Buck v. Bell
Ross Pomeroy writes at RealClearScience about the infamous case of Buck v. Bell:
By the 1920s, eugenics was a genuine movement. As author and pediatrician Paul Offit describes in his new book, Pandora's Lab, Hundreds of colleges taught courses on the subject. It appeared in the majority of high school biology textbooks. There were fairs, meetings, and advertisements. The nationwide campaign convinced citizens and legislatures – forty-one states eventually prohibited marriage by those deemed feeble-minded or insane, and a few states even instituted policies of forced sterilization.
It was Virginia's law on forced sterilization that eventually reached the Supreme Court. The case, Buck v. Bell, argued ninety years ago, pitted the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded against one of its patients, Carrie Buck. The colony's superintendent, Dr. John Hendren Bell, wanted to sterilize Buck. His lawyers argued that Buck was a "genetic threat" to society. Buck's lawyer argued that she had a right to procreate which was being violated.
The Court sided 8 - 1 with the colony. The majority opinion, penned by the legendary justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, seems like it originated from a dystopian work of science fiction:
"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, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence... The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes."
"Carrie Buck is a feeble-minded white woman. She is the daughter of a feeble-minded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feeble-minded child. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crimes, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind... Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
Unfortunately, Holmes' opinion was very real and far-reaching. Not only did it result in the sterilization of Buck, it also led to the sterilization of as many as 70,000 people over the next fifty years. Equally clear evidence of the decision's warped sense of justice came during the Nuremburg Trials after World War II, when Nazi war criminals utilized it for their defense.
