Bell Vs Eugenics Research Paper

In the news article “Abortion: Every Woman’s Rights” Sharon Smith wrote an article about women’s rights to get abortions prior to the hearing of the Planned Parenthood v. Casey court case, “which threatened to severely restrict women access to abortion” (Smith). Women wanted reproductive control over their lives and felt that they were not equal to men no matter what advances they got at work and how high their level of education was. The women’s right movement wanted women to have the choice of abortion for all women, the rich and the poor. In the US, thirty- seven states did not provide

The Birth Control Movement of 1912 in the United States had a significant impact on Women’s Reproductive Rights. Women in the 1800s would frequently die or have complications during or after childbirth. Even if the woman would have died, they would still have a great amount of children. As the years progressed into the 1900s, the amount of children being born dropped. Because of this, birth control supplements were banned, forcing women to have a child that she was not prepared for or did not want to have in the first place.

Eisenstadt v. Baird was a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court. It ruled in favor of unmarried couples using birth control. Griswold v. Connecticut provided the right for secrecy under the marital bedroom only, but not birth control on unmarried couples. The ruling was based it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The argument was simple. The law which the defendants were penalized was a Massachusetts law of “Crimes Against Chastity”. Because it did not prosecuted marry couples due to buying, possessing, or using birth controls, it was discriminatory this law persecuted unmarried couples for it. Also it was ruled one of the defendants was exercising his freedom of speech, when distributing birth control. Therefore he could not be punished. Judge Brennan wrote in his opinion

In the state of Kansas between 1913 and 1961, Kansas practiced forced sterilization on mentally unstable women.” In addition to laws regarding sterilization, several marriage restriction bills were proposed in Kansas as part of the eugenics movement. Although they were never enacted as state law, marriage bills were proposed in 1915, 1917, and 1927, demonstrating the popularity of eugenic ideals.” (University of Vermont…Kansas). Dr. F. Hoyt Pilcher performed 150 sterilization in the Kansas State Home of the Feebleminded. Between the years 1913 and 1916 there were 1,274 women sterilized in Kansas. In the year 1921, sterilization in Kansas was at its all-time lowest. Between the years 1950 and 1963, sterilization in Kansas was at its peak. It is

I support the guidelines outlined by Kitcher for the use of genetic information because of their responsible and ethical nature. I believe that future generations will benefit as a direct consequence of these guidelines. I shall begin by defining eugenics as the study of human genetics to improve inherited characteristics of the human race by the means of controlled selective breeding.

Contrary to Kitcher’s minimalist model that constrains eugenic decisions only to avoid neurological diseases, Gregory Stock’s position in the debate defends maximalist eugenics in which individuals have total free eugenic decision-making, including enhancement, without any state coercion. He wants readers to accept and adopt such a position by arguing that genetic engineering such as selecting and alternating embryos is an inevitable future and human destiny (7, Stock, CC p.279). For example, if redesigning humans became commonplace, Stock reasons that parents would give their children endowments they desire but could not otherwise obtain and thus further expand life’s possibilities to the next generation (8, Stock, CC p.276). In this society, people’s genes would become an embodiment of their parents’ values and preferences. People would arguably want such endowments since they would view modifications as beneficial in

Later the Circuit Court had supported the law and filed for the sterilization of Carrie. In 1925 Carrie’s lawyer Irving Whitehead supported the decision of the Circuit Court at the Supreme Court of Appeals of the State of Virginia. So after all of this Dr. Priddy had passed away in which Dr. J.H. Bell had replaced him at the Colony. The case now became Buck v. Bell; Dr. Bell had sterilized Carrie in 1927 which then was released from the Colony (Buck v. Bell, 2006).

Future eugenicists can extort their knowledge and use it to their advantage. Eugenics is an interesting subject that is co-dependent on society; the future holds great possibilities for acknowledgment in this field of science.

Imbeciles by James Cohen talks about the eugenics movement that swept the nation during the early 1900s. Cohen talks about court cases within the subject, more specifically Buck v. Bell. Eugenics is defined as the science or belief of bettering the human population by regulating breeding of those deemed “unfit” to improve the genetic quality of humans. Cohen leads with describing well known figures that were in support of it to help demonstrate the so called mania that occurred across the United States. Such figures included John D. Rockefeller, Alexander Graham Bell and even Theodore Roosevelt.

