The Return of Punitive Sterilization Proposals

Current Attacks on Illegitimacy and the AFDC Program

Bibliographic Data

ID4774640
AuthorsJulius Paul (corresponding author)
Year1968
Volume3
Issue1
Pages77-106
Publication date1968-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLaw & Society Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0023-9216 • E-ISSN: 1540-5893
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3052796
OpenAlexW2315844772
LanguageEN
Citations received14

Punitive sterilization has once again returned to the lexicon of American legislative debate. While there is no denying that the America of the social Darwinians and the extreme hereditarians of the late 19th and early 20th century has vanished from our midst, the residue still remains. The early eugenics literature was often punitive in tone, aimed at "purging" the nation of its so-called criminal, degenerate, and other "cacogenic" classes, not by physical extermination but rather through the use of surgical castration or sterilization. Notwithstanding the fact that the early hereditarians were concerned with the alleged inheritance of criminality and social degeneracy, the main thrust of the eugenic sterilizations laws which were passed (beginning with Indiana in 1907) was the reduction and eventual elimination of insanity and feeblemindedness. These laws were clearly gauged to prevent America from being deluged or "inundated" by those socially undesirable classes or categories of persons that the state legislators of that period believed to be the most serious threat to the stability, even the survival, of the nation as they conceived it. The eugenic character of these early laws was often compromised by the inclusion of habitual criminals, rapists, sexual perverts, social degenerates, and other groups where the intent of the legislation was clearly punitive

Demographic economics · Economics · Keynesian economics · Political science · Punitive damages · Sterilization (economics · Feminist Theory and Gender Studies · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Law

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