The eugenics movement is a movement that advocates for measures that would improve the genetic makeup of the population. Prior to its discrediting after the Second World War, eugenics played a significant role in the United States. The American eugenic movement traces its background to Francis Galton, who was a cousin of Charles Darwin. The eugenics movement had many famous and well-known backers such as Henry Ford and J.H. Kellogg as well as the support of various institutions. Michigan was the first state to attempt to pass laws promoting eugenics and Indiana became the first state to pass eugenics laws in 1907. American eugenics laws would provide the foundation for Nazi eugenics laws. In the United States the eugenics movement sought to sterilize the mentally retarded, criminals, and generally ‘unfit’ people.
Advocates of American eugenics may have had purely racist ends in their desire to promote sterilization amongst racial minorities and immigrants, but legal sterilization as performed in California involved the courts and adjudication of guilt for a crime. The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Buck v. Bell that sterilization was legal under the correct circumstances. This stands in contrast to Nazi Germany. In Nazi Germany there was no legal decision or judgment prior to sterilization. Rather, the Nazis indiscriminately sterilized all those that they deemed unfit including Jews, Gypsies, and the mentally retarded. While in America, the motivations may have been racist, the system tempered the laws and the application of sterilization was controlled by courts of law with a jurisprudential background.
Today it is widely acknowledged that sterilization for the purpose of eugenics is a violation of fundamental human rights. It was only in the mid 1970s that the last laws promoting forced sterilization were repealed in America. While not as insidious as the Nazi implementation, the American eugenics movement is a dark spot in American history.
References:
Kuhl, Stefan. The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.
Lynn, Richard. Eugenics: A Reassessment. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2001. Print
