Lynda

There have been various discussions lately about the U.S.'s sterilization
policy, particularly since the son of the man that pushed this policy was
resently declared president by the supreme court. Quite frequently the
response on lists has been "prove it" and when references have been given,
doubt continued.

Well, here is a state that is admitting that eurgenics was practiced.

Lynda
----- Original Message -----
>
> To view the entire article, go to
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19404-2001Feb2.html
>
> Va. House Voices Regret for Eugenics
>
> RICHMOND, Feb. 2 -- The House of Delegates voted today to express regret
> for Virginia' s policies of selective breeding during the 20th century,
> including the forced sterilization of 8,000 mostly poor, uneducated men
and
> women for supposed hereditary "defects."
>
> The 85 to 10 vote came after some of the hundreds of victims of
Virginia's
> forced sterilizations spoke out in television and newspaper reports
> spotlighting the state's leading role in a movement called eugenics. It
> sought to use government power to breed away such chronic social problems
as
> poverty, immorality, crime, addiction and ignorance.
>
> The resolution, which requires the approval of the state Senate, would
make
> Virginia the first among the 30 states that once had forced sterilization
> laws to formally express regret. The resolution passed today would declare
> "profound regret over the Commonwealth's role in the eugenics movement in
> this country and the incalculable human damage done in the name of
eugenics."
>
> It was a remarkable moment for a state whose leaders prefer to talk
about
> Virginia's role in helping found the nation -- and lately, its high-tech
> dominance -- instead of its prominent role in such historic evils as
slavery,
> segregation and forced sterilizations.
>
> Even today's resolution was changed to remove the word "apology." Some
> House members, including Del. Harry J. Parrish (R-Manassas), wanted to go
> further and remove the passage expressing regret, though he called the
> resolution's intentions admirable.
>
> "We're offering regrets for something that was done legally," Parrish
said.
> "It's improper for us to now second-guess the General Assembly then."
>
> Virginia officials and academics had a leading role in the American
> eugenics movement, which paralleled the Nazi drive for a super race. The
U.S.
> Holocaust Memorial Museum has requested documents from Virginia as it
> prepares an exhibit in 2004 tentatively called "Nazi Race Science."
>
> The eugenics movement began in the United States at the beginning of the
> 20th century. Indiana passed the nation's first sterilization law based on
> eugenics in 1907. Over the next seven decades, government hospitals
> sterilized 60,000 men and women. Only California, with 20,000
sterilizations,
> had more than Virginia.
>
> Virginia passed its Eugenical Sterilization Act in 1924 -- which
targeted
> "socially inadequate offspring" -- on the same day it passed the Racial
> Integrity Act prohibiting marriage between whites and nonwhites. Both grew
> out of eugenicists' drive for what they deemed a superior stock of humans.
>
> "Virginia eugenicists saw themselves as the vanguard of the future,"
said
> Gregory M. Dorr, a University of Alabama historian who studied Virginia's
> role in the eugenics movement.
>
> More than half of Virginia's sterilizations happened at the Virginia
Colony
> for Epileptics and the Feebleminded in Lynchburg, though others happened
at
> hospitals in Petersburg, Staunton, Williamsburg and Marion. Most victims
were
> white, but some African Americans and Indians also were sterilized,
> historians say.
>
> "People were sterilized not because they were feebleminded, but because
> they were 'poor white trash,' " said Steven Selden, a University of
Maryland
> professor who wrote a book on eugenics that was published last year.
>
> The U.S. Supreme Court upheld forced sterilization at the Lynchburg
> facility in a case involving a woman named Carrie Buck, who had become
> pregnant as a teenager. In allowing her sterilization in 1927, Chief
Justice
> Oliver Wendell Holmes assessed Buck, her mother and her daughter, then
> declared, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
>
> A surge of sterilizations followed nationwide, tapering off when Nazi
> brutality in World War II turned public opinion against eugenics.
>
> "The Nazis took great comfort from the eugenics movement in America,"
said
> Paul A. Lombardo, a University of Virginia historian.
>
> Forced sterilizations continued on a very limited basis in Virginia
until
> 1979. Today's resolution calls on society to "reject absolutely any such
> abhorrent pseudo-scientific movement in the future."
>
> State lawmakers urged particular vigilance at a time when scientists are
> decoding the human genome and making possible far more profound
manipulation > of genetic traits than envisioned by eugenicists during the
last century.
>
> "We're tampering with DNA, with genes. And scientifically we're greatly
> advanced, but morally we have a problem," warned Del. Mitchell Van Yahres
> (D-Charlottesville), the resolution's sponsor. "We don't want to go down
that
> road again."
>
> A key supporter of House Resolution 607 was the chamber's top
Republican,
> Speaker S. Vance Wilkins Jr., a veteran lawmaker from the small town of
> Amherst, just north of Lynchburg. He helped the resolution get past a
> reluctant committee this week.
>
> "It's the right thing to do," said Wilkins before today's session.
"They're
> facts of history . . . and we shouldn't try to cover them up."
>
> Claude A. Allen, Virginia's secretary of health and human resources,
said
> Gov. James S. Gilmore III's administration had taken no position on the
> eugenics resolution and is seeking a legal opinion on the threat of civil
> liability for the state before taking a stand. He said forced
sterilizations
> "clearly were atrocious."
>
> One Virginia victim of sterilization was Jesse Meadows. He was sent to
the
> Lynchburg colony in 1940 after his mother died and his father remarried.
> Meadows was just 17. More than 60 years later, he can remember the names
and
> faces of the two doctors and the nurse who performed a vasectomy against
his
> will.
>
> Meadows married after leaving the facility and made a living as a house
> painter, but he could never have children. Now 78, he lives alone in
> Lynchburg, in the same neighborhood as several others who were sterilized
at
> the colony there.
>
> "They ought to apologize for doing something like that, treating them like
> animals," Meadows said. "They ruined a lot of people's lives."