Eugenics+and+People+with+Disabilities

=Eugenics and People with Disabilities=

The Language
toc The language used to describe disability has changed many times throughout history. In Eugenics legislation, the language of feeblemindedness and moral imbecility is fairly consistent. In the lexocon, feebleminded is a creation of H.H. Goddard, the USian psychologist who popularized the use of the Sanford-Binet Intelligence Quotient (IQ) Scale in the US.


 * Goddard classified intellectual disability as such: **

False Reporting in Research[[image:crossculturalsexuality/Kallikak.jpg width="371" height="556" align="right"]]
Aside from providing the language used in much of the Eugenics legislation, Goddard also contributed the landmark publication "//The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness"// in 1912. Goddard's book traced the lineage of Deborah Kallikak (a psudenym from the Greek "kalos" meaning beautiful and "kakos" meaning bad), a resident of the Vineland Training School. In his research, Goddard found that the progenitor of the Kallikak family, Martin, had spawned two lines--one with a barmaid (Deborah's family) and one with a "goodly Quaker woman."

Members of the family on the barmaid side, reported by Goddard, were feebleminded, degenerate, petty criminals, and moral imbeciles.

From the Quaker, legitimate, side came doctors, lawyers, and other "highest type" citizens.

From this research, and others like it, such as the Jukes (Appalachia) and the Hill Folk (western MA), the myth of hereditary causes for societal ills became pervasive throughout the US.

In 1985, A collaboration between David J. Smith, Steven Selden, and Stephen J. Gould discredits Goddard's study of the Kallikaks by finding original copies of the study to contain manipulated images of the family members and by interviewing the surviving members of the clan.

From an examination of Deborah Kallikak's academic records from the Vineland Training School, Smith deduces that it was likely that she had what is now considered a learning disability rather than IDD.

"[It is] not the slums which make slum people, but slum people who make slums. . . . [and] if you want artists, poets, philosophers, skilled workmen and great statesmen, you will have to give nature a chance and breed them." Albert E Wiggam

=Legal Precedents=

Haynes v. Lapeer & Smith v. Wayne Probate Judge
Michigan Bar Journal. January, 2009. Supplement from the Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society: The Verdict of History. The History of Michigan Jurisprudence through Its Significant Supreme Court Cases.
 * HAYNES v LAPEER CIRCUIT JUDGE EUGENICS IN MICHIGAN, 88-JAN Mich. B.J. S9**


 * Michigan, 1918 & 1925 **

In Haynes v. Lapeer, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled compulsory sterilization unconstitutional in Michigan, laying to rest, temporarily, a string of legislative offerings ranging from the castration of criminals to the electrocution of "feebleminded" infants.

In 1923, Michigan enacted a new version of the compulsory sterilization law. Under this law, Willie Smith, who had been adjudicated "feebleminded" by the Wayne County Probate Court, was slated to be sterilized after the court granted a petition put forth by his parents. Smith appealed the petition, but his sterilization was upheld by the courts.

This trend of states resisting sterilization legislation during the first wave of eugenics, but reversing that attitude during the second was common in many states, and was eventually supported by the US Supreme Court.

Buck v. Bell

 * Virginia (Supreme Court), 1927 **

In 1924, the Commonwealth of Virginia passed two landmark pieces of legislation: SB 281, "**An ACT to provide for the sexual sterilization of inmates of State institutions in certain cases**" and SB 219, entitled "**The Racial Integrity Act**." The Racial Integrity Act used the [|one-drop rule] to categorize all infants into the two categories--white or colored. SB 281, Virginia's version of the Laughlin Model Sterilization Law, eventually led to the compulsory sterilization of ~7200 Virginians.

Carrie Buck, a young woman living at the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, was slated for to be the first sterilized under Virginia's new Eugenics law. Buck was chosen specifically because she seemed to personify the Social Darwinist theory that feeblemindedness was genetic and could be minimized or negated by selective breeding. Carrie Buck, who had been born of parents at the colony and had given birth to a daughter while living there, was the test case.


 * [[image:crossculturalsexuality/242d80b27f2a7c85b4a7de4abd613140.wix_mp_1024.jpg width="305" height="250" align="center" caption="Carrie with her mother, Emma Buck."]] || [[image:crossculturalsexuality/16_Alice-Dobbs-and-Vivian-Buck.jpg width="163" height="240" align="center" caption="Carrie's daughter, Vivian, with her caretaker."]] || [[image:crossculturalsexuality/carriebuckb.jpg width="340" height="250" align="center" caption="Heredity chart for the Buck family"]] ||
 * [[image:crossculturalsexuality/buck-husband-2nd.jpg width="271" height="303" align="center" caption="Carrie and her second husband, Charlie Deatmore."]] || [[image:crossculturalsexuality/Carrie-husband1.jpg width="199" height="324" align="center" caption="Carrie with her first husband, William Eagle."]] || [[image:crossculturalsexuality/carrie_buck_detamore.jpg width="249" height="333" align="center" caption="Carrie, age 75"]] ||

In his majority opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind."

Carrie and her sister, Doris, were both forcibly sterilized. Doris did not find out the nature of her operation until much later. Carrie Buck Passed away in early 1983.

Buck v. Bell has never been repealed.

Skinner v. Oklahoma

 * Oklahoma, 1942**

//[to be summarized in the future]//

Stump v. Sparkman
**Indiana, 1978**

In 1971, Linda Spitler was given a tubal ligation, having been told she was having her appendix removed. Spitler's mother had petitioned through the courts to have her daughter, whom she characterized as being "somewhat retarded." Judge Harold D. Stump signed an ex parte motion, granting sterilization of the 15-year-old young woman.

In 1975, married and trying to conceive, Linda and her husband, Leo Sparkman, consulted with a fertility specialist. They found out from that doctor that Linda had not had her appendix out, but rather was sterilized in 1971.

Linda filed a suit against Judge Stump, but the IA District Court of Appeals found that Stump was covered by judicial immunity. In his majority opinion, Justice Byron White said, "//A judge is absolutely immune from liability for his judicial acts even if his exercise of authority is flawed by the commission of grave procedural errors. The Court made this point clear in Bradley, 13 Wall., at 357, where it stated "[T]his erroneous matter in which [the court's] jurisdiction was exercised, however it may have affected the validity of the act, did not make it any less a judicial act; nor did it render the defendant liable to answer in damages for it at the suit of the plaintiff, as though the court had proceeded without having any jurisdiction whatever...//"

Poe v. the Lynchburg Training School and Hospital

 * Virgina, 1980 **

In the Poe v. Lynchburg Training School and Hospital trial, a class of complainants claimed that, under the 1924 SB 281 they had been sterilized without notification or consent and based on diagnoses that were inaccurate. The suit alleged that even under the provisions of SB281, procedural conditions required that the person to be sterilized be notified of the nature of the surgery. Further, it said that court appointed guardians had failed to protect their wards and appointed attorneys had failed to represent their interests.

In preliminary hearings, the state tried to have the suit dismissed, citing the constitutionality of sterilization as per the Buck v. Bell decision. The Western District of Virginia Court ruled that the sterilizations had been legal when they were performed, but there was cause to believe that correct procedure had not always been followed. The plaintiffs settled with the state out of court, with the state agreeing to attempt to locate all living persons who had been sterilized, to inform them of the consequences of the operation, and to provide them with counseling and medical treatment. No monetary reparations were made.

The Poe v. Lynchburg Training School and Hospital case had a tremendous impact on the treatment of victims nationwide.