Eugenics history snippets

With the recent revelation that prison doctors illegally sterilized female inmates in California, and the ongoing full-court press of anti-woman's health legislation in Ohio, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Texas it may be a "teachable moment" as they say to discuss how much fun elite children of darkness have had in the past with "selective breeding."

On the occasions I have had to lecture on the history of eugenics the first reaction of my audience has usually been shock that there ever was such a thing in the United States. But yes, this supposedly free country has seen its share of restrictions on freedom. In my high school we had to pee in a cup to participate in sports and there was a ban on hats and jackets, but what the heck right? Students can't vote. Once the shock wears off that yes, many states had the power to sterilize citizens deemed unfit to have children because of mental or physical defect, one can almost start to see their brains turning; "hmm, who would I prevent from having children?"

The truth is that eugenics, the pseudo-scientific program of weeding out "bad genes" or encouraging the proliferation of good ones, was all the rage in the US around the turn of the Twentieth Century. The idea that society should have some degree of control over reproduction and raising children is an old one. In the western world the ancient Greeks charged the polis or city with responsibility for raising children to be good Hellenes and the Spartans in particular had detailed instructions on not only who could have children but how mothers are to take care of themselves during pregnancy to ensure strong and healthy kids. Eugenics itself is based on the Greek word for "good in birth" however humanity had to wait until Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species to really get the modern movement rolling. Sociologist Herbert Spencer adapted Darwin's ideas to humans, within the species, not between species. This was a big reason "Social Darwinism" was garbage, junk science.

Contemporaneously with Spencer, Darwin's cousin Francis Galton was studying the bloodlines of "genius" especially among nobility and found a tendency among very intelligent families to refuse to reproduce at rates that would increase the genius of mankind. On the other hand, Galton hypothesized that the poor (and obviously less-intelligent) were having children at a rate which would crowd out the gifted. It was therefore a rare occurrence in human history that "progress" could be made, more smart people and fewer dummies but it could never last as the differential birthrates meant a regression toward the mean. See where this was going? Why should not society regulate reproduction to maximize intelligence and ability?

Progress was the watchword of the day. Progress for the race. And it should not be a surprise that in America it was "Progressives" that latched onto the idea of improving mankind, but as with all human endeavors, the dark side got into the act as well. While deciding who would be prohibited from having children and who would get public subsidies to grow their families is an inherently elitist and paternalist fancy, in America there was a racist component as well. This was not Galton's intention, ogre that he was, Galton wanted to reserve his program for Anglo-Saxons and so did many in America. But this was a time of "scientific racism" where the so-called races of mankind were ranked and the light-skinned peoples of Northern and Western Europe were "naturally" the world's masters, justifying imperialism and abhorring the melting pot of ethnicities.

One would think that the South would be the epicenter of eugenics in America, given its history, however you would be wrong. By and large Progressives in the South were thwarted in their attempts to segregate or sterilize the unfit. It was their history that prevented eugenic ideas from taking hold. Long established churches, tight-knit communities, and the tradition of individual freedom was a barren place for the eugenic seed. But what about race you say? Well, eugenics was always considered a means of improvement of the white race against all others. While some social workers and doctors were able to sneak through a few outliers, it was not what popular memory holds.

California, on the other hand, was a different story. In the Golden State there were no long-established traditions and other checks on the onrush of eugenics, therefore California was the place to be for every crackpot attempt at social engineering. World War II and the revelations of Nazi horrors dampened enthusiasm for eugenics but for many years, especially during the Great Depression, the poor, disabled, prisoners, and anyone deemed "unfit" had much to fear from the authorities. Therefore, given that eugenics became a tradition in California, it is unsurprising that it resurfaced in their prison system. Legal or not, the impulse among certain people to decide for others whether or not they can have children is going to persist.