Charles Davenport, in The Eugenic Programme And Progress in its Achievement (1914) [italics in original, bold added] The lowest stratum of society has, on the other hand, neither intelligence nor self-control enough to justify the State to leave its matings in their own hands. On the contrary, the defectives and criminalistic are, so far as …
Category: mental defectives
Bentley Glass: “No parent will have the right to burden society with a defective child”
Excerpt from Dangerous Diagnostics by Dorothy Nelkin and Laurence R. Tancredi (pg 12, 1994) [Source] And in the same year [1970], Bentley Glass, in his retirement address as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, called for “the use of the new biology to assure the quality of all new babies. … …
Guy Irving Burch: Sterilize or Segregate
[Source] Context, etc, to be determined. [T]here is almost unanimous agreement among competent authorities that those who are definitely mentally defective should not reproduce their kind. This can be accomplished either by segregation or by voluntary sterilization.
Eugenic Quote of the Day: Compulsory Vaccination and Compulsory Sterilization? Justified on the Same Principle
Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 1927 Buck vs. Bell decision upholding the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck, ‘feeble-minded.’ [Reference] An Act of Virginia, approved March 20, 1924, recites that 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, &c.; …
Buck vs. Bell Supreme Court Decision, Opinion by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1927)
Oliver Wendell Holmes delivering the Supreme Court’s decision in Buck vs. Bell [Source] 274 U.S. 200 Buck v. Bell (No. 292) Argued: April 22, 1927 Decided: May 2, 1927 143 Va. 310, affirmed. Syllabus 1. The Virginia statute providing for the sexual sterilization of inmates of institutions supported by the State who shall be found …
The Duty of the State in the Treatment of the Deformed: R. Z. Mason, Appleton WI, 1879
R.Z. Mason, mayor of Appleton, WI, “The Duty of the State in its Treatment of the Deaf and Dumb, the Blind, the Idiotic, the Crippled and Deformed, and the Insane.” [Source / Italics added, bold text added] In the progress of modern civilization, the state has come slowly to a recognition of certain duties and …
DH Lawrence pines for the lethal chamber for the sick and maimed (1908)
DH Lawrence in a letter to Blanche Jennings, October 9, 1908. [Reference] If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I’d go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, …
Virginia Woolf: Defective idiots and imbeciles “should certainly be killed.” (1915)
Author Virginia Woolf, in a 1915 diary entry describing some people she saw while on a walk: we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles. the first was a very tall young man, just queer enough to look at twice, but no more; the second shuffled, & looked aside; and then one …
Frederick Osborn, Galton and Mid-Century Eugenics, 1956 Eugenics Review published lecture and “Voluntary Unconscious Selection”
Frederick Osborn, president of the Population Council and steadfast advocate for eugenics, in a 1956 speech recorded in the Eugenics Review. [SOURCE] […] Galton never envisaged any system of arbitrary controls, except for the more serious mental and physical handicaps, which should be treated like a form of communicable disease. But he did propose that …
Helen Keller: Physicians Juries for Defective Babies, Article in the New Republic, 1915
Due to the successful sanitization of the past in regards to eugenics, it is largely unknown how pervasive eugenics attitudes were, and how expansive eugenicists believed their program to be. Here we have Helen Keller, writing in a prominent liberal magazine, advocating explicitly for infanticide–in the name of the race. For more information and the …
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