In 2001 Peter Augustine Lawler observed, “We live in a time when eugenics has replaced socialism at the center of utopian speculation” (Lawler 68).  His statement seems rather innocuous; however, eugenics poses many problems in the social psyche.  In its infancy, eugenics denotatively meant ‘good stock or race’ (Clarke 103).  As social practice in the early 20^th century, eugenics found many supporters synthesizing genetic principles from Gregor Mendel: biometrics from Francis Galton; and theories on evolution from Charles Darwin to create a taboo around ‘eugenics’ as a linguistic signifier.  In its most extreme form, eugenic theory resulted in Nazi Germany’s extermination of an estimated 5 to 6 million European Jews. 

Due to the extreme actions of Nazi Germany, eugenics- the idea- seems untenable in modern society.  The term does not have to assume a value judgment though.  Andrea Tone defined “eugenics as…the supposition that behavioral, physical, intellectual traits are inherited” in her 1996 book Controlling Reproduction: An American History (Pierson 3).  Due to advances in biotechnology, eugenic practices now fill the social sphere with the hidden caveat that people don’t use the word ‘eugenics.’  As we live on the cusp of gaining the ability to manipulate genetic matter, we also find ourselves confronted with redefining human nature and what it means to be human.  “’Human nature’ no longer describes a necessary principle of human limitation” (Lawler 68). 

Peter Lawler posits, that advances in biotechnology force a reclassification of defects once exclusively assigned as sinful and only remedied by God’s grace; to an area of science capable of correcting the defect at a human level.  Biotechnology embraces eugenic theory, “in the sense that people will live longer and healthier lives” as the result of advances in biomedicine (Lawler 72).  In this era of biomedical optimization at a molecular level, Americans especially, have two options when reproducing.  We have the option of choosing quality of life for our offspring or we can choose the quantity of offspring we produce.

Despite what eugenically receives a positive portrayal in the form of molecular biology, “there is [still] the widespread fear of the gradual reappearance of eugenic practices and eugenic approaches to social ‘deviancy’” (Marks 334).  Eugenics never left the American landscape, even after the results of the World War II “and the elevation of eugenics to a brutally racist state policy” (Marks 333).  The reason for this seems clear.  In practice, eugenics constitutes acts of intervention and control over reproductive systems without the intent to “eliminate unwanted characteristics from the human gene pool” (Clarke 103).  Hitler claimed to gain his inspiration from American eugenic social policies which resulted in the death of 6 million Jews (Hasian 131).  However, eugenics proliferates in our country today and opponents can not easily disregard the benefits or widespread acceptance of eugenic practices.

The sentiment fueling eugenic sympathizers still surges today in terms and practices that don’t mention eugenics, yet still carry the potential to be as destructive as anything in the past.  For this reason, we must first understand eugenics before we can determine its worth.  In an attempt to arrive at a fuller understanding of eugenics I will examine it from a historical U.S. perspective.  Eugenics can be traced in America back to the late 19^th and early 20^th century.  The comments of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in his majority ruling on Buck v. Bell still largely embody the legal legitimacy of eugenics in this country. Margaret Sanger, on the other hand, exemplifies the dualistic nature surrounding eugenics.  Finally, I will look at some clear examples of how ‘acceptable’ eugenic practices continue today.  Through this exercise, I hope to test Lawler’s optimism when he said,

Perhaps we will be able to engage eugenics in the precise sense, improving what we have been given by nature according to our conception of human perfection.  Whatever success biotechnology has will be eugenics in some sense (Lawler 71).

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Indiana approved the first eugenics law in the United States in 1907.  In the early 1900’s, positive eugenic philosophy in America encouraged ‘old stock’ Americans to produce more offspring for the social good (Pierson 3).  However, negative eugenic practices surpassed the appeal of positive eugenics by the 1920’s.  By 1935, it’s estimated that about 20,000 forcible sterilizations took place in 30 U.S. states.  In 1907, there was a Eugenics Records Office that drafted model legislation defining “socially inadequate” people “as someone who fails chronically…as a useful member of organized social life” (Pierson 3).

