The Legacy of the Eugenics Movement In America

The Chicago Tribune has an editorial on the eugenics movement in America:

From the 1920s to the 1970s, tens of thousands of American women, many in the prime of their childbearing years, were the victims of this country's shameful eugenics movement.

The idea behind eugenics was to rid society of its ills by getting rid of its "less desirable" citizens. (No shock, the idea was embraced by Nazi Germany.) The theory held that if you prevented criminals, the mentally retarded, the infirm and feeble-minded from reproducing, then those defective genes wouldn't be passed along to offspring. The goal was to create a society free of genetic imperfections.

Nearly two-thirds of the states established boards to govern eugenics. (Illinois did not.) North Carolina had a particularly aggressive program. As the Tribune's Dahleen Glanton recently reported, at least 7,500 poor African-Americans and whites between 1929 and 1975 were persuaded--most were duped into believing-- that sterilization was their only option.

In many of these cases, there were questions about whether women were involuntarily sterilized not because they were "feeble-minded" but because they received welfare, or had sex outside of marriage, or simply were considered unfit to bear children. Johanna Schoen, a University of Iowa professor who exposed the eugenics program in North Carolina while working on her doctoral dissertation, said many of the women battled depression. Some said the surgery led to other gynecological problems.

You can't have government involved in health care and not expect these sorts of outrages.When Big Brother has control look at the affects.