamphlet (map above) unfolds to a dramatic series of four “U.S. Maps showing the States having Sterilization Laws in 1910-1920-1930-1940.”
On each map, the states that had adopted these laws are shown in white and all other states are black.
The year the legislation was enacted is spelled out the first time any state appears in white.
The images show at a glance the steady growth of the movement each decade, from the three states in 1910 to 28 in 1940.
Just as this Suffrage Map showed the apparently undeniable progress toward votes for women nationwide, this series of maps suggest a similarly inevitable movement to forced sterilization.
It has been estimated that more than 60,000 people in 30 states were sterilized under these laws from 1907 to 1963.
In addition, “thousands of poor, mostly Black women were sterilized each year in the United States under federally funded programs.” Villarosa 2022.
The aggressive use of forced sterilization by the Nazis brought much increased criticism and reconsideration and a slowing of American programs.
At the same time, “already-entrenched programs continued to sterilize about 2500 institutionalized persons each year.”
Although many state laws have been repealed, the practice continues, and recent patterns of forced or coerced government sterilization were reported in California (2006 to 2010), in Tennessee (2017), and in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Georgia (2020). Villarosa 2022.
Note the The descriptive information in the “Collector’s Notes” has been supplied by Mr. Mode and does not necessarily reflect the views of Cornell University.
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