The preceding quote illustrates one key reason why eugenics carries negative overtones today.  First, a subjective nature problematizes trying to determine the “socially inadequate” from the “useful member of organized social life.”  The questions: who chooses, what constitutes a healthy human being and what actions result from the conclusions; pose just as daunting a challenge today as it should have during the inception of eugenic practices in early 20^th century America.  However, “eugenics in its infancy was seen as a tool for societal and human improvement…a way to enlist science, biology, and genetics in service of healthy human reproduction” (Sanger 210).  Through this endeavor, on the surface,

Eugenic researchers tried to discover whence came our 300,000 insane and feeble-minded, our 160,000 blind or deaf, the 2,000,000 that are annually cared for by our hospitals and homes, our 80,000 prisoners, and the thousands of criminals that are not in prison, and our 100,000 paupers in almhouses and out (Hasian 125).

Two conditions of early 20^th century America exacerbated the inherent flaws within eugenic practice.  The first major impediment to an objective “bettering” of the human race- if such a practice is possible- was the rampant racism of the time.  “The eugenics movement…occurred in the context of widespread fear and nativism” (Sheldon 162).  For this reason, the original individuals singled out for eugenic social control consisted predominantly of immigrants from southern European countries.  Jews, Hispanics, Japanese and black Americans would later become demographics disproportionately subjected to eugenic policies.  The mainstream social conscience of early 20^th century America, from at least the end of World War I, focused on the concepts of “insidious domestic threat[s] of bad genes” as well as the popular concept of “race suicide” (Hasian 124).

The prevailing ideology of Social Darwinism delivered the term “unfit” as a key rhetorical tool in the eugenics debate.  ‘Unfit’ morphed into a code for those who shouldn’t breed.  Media inundated the American public with calls for eugenic social planning for the improvement of the human race.  Some newspapers contained historical discussions of how Rome fell when it lost its “older finer stock” (Hasian 124).  “By the 1920’s, eugenics arguments had become standard far in popular publications like Good Housekeeping and the Saturday Evening Post” (Stubblefield 165).  An editorial in the New York Times observed that genealogical tables show “nearly everything worthwhile in achievement and thought has been the creation of the hereditarily predestined few,” therefore eugenics supporters should agitate for a higher birthrate from the “select few” so that the “army of humanity” could be guided in the “right direction” (Hasian 124).

By 1909, California allowed sterilization to take place in state hospitals, homes for the feebleminded and prisons for therapeutic and punitive reasons.  In 1911, Iowa began targeting “criminals, idiots, feeble-minded, imbeciles, drunkards, drug fiends, epileptics, syphilitics, and moral and sexual perverts” for eugenic correction (Stubblefield 166).  Before 1920, almost half of the states in the Union prohibited marriage between, “imbeciles, epileptics, paupers, drunkards, criminals, and the feebleminded” (Sanger 212).

Assessing intelligence and mental states objectively presented the second social problem of early 20^th century America that seriously exposed flaws within eugenics practice.  Understanding feeblemindedness requires knowledge of “how people in positions of social power [construct] and [reconstruct] cognitive dis/ability over time to serve their own interests” (Stubblefield 163).  Early 20^th century America largely took for granted the inheritability of feeblemindedness.  In addition, people like Henry Goddard of the Eugenics Record office created gradient scales to measure feeblemindedness.  Goddard created the concept of “moron” (Hasian 126).  By his scale of intelligence measurement, a person tested with a mental age of two or younger was an idiot.  If the mental age was 3 to 7 years old, that person received the label of imbecile.  A moron had the mental intelligence of an 8 to 12 year old (M2.)  According to Goddard, a moron walked among the ‘fit’ populace:

capable of earning his living under favorable circumstances, but is incapable from mental defect existing from birth or from an early age (a) of competing on equal terms with his normal fellows or (b) of managing himself and his affairs with ordinary prudence” (Stubblefield 173).