Many Eugenics organization lobbied for laws to be passed that promoted the sterilization of the deviants of society. In some cases the women who were sterilized tried to fight against the crime committed against them. In Buck v. Bell, 1927 the court ruled in favor of the sterilization of Carrie Buck. She was said to have came from a feeble minded mother and she was called feeble minded as well by Dr. Priddy of Virginia State Colony of Feeble Minded where she was a patient. Her mother was said to be immoral and was a prostitute. Carrie was adopted by another family and was raped by her cousin and was viewed as promiscuous, therefore sent to Dr. Priddy institution (Buck v. Bell). Promiscuous and immorality was viewed as a characteristic that

In contrast to the "negative" eugenics position of the state of Virginia, involuntary sterilization laws emphasizing breeding restrictions for society's "unfit" neither benefit the welfare of the individual nor that of society for several moral and legal reasons. The legal validity of these involuntary sterilization laws would be challenged within the Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell. In September of 1924, at the age of eighteen, Carrie Buck, an illegitimate daughter of an allegedly feebleminded woman, was admitted to the Virginia's State Colony for Epileptics and the Feebleminded. Six months earlier, the Virginia State Legislature decisively passed their involuntary sterilization bill authorizing the Superintendents of five state institutions to petition for the permission to sterilize inmates. Buck, who had a mental age of nine and an I.Q. of about fifty, had already given birth to an illegitimate child herself, who was allegedly feebleminded as well. At the time, the Superintendent of the State Colony, Dr. A. S. Priddy, petitioned for permission to sterilize this woman for fear that Buck would have more mentally defective children. The statute had provided that each Superintendent needed to receive permission from a special Board of Directors of that institution, who would hear the grounds for sterilization and determine whether or not to follow through on the operation. Priddy faced immense pressure from state officials to petition for sterilization, as

The United States became the developer for eugenics legislations. The United States became the leader of eugenics by the 1920s. By 1935, throughout the United States there has been 21,000 sterilizations and by 1937, there were 31 states with eugenics legislations. However, during those years in the 1930s, Germany had exceeded the United States in eugenics due

Sterilization "on eugenic grounds" (Lombardo 1) was not legalized until 1907 in Indiana, but doctors across the nation practiced the procedure illegally before even then. Generally, the patient didn't know about the sterilization until after the act was done, at which point they were informed of their "feeblemindedness" or other social disorder. Within 17 years of the law being instated, a recorded 3000 people were sterilized, and thousands more suspected off the record. The range of reasons for being sterilized was infinite, ranging from genuine mental disorders such as schizophrenia, to things as pointless as "excessive masturbation" (Selden

Bell case. The Fourteenth Amendment states that “…nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property…”. This idea of property has come to recognize a person’s body, including its reproductive rights, as property as well, and by implementing sterilization, law would be giving doctors the right to deprive someone of their lawful property. Today, with the highly controversial issue of abortion, women’s bodies are regarded as their personal property and they are given the opportunity to terminate their pregnancy if they so choose to do. In the Buck v. Bell case, the Supreme Court ruled 8:1, stating that the case did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the state did have the duty to sterilize Ms. Buck. According to Mr. Justice Holmes who delivered the opinion of the Court during the Buck v. Bell Trial, the case was not upon “the procedure but upon the substantive law” (Holmes 328). This being said, the Court did not feel as though the procedure itself was a hot issue, but rather the law prohibiting it. This Court vote of 8:1 showed that the case did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment; Today this would probably not be the case; time has passed and people have discovered that sterilization, and eugenics in general, are unethical and immoral (Thompson

Let’s retrace this article’s path. There exist distinctions between disease traits and other – e.g., culturally-influenced – traits. The value of culturally-influenced traits change; thus, parents cannot always be morally obligated to “what [they] have the most reason to do” when selecting children, because what is most reasonable in one time/place can be morally abhorrent in another. It is also problematic to claim that people should recognize and implement social institutional reform, instead of genetic selection, when social institutional problems are present – history points to the implausibility of this suggestion. Finally, allowing unfettered, private genetic selection is likely to lead to adverse or unknown outcomes: a) It could lead to the selection of traits that are by no justifiable means ‘best,’ traits that drive homogenization, or both; and b) New genetic technologies have the potential to permit near-unlimited manipulations, the implications of which we don’t know, and thus, cannot allow