What Is Her.meneutics?

The Christianity Today women's blog provides news and analysis from the perspective of evangelical women. We cover news stories and books related to international justice and evangelism, pregnancy and sexual ethics, marriage, parenting, and celibacy, pop culture, health and body image, raising girls, and women in the church and parachurch.

Her.meneutics is edited by associate editor Katelyn Beaty and online editor Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

Free Newsletters

books we're reading



« The Untapped Potential of the At-Home Mom | Main | The Best Christian Marriage Book You’ve Never Heard Of »

January 18, 2012

When the State Took Away My Life: North Carolina Grapples with Sterilization Practice

It all began just a mile down the road from my house.

Karen Swallow Prior

The small, rural Virginia county where I live is home to an infamous court case that resulted in “one of the most chilling statements” ever issued by the U.S. Supreme Court. That case, Buck vs. Bell, unleashed decades of forced sterilization on those deemed “unfit” across the United States.

elaine-riddick-sterilization-north-carolina-eugenics.jpg

Last week a taskforce appointed by the State of North Carolina recommended reparation payments of $50,000 to each surviving victim of the state’s involuntary sterilization program. The program ended in the 1970s, but incredibly, the laws remained on the books until 2003.

According to the N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation website, “Between 1929 and 1974, an estimated 7,600 people were sterilized by choice, force or coercion under the authority of the N.C. Eugenics Board program.” Those targeted for sterilization in hopes of ridding the population of “inferior” genes included people who were sick, epileptic, “feeble-minded,” or otherwise disabled. At least 33 states had involuntary sterilization programs, but North Carolina was the only state that gave social workers the power to petition for the sterilization of members of the public, subject to approval by the state’s Eugenics Board. Over 70 percent of North Carolina’s victims were sterilized after 1945, when most other programs waned, and as of 2010, 2,944 victims were estimated to be living. Surviving victims will receive the reparation payment if the taskforce’s recommendation is approved by the state legislature. The victims include:

· Naomi Schenck, who married at 16 and had a miscarriage at 17. At the hospital, her husband gave permission for a D and C, but doctors sterilized her instead. She never had children.

· Elaine Riddick (pictured above), who was just 13 when she got pregnant after being raped. After giving birth to her only child 43 years ago, Riddick was cut open “like a hog” and sterilized after her illiterate grandmother was “bullied” into approving the procedure.

· Nial Ramirez, who was sterilized after having her daughter at 17 because she was told that if she had more children, her family would no longer receive public assistance. Ramirez says she was told at the time the procedure was reversible, but that was not so.

It all began just a mile down the road from my house, when a local case (designed to be a test case) went all the way to the Supreme Court. From there Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a reputed civil libertarian, wrote the decision containing his notorious (and factually incorrect) declaration about Carrie Buck and her family that “three generations of imbeciles is enough.” The case’s central researcher, Paul A. Lombardo, says the ruling is historical, “not only because of its factual inaccuracy, but because Holmes seems to turn his back on his reputation as a libertarian and champion of human rights.”

“Bad case makes bad law” is an old legal saying. Carrie Buck was forcibly sterilized for allegedly exhibiting the “defective” characteristics of feeble-mindedness (later disproven) and promiscuity (her out-of-wedlock pregnancy was the result of being raped by a member of her foster family, a matter never brought up in the trials). When Buck was freed from institutionalization, she married and remained so for 25 years until her husband died. She regretted not being able to have more children. Those who interviewed her for research later in life reported that she was of normal intelligence. She died in 1983 and was buried near the daughter whose short life had been the unwilling catalyst for so much human drama.

Eugenics_congress_logo.png

Involuntary sterilization programs were rooted in a eugenics movement based on Charles Darwin’s principles of natural selection. Eugenics is defined as selective breeding of humans and animals in order to “rid the population of characteristics deemed unfit by those administering the practice.” Steven Selden, author of Inheriting Shame: The Story of Eugenics and Racism in America, explains that “the national eugenics movement was about altering the gene pool and eliminating people who spoke, looked, or behaved differently.” This usually meant the disabled (as the National Holocaust Museum shows) and often the poor. In the early 20th century, eugenics was seen by public welfare agencies, nonprofit institutions, and state governments as a “solution” to poverty and illegitimacy. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s eugenicist “Negro Project” is recognized as the model upon which Adolf Hitler built his “Final Solution.” The horrors revealed in Nazi Germany naturally called into question what had seemed before to be a logical, scientific approach to eliminating a good portion of human suffering. After World War II, eugenics programs fell out of favor.

