Contraception or Eugenics? Sterilization and “Mental Retardation” in the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract

Nonconsensual sterilization is usually seen as the by-product of a classist and racist society; disability is ignored. This article examines the 1973 sterilization of two young black girls from Alabama and other precedent-setting court cases involving the sterilization of "mentally retarded" white women to make disability more central to the historical analysis of sterilization. It analyzes the concept of mental retardation and the appeal of a surgical solution to birth control, assesses judicial deliberations over the "right to choose" contraceptive sterilization when the capacity to consent is in doubt, and reflects on the shadow of eugenics that hung over the sterilization debate in the 1970s and 1980s.

Dehumanization, Disability, and Eugenics

“…A focal point for discussions of the continuing effects of a eugenic past on contemporary society has been the relationships between reproductive technologies and disability Ladd-Taylor 2014;Wilson 2017). Given that disability, especially intellectual disability, has functioned as a strongly negative eugenic trait in the past, people with disabilities tend to view the reconsideration of eugenics as a neutral or endorsement-worthy project with scepticism.…”

Sterilization of men with intellectual disabilities

“…41 Ladd-Taylor describes how normalization had a 'contradictory impact' in that whilst leading to the closure of institutions, it led to parents wanting sterilizations to prevent their daughters falling pregnant. 42 Jones and Marks argued that, ironically, supporters of sterilization gained ground by arguing that people with intellectual disability could enjoy greater freedoms and independence in the community if the risk of pregnancy was removed. 43 Certainly this argument was employed forcefully in DE as justification for his vasectomy (as shall be seen later).…”

“…Ladd-Taylor, ‘Contraception or Eugenics? Sterilization and ‘Mental Retardation’ in the 1970s and 1980s’, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 31 (2014), pp. 189–211, at page 200.…”

Race, class, caste, disability, sterilisation and hysterectomy

“…Consequently, the importance of hysterectomy in the history of population control and modern global biopower has likely been underestimated in existing historical analyses which have tended to identify sterilisation primarily through tubal ligation (Stern 2005;Olszynsko-Gryn 2014;Dowbiggin 2008;Trombley 1988). Nonetheless, several historians have cited specific cases of hysterectomy found in the source corpus of known mass sterilisation programmes in the USA, Central America and Canada in the 1970s-1980s, which disproportionately impacted Native American, Latino, black women, as well as women and girls with disabilities (Lawrence 2000;López 49-69;Rutecki 2011;Ladd-Taylor 2014;Amy and Rowlands 2018;Theobald 2019, 90). American gynaecologists between the 1950s and 1970s were the most explicit and emphatic about the value of hysterectomy as a method of surgical sterilisation, with some even seeing it as superior to the emerging laparoscopic tubal ligation methods.…”