           
In order to help identify morons, standardized tests developed.  In large part the developers of testing began with faulty assumptions that in turn led to faulty answers and bad social policy.  As an example of faulty assumptions, many scientists started with the assumption the white race was intellectually superior to all other races.  Therefore, if intelligence tests were to be believed accurate they needed to prove this assumption correct.  The cultural bias of the tests led to a significantly greater quantity of tainted-whites and non-whites diagnosed with feeblemindedness (Stubblefield 169).

           
Another example of assumptions public policy-makers started with involved the notion of “civilization-building skills” (Stubblefield 177).  In this regard, cognitive ability became defined as “the capacity to make contributions…to the building of civilization” (Stubblefield 163).  Not only did this assumption exclude Africans and Native Americans (because “pure-white,” European-descended Americans disregarded their cultural history,) but it also excluded women to a large extent.  These same men calculated white men were the builders of civilization, so in turn women were predominantly represented as victims of eugenic policy.  Henry Goddard argued many criminals, most alcoholics and prostitutes fit into the moron category.

We know what feeblemindedness is, and we have come to suspect all persons who are incapable of adapting themselves to their environment and living up to the conventions of society or acting sensibly, of being feebleminded (Stubblefield 175).

           
Eugenics policy found great support in American religion.  In the early 1920’s YMCAs took part in Keeping Fit Campaigns with messages such as, “Children get their basic qualities by inheritance.  If they are to be strong, keen, efficient and great there must be good blood back of them” (Hall 24).  As early as 1912 Walter Taylor Sumner, Dean of Protestant Episcopal Cathedral of Saint Peter and Paul in Chicago instituted his own system of inspection for prospective couples to ensure they were “normal physically and mentally” (Hall 24).  Contests formed- such as some funded by Andrew Carnegie- provided incentive for pastors to produce sermons on “better breeding.”  One award-winning sermon on eugenics asserted decent Christians have a responsibility to use “every help which science affords” to prevent the “feebleminded and wrong-willed” from “pouring their corrupt currents into the race stream” (Hall 24). 

The eugenics movement declined in the United States after 1935; however, as late as 1948 the Intercollegian journal published an article warning readers too many children were being born in houses that gave “them the worst start in every way” (Hall 26).  The actualization of eugenics social rhetoric manifested itself in repressive state action.  Men like Dr. Harry H. Laughlin developed social eugenic plans involving: segregation, incarceration, sterilization, castration and education in conjunction with other methods.  Laughlin extrapolated in his plan that after ten years, “nearly 15% of the entire population” would be sterilized.  Included in his 15% of the population are those who are “dull but harmless” but who “produce little leadership and much dependency” (Hasian 126). 

           
Forced sterilization of criminals and the mentally disabled continued in the United States until the 1960’s.  Between 1927 and 1957, about 60,000 “feebleminded” Americans underwent sterilization in state institutions (Stubblefield 162).  Several states debated compulsory sterilization legislation for welfare mothers in the 1950’s and the 1960’s (Pierson 5).  North Carolina sterilized thousands of people before their program ended in 1974 (Hall 25).  It wasn’t until 1965 that any state voluntarily repealed its sterilization law and some states still have sterilization laws on the books (Hasian 131).       

           
The legal implications in the beginning did not seem certain for several decades.  Between 1907 and 1915, thirteen states passed laws for eugenic sterilization of the mentally ill and the feebleminded.  A smaller amount of states added these laws to their books between 1915 and 1925 (Hasian 127).  However, no state sterilization law had been found constitutional within the American legal system until 1925 (Hasian 127).  Until that time, there was an atmosphere of timidity as proponents of sterilization characterized this period as an era of legal experimentation. 

