Report of the Departmental Committee on Sterilisation.

  • Great Britain. Board of Control. Committee on Sterilisation.
Date:
1934
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Report of the Departmental Committee on Sterilisation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    37 ^74Г'' ■'í CHAPTER VI RECOMMENDATIONS ' {a) General Conclusions and Recommendations as to Sterilisation (66) Having completed our survey of the facts, so far as we could ascertain them in the limited time available, we come now to the crux of the whole problem ; and we have to ask ourselves whether the present state of knowledge and the experience of other countries warrant us in recommending sterilisation either on a compulsory or a voluntary basis. We propose to consider compulsion first, for the obvious reason that if the case for compulsion can be made out, there is no need to discuss the less drastic alternative. We assume that the Legislature would not feel justified in compelling any persons to submit to sterilisation, unless it could be shown beyond reasonable doubt that some at least of their offspring would either be mentally defective or would develop mental disorder. In the present state of knowledge no such proof can be produced. While the results of our enquiry and the other statistics we have collected may justify some prediction as to the average results in a large group of cases, it would be hazardous to attempt to forecast the genetic results of any particular union ; much less is it possible to say about any individual, without regard to the other partner, that he or she is so constituted that some of the offspring must inevitably be mentally abnormal. The more closely individual records are examined the more difficult it becomes to fix on one cause to the exclusion of others, or to say with certainty that the genetic endowment of any individual is such that it must produce a given result. About the social results it is possible to be more certain, since it is beyond ques¬ tion that the vast majority of defectives are temperamentally and socially unfitted for parenthood. But we interpret our reference as asking us to say whether there is on scientific grounds an unassail¬ able case for compulsory sterilisation. To this question there can, in our considered judgment, be only one answer. If the test is to be the certainty with which the result of procreation can be predicted in individual cases, the case for compulsion cannot be established. The Objections to Compulsion (67) Even if on other grounds the case for compulsory sterilisation was stronger than we have found it to be, we should doubt the wisdom of compulsion as a practicable measure. It is significant that sterili¬ sation in the United States of America has been most practised in the States in which it has been administered on a volimtary basis and no operations have been performed without the patients' (ci 2627) c3