Quick! Name the first nation to force sterilization for eugenics purposes

[jobycom]

That's right. US!

"The first country to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of eugenics was the United States. The principal targets of the American program were the mentally retarded and the mentally ill, but also targeted under many state laws were the deaf, the blind, the epileptic and the physically deformed. Native Americans were sterilized against their will in many states, often without their knowledge, while they were in a hospital for some other reason (e.g. after giving birth). Some sterilizations also took place in prisons and other penal institutions, targeting criminality, but they were in the relative minority. In the end, over 65,000 individuals were sterilized in 33 states under state compulsory sterilization programs in the United States."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization



"In 1924, a teenager in Charlottesville, Virginia, Carrie Buck, was chosen as the first person to be sterilized under the state’s newly adopted eugenics law. Ms. Buck, whose mother resided in an asylum for the epileptic and feebleminded, was accused of having a child out of wedlock. She was diagnosed as promiscuous and the probable parent of "socially inadequate offspring."

A lawsuit challenging the sterilization was filed on Ms. Buck’s behalf. Harry Laughlin, having never met Ms. Buck, wrote a deposition condemning her and her 7-month old child, Vivian. Scientists from the ERO attended the trial to testify to Vivian’s "backwardness." In the end, the judge ruled in the state’s favor.

On appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case Buck v. Bell (1927), ruled 8-1 to uphold the sterilization of Ms. Buck on the grounds she was a "deficient" mother. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., an adherent of eugenics, declared "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

According to University of Virginia historian Paul Lombardo, evidence was later revealed that supports the claim that Carrie Buck’s child was not the result of promiscuity; Ms. Buck had been raped by the nephew of her foster parents. School records also indicate her daughter Vivian was a solid student and had made the honor roll at age 7. A year later, Vivian died of an intestinal illness."

http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/in_our_opinion/un_sterile_past.html

[Mrs. Overall]

1. Wasn't George W. Bush's Grandfather somehow involved

in funding eugenics?

[TahitiNut]

2. Yep. Ol' Prescott was an advocate of eugenics.

It was a very popular stance among the fascists in the 20s.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3255.htm

[ellenfl]

4. he wouldn't be now, with his grandson exhibiting

anti-social behavior.

ellen fl

[TahitiNut]

6. Such people NEVER apply the same 'standards' to themselves.

Never. Prohibit abortion? Not for the entitled elite! It's "rights for sale" for only those who can afford them or who're 'family' of the wealthy. Eugenics? The progeny of the wealthy are inherently superior. It makes absolutely no difference that they're psychopaths. After all, it's an 'idiosyncrasy' if you're wealthy and and crazy if you're poor.

[Lenore]

5. Anything to redeem his family! Jukes Anyone??

I have a thing for old Scientific American journals, I purchase them on ebay and read them from cover to cover (minus the many engine, piston and pumps type articles). Just a few months ago, as I was reading my June-Dec 1878 volume, I ran across an interesting article (well "proclamation" might be more accurate, LOL) concerning "The Jukes".

According to the article, The Jukes were a family of degenerates who produced feeble minded, anti social (or in the case of the promiscuous girls that would be "to social" LOL), drunken, dirty, criminally inclined types of ::mencia voice:: Dee Dee Deeees!

The study was done by Dugdale and is titled "The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity" (1877)

Later, in 1911, the true identities (family names) of those in Dugdales study were discovered. Another study was undertaken, titled "The Jukes in 1915". It was printed by the Eugenics Records Office. http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/lib/docs/759.htm

Guess what prominent family name is one of those who make up the clan of "degenerates" upon which this study was based?

If you guessed "BUSH" then give yourself a prize!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22The+Jukes%22+Dugdale+Bush

[TahitiNut]

7. It's the 'science' of livestock breeders and agriculturalists.

We had a society that was over 80% agricultural. Livestock breeding, dog breeding, race horse breeding, plant hybrids, and other applied science of the day was touted in a 'pop' sense to human beings, without anything but superficial (at most) consideration for the far more complex question of aptitude and 'worth' as applied to human beings or the enormously more diverse and complex breeding in human cultures. This same kind of 'thinking' pervades human cultures today - ALWAYS in a self-serving way.

[seemslikeadream]

3. War Against The Weak

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/



How American corporate philanthropies launched a national campaign of ethnic cleansing in the United States, helped found and fund the Nazi eugenics of Hitler and Mengele — and then created the modern movement of "human genetics."


In the first three decades of the 20th Century, American corporate philanthropy combined with prestigious academic fraud to create the pseudoscience eugenics that institutionalized race politics as national policy. The goal: create a superior, white, Nordic race and obliterate the viability of everyone else.

How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to legislated segregation and sterilization programs. The victims: poor people, brown-haired white people, African Americans, immigrants, Indians, Eastern European Jews, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the superior genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists. The main culprits were the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune, in league with America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, operating out of a complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. The eugenic network worked in tandem with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the State Department and numerous state governmental bodies and legislatures throughout the country, and even the U.S. Supreme Court. They were all bent on breeding a eugenically superior race, just as agronomists would breed better strains of corn. The plan was to wipe away the reproductive capability of the weak and inferior.

Ultimately, 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized — legally and extra-legally. Many never discovered the truth until decades later. Those who actively supported eugenics include America's most progressive figures: Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

American eugenic crusades proliferated into a worldwide campaign, and in the 1920s came to the attention of Adolf Hitler. Under the Nazis, American eugenic principles were applied without restraint, careening out of control into the Reich's infamous genocide. During the pre-War years, American eugenicists openly supported Germany's program. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and the work of its central racial scientists. Once WWII began, Nazi eugenics turned from mass sterilization and euthanasia to genocidal murder. One of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute doctors in the program financed by the Rockefeller Foundation was Josef Mengele who continued his research in Auschwitz, making daily eugenic reports on twins. After the world recoiled from Nazi atrocities, the American eugenics movement — its institutions and leading scientists — renamed and regrouped under the banner of an enlightened science called human genetics.

[kskiska]

8. Barbara Bush is all for it.

(snip)

At the hospital, she reads a story to some young patients and makes them laugh. But back in the van for the drive home to Kennebunkport, she says that the book she was given to read was without educational value and that the hospital administrators were obsequious—a quality she dislikes. “They thanked me three times, when once would have been fine.” Then, softening abruptly, she thinks back to that morning’s visit to the hospital’s neonatal ICU, where she saw premature infants in incubators. “Where do you draw the line” in saving those who would not have survived in another time? “What kind of quality of life? It’s the same thing with old age. Are we doing the right thing?” Then again she says of one severely impaired newborn, “But, they say she’s brought great happiness ...”

more…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3225744/site/newsweek/