Surely, the desire to prevent suffering is good. But eugenics attempts to eliminate human suffering by eliminating humans who suffer. Yet, the severest human “disabilities” usually aren’t the genetic kind, but are disabilities of character, mindset, and simple sin nature—the sort of things medicine will never be able to sterilize us from.

Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould acknowledges that sterilization programs are evidence that “a popular, quasi-scientific idea can be a powerful tool for injustice.” The irrefutable science of the past is but foolishness in the present. Yesterday’s undisputed mandate is today’s undisputed mistake. Just as the Scripture says, “There is a way that appears right, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12). The ill-founded eugenics movement demonstrates that “even the compassion of the wicked is cruel.”

We should try to ease human suffering. But good solutions will never come from science that's divorced from compassion, from government agencies separate from real communities, or from an understanding of the human condition apart from the Creator of all life.

Share |

Posted by Katelyn Beaty on January 18, 2012 11:10 AM

Comments

Karen, you really got to the heart of the issue with this line: "Yet, the severest human 'disabilities' usually aren’t the genetic kind, but are disabilities of character, mindset, and simple sin nature—the sort of things medicine will never be able to sterilize us from." Well put.

There is really only one way for us to be freed from these types of disabilities, and that's by the blood of Jesus isn't it? It is in him that we are truly free, made alive and grown into the people he wants us to be. The eugenics program was aimed at making the population as a whole better by restricting who could procreate. God, on the other hand, takes each of us as broken as we are and desires to populate his kingdom with the likes of us. What a mercy!

Cheers,
Tim

Posted By: Tim | January 18, 2012 11:51 AM

Well said, almost entirely. I do think that implying that Planned Parenthood's founder was directly responsible for the "Final Solution" is a little overboard - Humans have been killing Humans since for almost our entire history. You could probably claim that he was inspired just as much by the Crusades and the Inquisition.

That said, Eugenics scares me; it's the main* reason I support legally banning abortion (with limited exceptions). Imagine a world without people like Hawking or Einstein. Imagine a world without people like myself - I have at least three birth defects. In general, it's just a bad idea to allow us to pick and choose which children we're going to have, because it *will* lead to problems.

*I believe abortion is wrong on both a civil and religious level. I also believe that legally compelling another to follow my religious beliefs is wrong - that it doesn't lead to a lack of sin, but rather by taking away their ability to choose the right thing to do I have taken responsibility, in a way, for what they do - a tremendously prideful thing to do.

So I find that I cannot support a legal ban on abortion *for that reason*. But I can support a legal ban on abortion due to the damage I believe it does to society - in much the same way that murder is both a sin and a crime (because it harms our relationship with God and society) but lying is (with limited exceptions) a sin but not a crime (because it harms our relationship with God and with others, but generally not society as a whole).

Posted By: Newly Karen | January 18, 2012 11:51 AM

Theodore Roosevelt, the Gilbreaths ("Cheaper by the Dozen") and countless others at the start of the 20th Century fully supported Eugenics.

Posted By: Lisa | January 18, 2012 12:21 PM

Incredible article. Very enlightening about a practice that most people are only vaguely aware of if not totally ignorant about. Thanks for bringing scripture into it and helping us understand the motive behind forced sterilization.

Posted By: Ruthie Dean | January 18, 2012 1:11 PM

Well written article about a troubling subject.

I wonder, though, if I had lived during a time when eugenics movement was considered "irrefutable science", if I would've recognized it as horrible and ungodly. And just as importantly, would I have worked against it or said "it's none of my business"?

Posted By: Laura Droege | January 18, 2012 1:18 PM

I consider myself fairly well read but I was shocked to see how recent forced sterilization occured in our own country. I knew about movements in the earlier 1900s (Sangers era and of course Hitler) but North Carolina in the 1960s and 70s?! Social workers could refer women for sterilization?!

I worked in social services for a few years, and while this is very dark humor, we sometimes joked about this; the ability to sterilize a parent whose child was in foster care. Now, that's not a *funny* joke but when you see children every day who are sexually abused and neglected it can wear on you, and seeing the same abusing parents continue to have more babies while their other kids are being cared for by foster parents, and ultimately taxpayers, you kind of tend to vent. BUT, I didn't realize this ACTUALLY HAPPENED. No one is qualified to make that decision for someone else. In a perfect world, every child would be cared for and wanted, but we can't take away that option.

