Start Date
4-20-2017 10:30 AM
End Date
4-20-2017 11:45 AM
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Subjects
Involuntary sterilization -- United States -- History, Human Betterment Foundation, Eugenics -- United States -- History, Eugenics -- Popular works -- Criticism and interpretation
Abstract
The sterilizations of over 200,000 Americans is an often forgotten part of Western science’s not so distant past. Sterilization was proposed as a eugenic solution to combat societal issues attributed to genetics, such as criminality, pauperism, and feeblemindedness. Sterilization laws began to be implemented in several American states. However, it was not until the 1920s, that eugenics advocates E.S. Gosney and Paul Popenoe created the Human Betterment Foundation to introduce the complex conjecture of eugenics to the layman. Drawing upon the original publications by the HBF, Sterilization for Human Benefit and “Human Sterilization Today”, and contemporary reviews, this paper explores the extent to which the documents impacted the sterilization movement. This paper posits that Gosney and Popenoe’s publications, Sterilization for Human Benefit and “Human Sterilization Today,” propelled widespread implementation of sterilization as a eugenic solution, nationally and globally, by generating credible and accessible analysis of California’s sterilization successes and eugenic propaganda that destigmatized human sterilization.
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Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/20239
The Escalation of Human Sterilization in the 1900s
The sterilizations of over 200,000 Americans is an often forgotten part of Western science’s not so distant past. Sterilization was proposed as a eugenic solution to combat societal issues attributed to genetics, such as criminality, pauperism, and feeblemindedness. Sterilization laws began to be implemented in several American states. However, it was not until the 1920s, that eugenics advocates E.S. Gosney and Paul Popenoe created the Human Betterment Foundation to introduce the complex conjecture of eugenics to the layman. Drawing upon the original publications by the HBF, Sterilization for Human Benefit and “Human Sterilization Today”, and contemporary reviews, this paper explores the extent to which the documents impacted the sterilization movement. This paper posits that Gosney and Popenoe’s publications, Sterilization for Human Benefit and “Human Sterilization Today,” propelled widespread implementation of sterilization as a eugenic solution, nationally and globally, by generating credible and accessible analysis of California’s sterilization successes and eugenic propaganda that destigmatized human sterilization.