Forced Sterilization started in The USA

The very first nation to take an official and organized approach to eugenics, involving forced sterilization of "undesirables," was the United States of America. Starting with Michigan in 1897, forced sterilization in the US lasted into the 1960's and was given Supreme Court approval in Buck v. Bell in 1927. More than 60,000 people considered undesirable, including the mentally ill, the "promiscuous," the poor, Native Americans and the physically disabled, were compulsorily sterilized under official policy in the United States. The very last state-sanctioned, forced sterilization program in the US was in Oregon, only ending in 1981.

According to the anthropological study of Judaism called Unsettled (reviewed here), the Nazi eugenics program in 1930's and 1940's Germany was inspired by and specifically modeled on America's eugenics program. Our shame was their inspiration.

America is certainly not alone in having as part of its history the forced sterilization of citizens based on junk science, but our programs were among the earliest and lasted the longest, though Nazi Germany easily surpassed us in terms of both numbers and enthusiasm.

Each forces sterilization has a face and a story going with it, and thanks to BBC news one woman is going very public regarding her secret and forced sterilization in the 1960's by official US policy...or, more specifically, official North Carolina policy.


( quotes from the BBC article)

"When I was 13, I was raped. I had my beautiful son and when they cut me open, I had a caesarean, they sterilised me at the same time," she said.

"I didn't know anything about it until I was 19. I got married and tried to have a child. The doctor told me I had been butchered."

That is what happened in America to Elaine Riddick. Social workers would make reports to unelected Eugenics Boards who could then decide, without the knowledge of the patient, to sterilize an American citizen. This was happening during both Democratic and Republican presidencies, including the time when JFK and Lyndon Johnson were promoting civil rights and the war on poverty. This was happening while feminism was getting its start and the Beatles were performing to screaming crowds.

The social worker's reasoning for secretly referring Elaine Riddick, victim of rape, to the Eugenics Board? Promiscuity.

Elaine Riddick's form refers to "community reports that she was 'running around' late at night" and her "promisicuity" [sic] and her "inability to control herself" constituted grounds for sterilisation...

More than 60% of those sterilized were black women and girls like Elaine Riddick.

Records show that in North Carolina out of the 7,000 sterilisations less than 500 took place with the clear consent of the patient...