Eugenics

Eugenics is the practice, and philosophical underpinning of such practice, of seeking to improve the human population by promoting the reproduction of people with desired traits and reducing or eliminating the reproduction of those with undesirable traits. Eugenics is especially associated with the sterilization or execution of those with undesirable traits, in an attempt to reduce the prevalence of those traits in the gene pool, and it shared many of the same philosophical foundations with miscegenation laws of the 19th and 20th century, which sought to prevent the introduction of nonwhite genes into a “white” gene pool. The Holocaust made outright support of eugenics, especially by that name, politically untenable (though eugenics policies were still proposed in the United States and Europe, under cover of euphemism, and Sweden continued a eugenics program until 1975), but in the 19th century, advocates talked openly of castrating and otherwise sterilizing the mentally ill and physically disabled.

Various means of reducing the contribution of the undesirable to the gene pool were adopted: sterilization (sometimes but not always compulsory), segregation (including racial segregation and the practice of segregating one population from another, such as by keeping the mentally ill in homes and reducing their interaction with the general population), selecting certain populations for birth control instruction and free birth control supplies, and marriage restrictions. Because understanding of genetics was still developing, some of the targeted groups were targeted for traits that were not actually genetic in origin; this was true for eugenics policies targeting the deaf, for instance. In other cases, eugenics was a flimsy justification for actions motivated by other desires. Not all eugenics advocates focused on, or supported, sterilization or other means of “negative eugenics,” and the field was studied as an academic discipline at numerous universities. Had it not been used as the justification for the racial policies of Nazi Germany, the sterilization of mental patients, and other horrors, it might have developed into a legitimate field, the precursor of gene therapy (and raising the same ethical questions as genetic engineering and stem cell research).

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“Crying Hands” by David Bloch

Source: Gallaudet University Archives

Alexander Graham Bell concluded based on his study of the deaf community in Martha’s Vineyard that at least some forms of deafness were hereditary. While doing significant work with the deaf, he also suggested that the future deaf population could be reduced if deaf people did not intermarry. In an 1884 paper, he warned against the possibility of a “deaf race” as the result of the growing sophistication of the deaf community, in which deaf people were socializing with one another in Deaf clubs and associations, and consequently marrying each other and having children; he also considered sign language a “foreign language,” and as an opponent of immigration, was no advocate of foreignness.

Early American eugenics initiatives were largely aimed at epileptics and mental retardation, with Connecticut passing the first eugenic marriage laws in 1896 and Indiana becoming the first of thirty states, in 1907, to pass compulsory sterilization laws, in this case aimed at the mentally retarded. Immigration restrictions were adopted for the same reason, and when Planned Parenthood was founded, one of Margaret Sanger’s motivations was a reduced birth rate for poor immigrants, in order to limit their share of the American population.

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