In his terrific Shiny Herd substack, Ted Balaker interviewed me on the mania for eugenic sterilization of those deemed “unfit to reproduce” for the first 75+ years of the 20th century. As Ted and I discussed:
“They were forced to undergo hysterectomies. Their tubes were tied and they were given vasectomies, sometimes without anesthesia.”
The scientific and political communities in America were solidly behind the project. Those performing the sterilizations were considered humanitarian heroes, and academics who questioned the idea were subject to vilification, loss of employment, and loss of academic funding. The press and political activists formed a solid phalanx to protect the pro-eugenics side....Then I heard of the Family Planning Services Act and began to wonder if there was in 1971 a federally-funded bias toward sterilizing poor young women in Appalachia. Is this why I never had siblings and face being the sole caretaker and provider for my aging mother?But I can only wonder because I can’t find any research or data or even articles inquiring about changes in birth and sterilization rates among women in Appalachia before/after the Family Planning Services Act took hold.Maybe the Act didn’t make a difference at all. Or maybe it was a quiet Bluegrass Genocide....This writer’s expression, “bluegrass genocide,” is a marvel of imagery, simplicity, and power. Nowhere to be found on the internet (till now), the term lashes an arcadian adjective to a dystopian noun. Just two words and five syllables describe a sweeping saga, imparting both sense of place and sense of horror. It starkly captures the inhumanity that, for the better part of the last century, exerted a vise grip over science, medicine, culture, politics, journalism, and public policy—the notion that experts are entitled to play God with lives in pursuit of their favored social goals. The writer’s addition of “quiet”—”a quiet Bluegrass Genocide”—makes the events described all the more vile.Sometimes, the word “genocide” is used in a hyperbolic and, in my view, inappropriate ways, but here, the term is more than apt.
Usually one hears about the eugenics movement in terms of the eugenics crowd's fascination with the idea of 'race,' and the desire to limit the growth of 'races' that they deemed inferior; or one hears about the sterilization of those deemed mentally inferior. Here, though, it's really often just poor folks from Appalachia; useless eaters in the eyes of the Wise of that era, I suppose.
6 comments:
The Republicans in Wisconsin in the early 1900's supported sterilizing 'the feeble' very heavily. They were prominent folks; one, a Dr. Rogers, has a mental health clinic named after him still operating in Oconomowoc.
Their enthusiasm earned them a total condemnation by Wisconsin's Catholic Bishops--a condemnation which (electorally) mattered until the late 1960's, when DEMOCRATS became the party of genocide, now called "abortion."
@Dad29
And you'd have thought people who pride themselves on racial equality would have CELEBRATED the fact that Sanger's infamous Negro Project got a huge setback last year. Nnnnope!
"The scientific and political communities in America were solidly behind the project. Those performing the sterilizations were considered humanitarian heroes, and academics who questioned the idea were subject to vilification, loss of employment, and loss of academic funding. The press and political activists formed a solid phalanx to protect the pro-eugenics side...."
Plus ça change...
The effort to annihilate alien tribes is an old story. This one is made more grotesque by being cloaked in nominal solicitude, and that the victims thought they were part of the same tribe as the "wise ones."
Korora, exactly.
Recent events bear this out.
...the victims thought they were part of the same tribe as the "wise ones."
I have often argued in this space that at least half the point of Jim Crow was to convince the poor white Southerners that their enemies were the poor black Southerners, and not the rich and powerful class that was exploiting them both on almost the same terms. Here too one sees the use of 'white' as an exploit: I don't know if they thought of these people in racial terms, e.g. 'Celtic' or 'Scots-Irish' rather than 'Anglo-Saxon' or 'Germanic.' Alternatively, class might have always superseded race as a motivating concern (as well it might, since class at least is definitely real and meaningful).
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