Mississippi Sterilization

women as a way to permanently prevent that woman from having future children, and is still

This case challenged the rights of marital privacy within the home. In 1961, Griswold and her partner, Dr. Buxton, opened a birth control clinic in New Haven, Connecticut. A law enacted in 1879 made it illegal to use anything to prevent contraception in the state. That’s right, nothing could be used to prevent pregnancy. Consequently due to their actions, Griswold and Buxton were arrested, tried, found guilty, and fined to pay $100. Griswold appealed her conviction to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the state was in breach of multiple amendments including the fourteenth, first, and of course, the third amendment. The argument based on the third amendment was that the home is and should be a private place. No one is to know what happens in the home, or in the bedroom for that matter. The only way to prove that the women who visited the clinic were actually using birth control would be storm their homes. In the end, it was found that Connecticut's actions were unconstitutional and this court case paved the way for future cases such as the famous Roe vs Wade

This controversial case ruled that a woman’s ability to be able to chose to get an abortion is considered a protected liberty. It also concluded that this

Sterilization legislature was enacted on the state level with the goal of physically preventing the procreation of individuals deemed to be unfit, mainly handicapped persons or criminals. Though the nature of these laws did not outright target certain races or social classes, a disproportionate amount of the individuals sterilized were non-white or of immigrant background. Prominent eugenicists and eugenic organizations in the U.S. played a key role in lobbying for state sterilization laws. Harry H. Laughlin, superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office, drafted the American Model Eugenical Sterilization Law in 1922, which served as a model for many sterilizations laws in the states (Berenbaum, 1998). By 1926, 23 states had passed sterilization laws that were voluntary and/or involuntary in nature (Sofair, 2000). Laughlin and other eugenicists called for the sterilization of institutionalized individuals under the assertion that their “genetically inferior” traits would be passed to their progeny and be an economic drain on the state. Many states complied, and by 1935 over 30 states had some form of sterilization law with over 21,000 compulsory sterilizations performed (Allen 1997). Though the eugenic nature of these laws was stressed by eugenicists, it was acknowledged that the political support of such laws were greatly financially motivated. Another important legislation passed by the U.S. was the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which was the first immigration quota

Forced sterilization and Eugenics are terms you would associate with Hitler's heinous World War II crimes. Those terms were not isolated to war time Europe. From 1929 until 1977 Eugenics was a terrible part of North Carolina History that used selective breeding to extinguish lower class mentality and guarantee future generations. The State is trying to make amends to the victims of the past. For almost 50 years over 7,600 victims were evaluated harshly and then coerced or sterilized against their will. Eugenics scientists have used this method to target what they consider as the “undesirables,” mainly unwed, black females, and also the mentally disabled in North Carolina. This was done under the pretense to make future American generations stronger and smarter. Eugenics still negatively affects the people of North Carolina today.

The idea of eugenics made it possible for involuntary sterilization. In order to improve the human race, it meant regulating reproduction. 1907 Indiana passed to sterilize the mentally insane and inmates. Their plan was to eliminate “defective” genes. By 1960 63,000 people were involuntary

However, since the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over public policy, Weddington argued that current abortion laws violated the fourteenth amendment. The fourteenth amendment guarantees the right to liberty without due process of law, and the decision contended that this right was extended to a woman's right to choose to be pregnant. In her closing argument, Weddington stated that "if liberty was meaningful... that liberty to these women would mean liberty from being forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy".

“In the United States, 15 states have laws that fail to protect women with disabilities from involuntary sterilization” (Against her will). Sterilization of disabled women in the United States should not be allowed. It denies disabled women the rights of having children. It is sexist to force women to get sterilized but men do not have to get sterilized. Women should have the right to have children, no matter if they have a disability or if something is wrong with her. The United States has used forced sterilization along with other countries in North and South America, along with places such as Asia and Africa.

During her time in Michener Leilani was educated only to the level of a fifth grader. Leilani stayed in Michener until she was twenty. During her 9 years in Michener she was sterilized without her knowledge or consent at the age of 14. Leilani was one of nearly 3,000 Albertans surgically prevented from having children under that province’s Sexual Sterilization Act before 1972- Forced sterilization is the process of surgically enabling individuals to reproduce without their constant. The Act became law in 1928 when “eugenics” —a theory about selecting or eliminating certain genetic traits—was popular (humanrights.ca). Many people believed that individuals with disabilities were not fit to parent, and would create a strain on society. Forced sterilization is now recognized as a human rights violation. Leilani was the first of hundreds to successfully sue the Alberta government for this practice. The more closely minorities adhere to certain special rules, the more likely they are to influence public

In a seven to two decision written by Justice Harry Blackmun, who was chosen because of prior experience as counsel of a nonprofit medical research group and practice called the Mayo Clinic, the Supreme Court ruled that the Texas law violated Roe 's right to privacy (White 32). The Court contended that the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual 's privacy, otherwise known as a “zone of privacy”, against state laws and referenced past cases which ruled contraception, marriage, and even child rearing as activities covered in a "zone of privacy” (Paltrow 17). The Court then proceeded to argue that this zone of privacy was "broad enough to encompass a woman 's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy” (Paltrow 17). This decision was influenced by and addresses the innumerable psychological, physical, and economic stresses a pregnant woman faces.

Sterilization of the developmentally disabled or the mentally retarded is an issue that has long been debated in America. Mental retardation is defined as the inability to learn normally and develop mentally. Traditionally in America if a mentally retarded person was born to a family, that family had 2 choices- take care of the child at home, or it was strongly recommended that the child was sent to a state run institution or hospital. The state institution was where this person would spend his or her entire life. Unfortunately these hospitals were often huge warehouses of people with disabilities, or mental illnesses. These hospitals offered no contact with the

After being condemned to state mental institution, it was believed that it was necessary for Carrie Buck to be sexually sterilized; the mental disease which she had acquired originated three generation back and had also been present in each of those three generations. This was the basis on which this suggestion was made. In Virginia state, it was legal to carry this action out on the grounds that it " promoted the health of the patient and the welfare of society." (www.oyez.org) Before the sterilization could occur, however, a hearing would have been heard and approved/disapproved by the court.

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 majority opinion of the case, which was ruled in favor of the plaintiff, was delivered by Justice Harry Blackmun. The Court held the opinion that the fundamental right of a married or single woman, to decide whether or not to have children, is spelled under the Ninth Amendment through the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Therefore, the Texas’s criminal abortion statutes were void as they were constituted in a manner that violates the plaintiff’s Ninth Amendment rights and they were unconstitutionally vague. The court also held that an array of Texas statutes criminalizing abortion in most cases violated a woman’s constitutional right to privacy, which it found to be implicit in the liberty guarantee of the due process clause of

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