The American Eugenics Movement Essay

The idea of eugenics made it possible for involuntary sterilization. In order to improve the human race, it meant regulating reproduction. 1907 Indiana passed to sterilize the mentally insane and inmates. Their plan was to eliminate “defective” genes. By 1960 63,000 people were involuntary

Eugenicists used this information to reaffirm the existing class and racial hierarchy. They saw that middle and upper classes were predominantly white. In contrast, they saw that poor person consisted of genetically inferior individuals and deemed it to be unfit. The movement was widely accepted by the public and was the reason why eugenics legislation got passed. Laws such as compulsory sterilization were passed at the state level that required the sterilization of unfit individuals. The goal of this was to eliminate “unfit” in order to produce the most “fit” family.

It is almost impossible to think that there was a time in American history where eugenics was something that a large mass of the public thought was actually a great idea. But, when it comes time to face reality, one must realize that this was not just a fabled tale of time of the past and that it actually happened. When researching historical events or movements, nothing is more beneficial to find evidence than through popular literature of the specific time period. The novel that sums up what this entire movement is about the best would be Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road.

Eugenics is a taboo science, but back in 1883 it was a modern advancement, discovered by Francis Galton (Carlson). Galton’s original mission was to improve humanity by encouraging the best and healthiest couples to simply have more children; Galton created positive eugenics (Carlson). However, with the positive comes the inevitable negative. Negative Eugenics was more set on preventing the least able from reproducing, in order to preserve the fitness of the

History throughout the United States has multiple positive and negative attributions that reflect onto today’s society. One circumstance that has been partially neglected was the eugenics movement in America; the notion of eugenics occurring in the United States is infrequently brought up today. According to Dr. Laura Rivard, the average person most likely does not even know what eugenics is. An English intellectual named of Francis Galton is responsible for starting this movement. Eugenics can briefly be defined as exploiting the fundamentals of genetics and heredity for the benefit of superiorizing the human race.

The eugenics movement began in the 20th century by a man named Francis Galton. As the cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton believed that eugenics was a moral philosophy to improve humanity by encouraging the ablest and healthiest people to have more children (Carlson). This Galtonian ideal of eugenics is often thought of as positive eugenics. Eugenics can be defined as the outgrowth of human heredity aimed at "improving" the quality of the human stock (Allen and Bird). At the other end of the spectrum is what can be classified as negative eugenics and is presently in disrepute. Negative eugenics entails selective breeding in which the least able from the population is taken out of the reproduction pool to preserve humanity's best traits.

The beginning of the Eugenics Movement all started at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. The United States coined the term Eugenics from Great Britain in the early 1900s. In the year 1910, a man by the name of Charles B. Davenport founded the Eugenics Records Office (ERO). The funds for this building came from Mrs. E.H. Harriman (“Eugenics: Did the Eugenics Movement Benefit the United States?”). The movement was initially meant to purify the Gene Pool. One of the ways

Eugenics, developed by an eminent scientist, Francis Galton, is the science of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population by controlling breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristic traits and decrease the occurrence of undesirable characteristic traits or genetical defects (Bergman, 2000.) Eugenic sterilization refers to the involuntary sterilization of certain categories of individuals without their need for consent by those subjected to the procedure (Pozgar, 2012, Pg. 411.) Individuals classified as mentally deficient, feeble-minded, epileptic, promiscuous, sexual deviants, or persons classified as habitual criminals were mainly targeted (Pozgar, 2012, Pg. 411.) Eugenicists argued degenerate traits tainted society through the reproduction of the lowest class and sterilization was to keep the "handicapped" from perpetuating themselves (Kaelber, 2014.) In addition, eugenicists also argued that "feeble-minded" individuals were believed to be financial burdens to society by overcrowding prisons, hospitals and living off welfare (Kaelber, 2014.) Sterilization was seen as a way to prevent the spending of tax dollars on the "feeble- minded" (Kaelber, 2014.) These arguments allowed Eugenics to become an acceptable practice. Advocates believed that getting rid of the "feeble-minded" and mentally deficient would decrease the undesirable characteristic traits within the human gene pool and ultimately improve the human population.

Eugenics was the hugely popular political movement that began with the in depth study of human heredity. During the 1920s through the 1940s it was seen as a progressive and state-of-the-art- way of thinking, which fueled its popularity. The technical definition of eugenics is the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. The debate that surrounded eugenics and still does today is the morality of creating someone that only possesses “desirable” characteristics. Who gets to decide what is deemed desirable? The term “Eugenics” was termed by Francis Galton in 1883 and stems from the Greek language meaning “well bred”. Galton was inspired to research the breeding of humans mainly by his cousin Charles Darwin but also by the middle classes of England and the United States. Galton’s studied revolved around variations in the human population through classifications such as race. There has always been a struggle between right and wrong in the Christian religion with the topic of eugenics. The question of who has the power to decide what is the perfect human is a driving force behind the many curiosities and opinions in eugenics. Throughout the research paper I intend to analyze the historical and medical effects of eugenics and how they play a role in Christianity and the success or demise of human life.