           
Prior to 1925, 7 state sterilization laws had in fact been struck down through the judicial process (Hasian 127).  The courts determined four of the state laws denied equal protection under the law.  Three state laws violated due process.  Two were deemed cruel and unusual; and one was ruled unconstitutional as amounting to a bill of attainder.  In 1924, however, Dr. Albert Priddy- serving as the Superintendent of the Virginia State Epileptic Colony- petitioned for state approval to sterilize eighteen inmates.  The matter quickly ended up in court.  Over the course of two and a half years, the case worked its way up to the Supreme Court in May of 1927.

           
Dr. Priddy died before the case made it to the Supreme Court and he was replaced by Dr. J.H. Bell.  The case became known as Buck v. Bell for the inmate target of sterilization Carrie Buck.  Buck’s family sued Priddy resulting in Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes having the opportunity to observe, “three generations of imbeciles are enough” as he upheld state authority to force sterilization (Hasian 129).  This opinion was supported eight to one.  The Buck family petitioned the Supreme Court for a rehearing, but received a denial October of 1927.  Nine days later Carrie Buck was forcibly sterilized. (Hasian 127).

           
In his defense of the majority ruling, Judge Holmes remarked, “it would be strange if [the state] could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence” (Hasian 129).  In this vein of political rhetoric, Holmes made analogies between forcible sterilization and military conscription or childhood vaccination.  Continuing to subserve individual rights to community obligations, Holmes reiterated that Carrie Buck, “is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring,” and that “she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization” (Hasian 128).  Holmes also interjected his own personal beliefs regarding the inheritability of “insanity, imbecility, etc” (Hasian 128).  The lone dissenter in the case- Justice Pierce Butler- left no written record for the reasons he disagreed. 

           
Following the Buck v. Bell decision entire Virginia families living on welfare were sterilized.  Within six years after of the ruling, sterilization laws appeared in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Germany and Canada.  Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes did not just rule on a case, he took an opportunity to advance a cause.  “The problem with Holmes’ decision is that his strong opinions concerning eugenics are treated as if they are natural, necessary, and irrefutable truths” (Hasian 130).  As late as 1981, the Buck case has withstood a constitutional challenge in Poe v. Lynchburg Training School.

           
The arguments of early feminist Margaret Sanger illustrate a dichotomy of trying to create a better society while fully immersed in social bias and fear.  According to her grandson Alexander Sanger, his grandmother co-opted eugenics into her ideology as a way to gain mainstream support.  “Eugenics…was not only ‘scientific’ but also much more respectable than birth control…seen as the cause of radical, feminist lawbreakers” (Sanger 213).   It appears Margaret Sanger primarily sought eugenic social policy through the vehicle of self-prescribed birth control rather than forcible state doctrine. 

Before eugenists and others who are laboring for racial betterment can succeed, they must first clear the way for Birth Control.  Like advocates of Birth Control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race towards the elimination of the unfit.  Both are seeking a single end but they lay emphasis upon different methods (Sanger 213+).

           
Margaret Sanger argued for the right of women to be able to choose to have a child.  Recurring often in her messages is a belief that “the race” can best be assisted in this method because no child would be born unwanted.  Furthermore she exclaimed, “If this right be made absolutely hers, there will be an end to the bearing of children for whom the world has no room and no opportunities; there will be an end to the bearing of diseased and defective children” (Sanger 217).

           
She was a eugenicist in much of her work.  She recommended birth control if: the parents have transmissible diseases (like alcoholism;) the mother has heart or kidney disease; the parents already have a subnormal child; the interval between children should be less than 2 or 3 years; the parents are not 22 or 23 years of age; the child can’t be brought up with proper care; or the parents haven’t been married yet for 2 years (Sanger 214).  However, in addition to this, she called for the sterilization of the feebleminded, in conjunction with a ban on allowing ‘unfit’ in to America immigrants and the segregation of the fit and unfit.

