Buck v. Bell and “bad genes”

May 2nd was the 80th anniversary of a 1927 Supreme Court decision, Buck v. Bell, which upheld the involuntary sterilization laws in Virginia. In the opinion written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Carrie Buck is referred to as a “feeble-minded white woman who was committed to the State Colony above mentioned in due form. She is the daughter of a feeble-minded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feeble-minded child.” Holmes cites an Act of Virginia of March 20, 1924 according to which:

the health of the patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives, under careful safeguard, etc.; that the sterilization may be effected in males by vasectomy and in females by salpingectomy, without serious pain or substantial danger to life; that the Commonwealth is supporting in various institutions many defective persons who if now discharged would become a menace but if incapable of procreating might be discharged with safety and become self-supporting with benefit to themselves and to society; and that experience has shown that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, imbecility, etc.

Holmes further notes that sterilization of the disabled has benefits to society:

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Read about three generations of autistic persons in a New Jersey family in this article and the final sentence has an eery, if not a sinister, ring. A May 22nd editorial about the 80 year anniversary of Buck v. Bell by disability rights advocates Andrew J. Imparato and Anne C. Sommers of the American Association of People With Disabilities notes that “Though society may be inclined to regard Holmes’ detestable opinion in Buck v. Bell as a relic of a time past, eerie similarities exist in contemporary remarks of the well-respected.” They note that, as of January, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is urging women of all ages to take a prenatal test for Down Syndrome. Also:

Last fall, Britain’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists argued for “active euthanasia” of significantly disabled newborns to spare parents emotional and financial burden.

Two years earlier, the Groningen Protocol emerged in the Netherlands; it proposed selection criteria for euthanizing babies and children with disabilities.

And across the United States, “futile care” policies have required that the most vulnerable give up their hospital beds – and lives – for those with more “potential.” In stark contrast to words such as “defective,” “burdensome” and “futile” are the words of civil rights laws that liberate and defend.

Eugenics is not a historical term, Imparato and Sommers note, so long as we talk about “good genes” and “bad genes” and “recognize a life with a disability as an injury, and allow health policies to value some lives over others”; to do so is to “continue to create human rights violations every day”—to repeat history that we might rather forget.

Thanks to Eye on DNA for the link to the editorial.