Buck versus Bell Essay example -- Supreme Court Sterilization Essays

Buck versus Bell During the early twentieth century, the United States was enduring pregnant social and economic changes due to its transformation into a commercial and industrial world power. As the need for labor escalated within many urban areas, millions of Europeans emigrated from grey and Eastern Europe with the hopes of capitalizing upon these employment opportunities and attaining a better life. Simultaneously, many African-Americans migrated from the rural South into major cities, bearing the same intentions as those of the European immigrants. The presence of these nonage groups generated both racial and class fears within white middle and upper class Americans. The fervent ethnocentrism resulting from these fears, coupled with the Social Darwinist concepts of Herbert Spencer, would ultimately spur the American eugenics movement. Originating from the theories of Sir Francis Galton, the cousin-german of Charles Darwin, eugenics is the study of human heredity and genetic pr inciples for the purposes of improving the human race by limiting the proliferation of defective gene pools. Charles Davenport, the founding father of the American eugenics movement, was unmatchable of many elite Americans advocating for the incorporation of the ideals of this new science into society. The work of Davenport, which became known as eugenic principles, would not only have an impact on reality education, but a legal impact as well. By 1931, thirty state legislatures had passed involuntary sterilization laws that targeted defective strains within the general population, such as the blind, the deaf, the poor, and the feebleminded. Virginia, one of these states, held the position that involuntary sterilization would not only benefit the overal... ... People With Mental Disabilities Issues, Perspectives, and Cases (Westport CT Auburn House, 1995) 22.Works CitedBuck v. Bell. 274 U.S. 200, 205. No. 292 US Supreme Ct. 1927.Brantlinger, Ellen. Sterilization of People With Mental Disabilities Issues, Perspectives, and Cases. Westport CT Auburn House, 1995.Larson, Edward. Sex, Race, and Science Eugenics in the Deep South. Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.Macklin, Ruth. Mental Retardation and Sterilization A Problem of expertness and Paternalism. New York Plenum Press, 1981.Reilly, Phillip. The Surgical Solution A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States. Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.Shapiro, Thomas. Population Control Politics Women, Sterilization, and Reproductive Choice. Philadelphia Temple University Press, 1985.