Saving Babies and Sterilizing Mothers
Eugenics and Welfare Politics in the Interwar United States
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12425922 |
|---|---|
| Authors | M LADD-TAYLOR (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1997 |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 136-153 |
| Publication date | 1997-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Politics International Studies in Gender State & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1072-4745 • E-ISSN: 1468-2893 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/sp/4.1.136 |
| OpenAlex | W2136367620 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 15 |
This article compares government-funded maternal and child health services with compulsory sterilization, two “eugenic” policies that rationalized reproduction in the United States from the 1910s to the 1930s. As Progressive Era reforms (though they did not achieve their biggest legislative successes until after the First World War), both were based on the optimistic belief that society could be improved through science and “expert” intervention. Yet they rested on very different ideas about the state's responsibility for social welfare. A comparison of the “baby-saving” and sterilization movements highlights the welfare, as opposed to racial (or even eugenic), function of compulsory sterilization in the United States. The association between sterilization and reducing welfare costs was undoubtedly one reason that sterilization programs achieved more lasting success in the United States than government-funded public health services
Birth control · Currency · Economic growth · Economics · Environmental health · Eugenics · Family planning · Legislature · Political science · Politics · Population · Sterilization (economics · Welfare · European history and politics · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Medical History and Research · Medicine · Law · Public Administration
Inventing the Feeble Mind
Born This Way
Living and Working in the Institution, 1890–1920
Introduction
Sordid genealogies
Six Blacks from Home”
Between Borinquen and the Barrio
Each of Us is an Other”
Defining Dependency, Constructing Curability
From the footnotes to the headlines
The Question of Margaret Sanger
Sterilized in the Name of Public Health
Worthy Widows, Welfare Cheats
"Sterilizing the "Feeble-minded
Undesirable Britons
| Unique citing works | 15 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,52 |
| Citation span | 1997 - 2022 (26) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 15 |