           
Amidst her own socially flawed narrative, Margaret Sanger still saw some of the flaws in the eugenic social system.  She commented, “Official [eugenic] policy…for years has been inspired by a class-bias and sex bias” (Sanger 215).  She also struggled with deeming criminals unfit probably because of her own arrest record.

As for the sterilization of criminals, not merely must we know much more of heredity and genetics in general, but also acquire more certainty of the justice of our laws and the honesty of their administration before we can make rulings of fitness or unfitness merely upon the basis of a respect for law.  The fact that a man is for the purposes of society classed as a criminal tells me little as to his value, still less as to the possible value of his offspring (Sanger 216)

           
Margaret Sanger provides a good figure for the struggle we must come to terms with in our times.  In much of her rhetoric she speaks of the quality of life she is trying to promote.  Her desire for children to be wanted would not feel foreign in a debate on the topic today.  Before we forget though, Margaret Sanger lived in a different time where people were much clearer about their prejudices.  After World War II, Sanger sought support for the sterilization of those on public assistance (Hall 25).  Her grandson Alexander aptly highlights some of her bias in his article.

In her book Pivot of Civilization (1922), Sanger addresses “the cruelty of charity,” arguing against the “sinisterly fertile soil” that perpetuates “defectives, delinquents and dependents.”  Charity “encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the…dead weight of human waste” (Hall 25).

           
Eugenics is possibly more alive today, in practice if not rhetoric, than in Margaret Sanger’s time.  With the advent of breakthroughs in biotechnology many eugenic procedures occur outside of public view.  In the practice of invitro fertilization, a donor gives several eggs with the idea that some of them will be “surplus.”  After that, “normally what would happen would be that the eggs are…checked under the microscope, transferred to Petri dishes, labeled, fertilized…and placed in the incubator” (Franklin 173).  State law dictates two staff members must witness the incubation part of the process.  After about a day, the fertilized eggs go through an evaluation period by an embryologist.  These eggs are then graded for suitability.  The two highest-graded embryos are then transferred through a catheter into the woman patient (Franklin 173). 

           
Essential to this process is the grading which undoubtedly represents a form of eugenics.  If no eugenic philosophy were attached to this process the embryologist would simply select two eggs at random.  The process of inspection for quality constitutes a eugenic act; however, the word eugenics seldom appears in this discourse.  To a further extent, invitro fertilization also perpetuates future eugenic policies by supplying a surplus of embryos for research “in the aid of an improved human future” (Franklin 178).  The Abraham Center of Life in San Antonio has taken this practice one step further into the realm of consumerism.  The center sells made-to-order embryos screened for hair and eye color, intelligence, and other characteristics to prospective patients.  Opponents to this use of biotechnology use the term eugenics in a negative way to condemn the practice (“Doctors Condemn Baby Supermarket” 58).  

           
Studies completed in the 90’s, showed a somewhat mixed impression on eugenics within the United States.  In 1994, a survey found 54% of respondents said they would be interested in gene alteration to avoid transmitting disease (Singer, et al 637).  In 1996, nearly 80% of respondents supported legal abortion in case of fetal defect (Singer, et al 635).  In 1993, a study showed 65% of respondents agreeing that the risks of genetic engineering outweigh the benefits, while 45% said the risks had been exaggerated.  Currently “the possibilities for genetic therapy are…extremely limited, and it is still the case that pre-natal and pre-implantation genetic testing can only screen for a very small number of genetic abnormalities” (Marks 334).

           
However, the limitations of genetic engineering will not exist as a permanent condition.  Scientists work today to correlate certain kinds of criminal behavior with specific genes.  There are a significant number of people like Dr. Wasserman who believe,

Genetic and neurobiological research holds out the prospect of identifying individuals who may be predisposed to certain kinds of criminal conduct…and of treating some predispositions with drugs and unintrusive therapies…such research will enhance our ability to treat genetic predispositions pharmacologically (Shelden 166).