I'm not sure how I'd feel getting a check 40 years later for a decision that invaded my basic human rights.

Posted By: SJ | January 18, 2012 3:28 PM

"Yesterday’s undisputed mandate is today’s undisputed mistake. Just as the Scripture says, 'There is a way that appears right, but in the end it leads to death' (Proverbs 14:12). The ill-founded eugenics movement demonstrates that 'even the compassion of the wicked is cruel.'"

Wow--powerful Scripture passages, esp. in this context. Thank you for this post. It is powerful.

Posted By: anonymous | January 18, 2012 5:46 PM

Wow, I did not know any of this. The inhumanity of man, sadly, shocks me again and again.

Posted By: Lesa Engelthaler | January 18, 2012 7:02 PM

@Newly Karen: I love your rationale for banning abortion and how you distinguish it from other sins. That's very helpful: some sins have enormous social implications (all sin does, of course, affect others, but not always directly); that's a legitimate consideration for regulation.

@Laura: yours is the crucial question. It is quite scary to consider the way most of us cannot see past the mores of the times we live in. Recognizing that in great humility, I think, goes a long way.

Posted By: KSP | January 19, 2012 6:35 AM

An otherwise good article about a horrible episode in our nation's history is marred by the unsupported reference to Margaret Sanger's "Negro Project" being the foundation for Hitler's "Final Solution." While the pro-life groups have been circulating claims about the supposed goals of the "Negro Project" for years, all the major fact-checking organizations have rated those claims, and the claims that Planned Parenthood has some plan to kill off black babies, as out-and-out lies.

The Washington Post give its worst "Four Pinocchios" rating. washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/herman-cains-rewriting-of-birth-control-history/2011/10/31/gIQAr53uaM_blog.html

Politifact rated it a "Pants-on-Fire" lie. politifact.com/georgia/statements/2011/apr/08/herman-cain/cain-claims-planned-parenthood-founded-planned-gen/
http://www.factcheck.org/2011/11/cains-false-attack-on-planned-parenthood/

FactCheck.org said it was "False." factcheck.org/2011/11/cains-false-attack-on-planned-parenthood/

Yes, it's true that Sanger, like many others of the early 20th century, accepted some of the views of the eugenics movement for at least some period of time, but she clearly moved away from those views as it became clear where they were ultimately heading.

Here is a scholarly, and quite frank, look at Sanger and her non-relationship to Hitler and the "Final Solution," which is published as part of a project at New York University gathering and publishing volumes of Sanger's original writings. There's a lot of material there where one can read both her original writings and what scholars working with her papers conclude from those writings. It also has a link to other academic collections of Sanger's original writings. http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/secure/newsletter/articles/sanger-hitler_equation.html

BTW, it would have been good to note how eugenics theories were used by some, including within the church, to bolster the Jim Crow laws against "race mixing" in the South. The eugenics movement was an abomination that was not limited to one end of the political spectrum.

Posted By: Christian Lawyer | January 20, 2012 8:52 AM

@Christian Lawyer: if as you say my reference to the connection between Margaret Sanger's project and Hitler's Final Solution detracts from my larger point that even well-intentioned people (including good Christian folk) can do evil, limited as we are by our cultural blindspots, then you are correct: that reference does mar the post.

The record on Sanger is highly disputed; I will grant you that.

Thank you for bringing up the related topic of anti-miscegenation laws, another evil wrought by the eugenicist mindset, and one the short length of my post didn't allow me to address.

Posted By: KSP | January 20, 2012 10:38 AM

What about the de facto eugenics that seem to be happening now where children are aborted due to gender, genetic issues, and/or number of children in a family?

Posted By: Kathryn | January 20, 2012 4:45 PM

I am speechless. But then I thought, this is the south and there are many hidden issues relegated to race and gender that we may never know. I hope these women read God's promise in Deuteronomy that there shall be no barren among them. What the enemy meant for evil, God can turn it around for good!

Posted By: Dr. Deana | January 21, 2012 3:43 PM

Post a comment:





Verification (needed to reduce spam):

tags

February 2012
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
      1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29