Buck v. Bell

There had been various state and local efforts to pass mandatory sterilization bills — that is, laws that allow for the involuntary sterilization of certain prison inmates, hospital patients, ex-convicts, and mentally ill people. Indiana passed the first such law in 1907, and by 1932, 30 states have similar statutes on the books.

In 1924, Virginia passes a bill decreeing that institutionalized persons "inflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy" — conditions whose definitions are subject to considerable interpretation — can be sterilized against their will. Shortly afterward, the case of Carrie Buck is brought to test the statute. Buck had become pregnant after being raped by her foster parent's nephew and had then been committed to a mental institution on grounds of "immorality," a classification considered indicative of mental impairment. There, she was scheduled for sterilization.

Buck v. Bell goes all the way to the Supreme Court, where, in 1927, it is decided that the state does have the right to sterilize "probable potential parent[s] of socially inadequate offspring" and that Carrie Buck meets this criteria. The court's eight-to-one decision seals the fate of the poor, the incarcerated, and the institutionalized, all of whom have long been targets for surgical intervention. Before 1927, 47% of these procedures were done on women and girls. Over the next five years, the number increases to 67%. Between 1907 and World War II, 70,000 people are known to have been sterilized.

Poster for New York State Department of Health promoting proper treatment for syphilis for pregnant women, showing woman holding a baby. Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project, [between 1936 and 1939]