PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS-VOLUNTARY STERILIZATION-PUBLIC POLICY

Plaintiff, advised by his physician that further pregnancy would endanger the life of his wife, submitted to an operation of vasectomy. Defendant physician informed him that the operation had been successful and that he could resume sexual relations with his wife without fear. The wife, however, became pregnant and plaintiff alleged that as a consequence he suffered mental agony and was put to great expense. He sued his physician on the theory of deceit in falsely representing to him that he was effectively sterilized. The lower court sustained a demurrer on the ground that the contract was contrary to public policy and that the law would leave the parties where they had placed themselves. Held, the demurrer was rightly sustained for want of any allegation of fraudulent intent. The court stated in a strong dictum, however, that the contract was not contrary to public policy and that the operation was entirely justifiable. Christensen v. Thornby, (Minn. 1934) 255 N. W. 620

The Eugenics Movement in North Carolina

The Eugenics Movement in North Carolina places North Carolina into the social political and legal context of the movement in the United States that resulted in the sterilization of more than thirty thousand people from the 1920s through the 1960s We sketch the social and political arguments that were mobilized to support sterilization as well as the arguments judges developed alongside these arguments from the 1910s through the 1930s State courts slowly accepted sterilization until the United States Supreme Court\u27s decision in 1927 in Buck v Bell Then courts and legislatures around the United States more readily accepted it even as legal scholars expressed reservations about sterilization North Carolina was one of those states that embraced sterilization The machinery of the state went into facilitating sterilization The Eugenics Board of North Carolina the state board in charge of reviewing petitions from public health officials for sterilization produced preprinted forms to facilitate the approval of sterilization They presided over the petitions and routinely granted the vast majority of them The few sterilization orders that were challenged in court were also routinely upheldFor nearly two decades until the United States\u27 entrance into World War II sterilization was broadly accepted by courts But the United States Supreme Court\u27s decision in Skinner v Oklahoma in 1942 began to turn the tide against sterilization as did unease with a procedure that was reminiscent of what was happening in Germany during the War Yet even after Skinner v Oklahoma and after World War II ended as the rest of the nation began to abandon sterilization sterilizations continued in North CarolinaWe conclude with a discussion of the recent legislation in North Carolina to provide modest payments to the victims of the state\u27s sterilization program In particular we discuss the design of a payment regime and how the legislature can justify payments for this concentrated episode of state infringement on personal liberty And we suggest that the North Carolina legislation may provide a model for future legislative action aimed at payments for people sterilized involuntarily in other state

A Study of the United States Influence on German Eugenics.

This thesis is a study of the influence and effects that the United States had upon Germany from the rise of eugenics to its fall following the end of World War II. There are three stages to this study. First, I examine the rise of eugenics in the United States from its inception to the end of World War I and the influence it had upon Germany. Then I examine the interwar era along with the popularization of eugenics within both countries before concluding with the Second World War and post war era. My thesis focuses on both the active and passive influences that the United States had upon German eugenics and racial hygiene in the twentieth century. This study uses a wide range of primary and secondary sources. Many of the authors are experts in their field while the visuals are a window into understanding how eugenics was spread to the public

"Of Low Grade Mexican Parentage:" Race, Gender, and Eugenic Sterilization in California, 1928-1952.

This dissertation argues that from the 1920s into the 1950s tropes of disability deployed through the notion of “feeblemindedness” converged with nativist concerns over Mexican immigration to mark certain Mexican-origin women and men as unsuitable for citizenship, threats to the racial health of the nation, and in need of institutionalization and sterilization. Mobilizing an interdisciplinary mix of feminist, critical racial, and disability studies lenses I explore Mexican American’s experiences of sterilization in California institutions. Drawing from a vast archive of sterilization requests, interdepartmental letters, institutional publications, and social science studies, my scholarship uncovers the ways Mexican-origin women and men were pathologized by scientists, social workers and institutional authorities as sexually deviant, inherently criminal, genetically inferior, and ultimately unfit to reproduce. Combining qualitative, quantitative and historical methods, my research uncovers the largely neglected racial aspects of California’s eugenic sterilization program, providing statistical evidence of the disproportionate sterilization of Mexican-origin women and men in California institutions for the feebleminded. My focus on the state’s southern institution for the feebleminded, Pacific Colony, reveals how race, gender and notions of disability converged to construct young Mexican-origin women as “sexual delinquents” and Mexican-origin male youths as inherent criminals in order to justify legal commitment and sterilization. I present quantitative data from records processed by Pacific Colony that suggests that Mexican-origin patients were more likely than their non-Mexican counterparts to be described as criminals and sexual delinquents in need of reproductive constraint. In doing so, this research expands the gendered scope of literature on the politics of reproduction beyond a focus on women, illustrating the ways in which race, gender, and disability came together to justify reproductive surgery. Finally, I situate the Mexican-origin patients sterilized at California institutions as more than mere victims of the state by discussing the various ways in which patients and their families resisted nonconsensual sterilization. This dissertation places Latina/o Studies in conversation with Disability studies to shed new light on the history of eugenic sterilization in California representing a critical facet of the larger pursuit of racial and reproductive justice by Chicana/os in California during the twentieth century.PhDAmerican CultureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113441/1/nlira_1.pd