Some theories exist today alleging to correlate criminal behavior with biological factors like genes, but we still await substantive results.  Dr. Wasserman’s quote provides a clear example of how many more eugenic practices are available today due to advances in biotechnology than ever before.

           
According to Amy Laura Hall, “The science of reproductive control grew in the soil of eugenics” (Hall 27).  Today she contends eugenic advances coupled with birth control now call into question the number of children “responsible” parents produce.  In this context, social eugenic education programs proliferate.  Predominately poor, fertile women find themselves the target of these eugenic education campaigns. 

           
Hall describes a teen pregnancy prevention campaign in which pictures of girls of different ethnicity receive the labels: ‘cheap,’ ‘reject,’ ‘dirty’ and ‘nobody’ (Hall 27).  The goal of this campaign is the same eugenic goal the United States has pursued for a century or more.  Determine the ‘unfit,’ in this case welfare recipients, and then take action to change reproductive behavior in that part of the population.  Further contemporary evidence of social eugenic campaigns in the U.S. take the form of legislation mandating: family cap restrictions for welfare recipients, abstinence-only education and proposals for voluntary sterilization programs (Pierson 1).  In this argument, “the specter of the unplanned child born to be a burden on the social body, is still a powerful tool in the propaganda of cultural assimilation” (Hall 27). 

           
In 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act openly vowed to promote marriage as the most suitable environment for raising children (Pierson 2).  In 1992, Wisconsin received federal approval to impose a stringent one-child-per-family cap on AFDC benefits (Pierson 6).  Within the same decade, 35 states proposed legislation to offer welfare mothers cash incentives for implanting Norplant birth control.  Accompanied with legislative trends, an ever-growing ability to manipulate our biological building blocks at a molecular level suggests that eugenic practices remain an intrinsic part of our collective future.  Eugenics does not have to be a bad thing though.  In fact, at its core, eugenics is nothing more than a system for improving the human condition.  Consumerism may be the democratizing element eugenics practice morally requires, although the age old class warfare argument makes in that prospect problematic.  Social eugenics policies administered by a centralized authority, however, clearly hold the potential for many negative implications.  As long as eugenics remains in the hands of individuals the moral questions minimize.  When eugenics is centrally forced upon citizens by the government we take one step closer to Adolph.

Works Cited

Clarke, Julie. "Only Healthy Seed must be Sown." Australian Screen Education.3: 103.

"Doctors Condemn ‘Baby Supermarket’." Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity 20 (2007): 58-.

Franklin, Sarah.  “The Cyborg Embryo.”  Theory, Culture & Society 23 (2006): 167-.

Hall, Amy Laura. "Good Breeding: The Eugenics Temptation." Christian Century 121.2 (2004): 24.

Hasian Jr., Marouf, and Earl Croasmun. "The Legitimizing Function of Judicial Rhetoric in the Eugenics Controversy." Argumentation & Advocacy 28: 122.

Lawler, Peter Augustine. "The Utopian Eugenics of our Time." Perspectives on Political Science 32.2 (2003): 68.

Marks, John. "Biopolitics." Theory, Culture & Society 23.2 (2006): 333-5.

Pierson-Balik, Denise A. "Race, Class, and Gender in Punitive Welfare Reform: Social Eugenics and Welfare Policy." Race, Gender & Class 10.1 (2003): 11.

Sanger, Alexander. "Eugenics, Race, and Margaret Sanger Revisited: Reproductive Freedom for all?" Hypatia 22.2 (2007): 210.

Shelden, Randall G. "Gene Warfare." Social Justice 27.2 (2000): 162.

Singer, Eleanor, and Amy Corning. "The Polls—Trends: Genetic Testing, Engineering, and Therapy." Public opinion quarterly 62: 633.

Stubblefield, Anna. "Beyond the Pale": Tainted Whiteness, Cognitive Disability, and Eugenic Sterilization. Vol. 22. Indiana University Press.