Sterilization for human betterment : a summary of results of 6,000 operations in California, 1909-1929 / by E.S. Gosney ... and Paul Popenoe.

  • Gosney, E. S. (Ezra Seymour), 1855-1942.
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Sterilization for human betterment : a summary of results of 6,000 operations in California, 1909-1929 / by E.S. Gosney ... and Paul Popenoe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/232 (page IX)
    INTRODUCTION zation of the hereditary defectives in their state institutions. Most of these laws also carried a provision for sterilization as a penalty for certain crimes. The penal section has generally been held unconstitutional, as in conflict with the provision prohibiting cruel and unusual punishments. Eugenic sterilization of the hereditary defective is a protection, not a penalty, and should never be made a part of any penal statute. The United States Supreme Court has recently sustained the legality of eugenic sterilization. In the case of Buck vs. Bell, where a feeble-minded woman who had a feeble-minded mother and a feeble-minded child was to be sterilized against her will, Justice Holmes, in handing down the decision, said, Three generations of imbeciles are enough. A score of years have passed since the first sterilization laws were adopted. Thinking people are asking, What have been the actual results of human sterilization? Here in California is the one place where these results have been clearly ascertained. No fewer than 6,255 sterilizations had been performed prior to January 1, 1929, in the institutions of this state—practically three times as many official sterilizations as had been per¬ formed in all the rest of the United States. We have traced the records and results of these ster¬ ilizations as far as possible, and have published [ix]