The first time eugenics was called eugenics was when an Englishman named Francis Galton began to observe the English upper class. He noticed in them a higher level of intelligence and decided that traits such as intelligence were hereditary. Galton concluded that selective breeding of upper-class individuals could create a more powerful society. (Bousch) Early eugenicists were social critics along with scientists. They believed that institutions such as charity allowed the sickness of impoverished people to drag down the human gene pool as a whole. Early eugenicists did not have an understanding of DNA when they first advocated for selective breeding in humans. They were operating on the principle that undesired traits stemmed from one or two problems and could be easily eradicated. Advocates for eugenics accepted it as a fact. They saw selective breeding in humans as a scientific fact. (History of Eugenics)

In 1833, Francis Galton coined the word eugenics, which means “good in birth” or “noble in heredity” in Greek (Selgelid 2013:3). Galton stated that those who were more suitable would prevail over the ones who were less suitable (Yudell 2011:4). The term eugenics is split into two different categories, positive and negative. When you are classified in the positive eugenics it means that you have desirable traits and they would want to use those traits to reproduce and increase the overall status of human beings. However, if you were in negative classification of eugenics, that indicates that the traits that you obtained as a human were not seen as “suitable”. Because those traits were not then as suitable, you were denied the right to reproduce by the force of sterilization, it generally affected criminals and those with mental disorders. This movement was prominent in North America. However, in Nazi Germany, they applied this ideology to create a desired civilization and as a result millions of people died (Yudell 2011:4). This horrific use of eugenics demonstrates how it was used to enforce prejudice attitudes and discriminating behaviours. Genetic testing for prenatal screening is used for the parent’s knowledge if their child will have a genetic condition or impairment. If it turns out the fetus does, the parents have the choice to abort the fetus or not. Some argue that this has the same premise as eugenics and it discriminates against individuals

In the Early 20th century the Eugenics movement was a popular one, taking root in all facets of civilization. Darwin’s theories of evolution had been a starting point for many in the scientific community to form what is known as Eugenics. The fear of the inferior, being considered weak, and immigration caused many to grasp onto eugenics as gospel. Eugenics was so deep seeded at this point it was embraced by scientists, politicians, as well as being a curriculum taught in schools. America had become the “dumping ground” for many of the “unfit” from other countries. This caused America to enforce stricter laws, tests, and punishments such as sterilization. During this time, a man by the name of Adolf Hitler was about to commit the biggest crime

Under this law, no recorded sterilizations occurred. In 1929, a modified eugenics law was adopted. Under this law, 49 people were sterilized under the authority of the administration of the institutions. The supreme court ruled this law unconstitutional in 1933 citing the absence of a public hearing notice or standards for appeal. The law was modified and also called for the creation of a North Carolina Eugenics Board. It consisted of three state officials, one representative of a mental health institution and one representative of the State Hospital in Raleigh. The board’s duties were to “review all cases involving the sterilization of mentally diseased, feeble-minded, or epileptic patients, inmates, or non-institutionalized individuals” (North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources). Over the next forty-one years, more than 7,500 sterilizations were carried out under this law. The state ceased this process in 1974 and the Eugenics Commission was subsequently abolished in 1977 ("Eugenics Board of North Carolina", 2017).

The name of the law was “An Act to Benefit the Moral, Mental, or Physical Conditions of Inmates of Penal and Charitable Institutions”. This law was never enforced and sterilization was still being practiced heavily in North Carolina. According to Paul, “many feared that the law was unconstitutional and therefore the state feared putting it into practice (Paul, p. 420). According to Paul “after this law was declared unconstitutional by the state's Supreme Court in 1933 due to a deficient appeals process, North Carolina in the same year enacted a new sterilization law that “provided for notice, hearing, and the right to appeal” (Paul, p.

Due to Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory, a prejudiced distinctive form of Social Darwinism developed known as eugenics which is the study that all inferior social groups should be sterilized to prevent the increase in inferior population. Eugenics is the belief that people who are unfit continue to reproduce more unfit offsprings, creating a unfit population, therefore needs to be sterilized. Eugenicists believe that the masses of people who were deficient in intelligence are a real “danger to the human gene pool and should be institutionalized, serialized, or both” (Ruggiero 21). Panicked and alert by this eugenics study psychologist and eugenicist Henry Goddard wrote: “we need to hunt them down in every possible place and take care of them, and see to it that they do not propagate and make the problem worse, and that those who are alive today do not entail loss of life and property and moral contagion in the community by the things they do because they are weak-minded” (Ruggiero 21). In result of President Theodore Roosevelt promoted that America should have “good breeders as well as good fighters” he supported the “Rigid System of Selection” which was the sterilization of “an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased and the insane and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives and perhaps ultimately to worthless racial types” (Ruggiero 21). Based on Darwin 's theory the