Minnesota
In
total, there
were 2,350 victims of sterilization in Minnesota.
Of the 2,350, 519 were male, and 1,831 (approx.
78%) were female. About 18% were deemed mentally ill and 82% mentally
deficient
Period during which sterilizations occurred
The
sterilizations took place predominantly between 1928 and the late 1950s. Sterilizations were
relatively high in the
1930s and early 1940s (Paul, p. 393).
During the war, there was a shortage of staff, which may
be the reason why
there were fewer sterilizations from 1942 to 1946 (Paul,
p. 396).
Temporal pattern of sterilizations and rate of sterilization
Eugenics was popular in
Minnesota in the
1930s, but by the early 1940s, social workers and officials in the
state were
opposed to it. Minnesota
became much
more selective with its sterilizations in the late 1940s and early
1950s (Ryan,
p. 272.) There were
about 135
sterilizations per year between 1928 and 1944. The rate was about 5
sterilizations
per 100,000 residents per year during the peak period.
Passage of law(s)
Minnesota’s
sole sterilization law was passed on April 8, 1925.
The law was formally voluntary in nature.
Groups identified in the law
Those
groups
identified in the 1925 law were the feeble-minded and the insane that
were
institutionalized. “The law provides that feeble-minded and insane in
state
institutions may be tubectomized or vasectomized upon the advice of the
state
board of control, the superintendant of the state school for
feeblemindedness,
a reputable physician or psychologist, provided or his or her legal
representative gives consent” (Landman, pp. 89-90.) “The law… covers
the insane,
and feeble-minded who have been lawfully committed to the guardianship
of the Commissioner
of Public Welfare… Present policy confines the law to the mentally
deficient” (Paul,
p. 391.)
Process of the law
Upon passage of the 1925
sterilization law,
the institutionalized feeble-minded and insane may be sterilized in the
state
of Minnesota, if the state board of control, the superintendant of the
state
school, or if a trustworthy psychologist of physician advise it, so
long as consent
was given. In
Minnesota, unlike in many
other states, there was no pressure to give consent.
Consent was completely voluntary. “Under
Minnesota law, the question of sterilization for an individual patient
is
reviewed by the hospital superintendant, a psychologist, a physician
and the
Commissioner of Public Welfare. The
law
requires consent of the nearest relative by policy the consent of the
ward is
required” (Paul, p. 392.)
Precipitating factors and processes
Minnesota
was considered to have an outstanding program of legal guardianship for
people
who had mental disabilities, and the state’s School for the
Feebleminded in
Faribault was considered among the best custodial institutions
(Ladd-Taylor, “‘Sociological
Advantages’ of
Sterilization,” pp. 282-83).
This reflects the strength of progressivism
in the state, which also manifested itself in extensive intrusions by
courts
and social workers into family life.
The
reason that such intrusions were considered necessary and important for
the
well-being of families was that with expansion of intelligence tests,
the
number of the “feebleminded” increased, with a subsequent increase in
the
number of people committed as feebleminded.
Judges committed feeble-minded people to the guardianship
of the state
without consent of the parent or guardian (Ladd-Taylor, “‘Sociological
Advantages’ of
Sterilization,” pp. 285-86).
Judges and social workers forced their attention on those who were
considered
beyond the benefit of public assistance, particularly those who were
already in
trouble with the law or welfare agencies as well as unmarried mothers
(Ladd-Taylor, “‘Sociological Advantages’ of
Sterilization,” p. 287). Yet their commitment in high
numbers led to
overcrowding and in the Depression of the 1930, when the system of
parole and
family support broke down (Ladd-Taylor, “‘Sociological Advantages’ of Sterilization,” p.
293). “Frustrated
by high case loads, disjointed
relief policies, and limited resources, a significant number of
Minnesota
welfare workers concluded the ‘eugenic’ sterilization was a viable and
indeed
humane solution to the seemingly endless cycle of family poverty,
dysfunction,
and delinquency (Ladd-Taylor, “‘Sociological Advantages’ of Sterilization,” p.
239).
In
Minnesota, eugenic sterilizations were routine during the Interwar
period because
they serve a variety of functions in the state’s welfare system. For
social
workers, it made their jobs more manageable because it reduced the
numbers of the
“feebleminded.” For some families, various kinds of contraception were
unavailable, so the sterilizations were forms of birth control. For
eugenicists, it was a launching point that would lead to more stringent
fertility laws for the unfit. And
for
welfare officials, the sterilizations reduced public expenditures by at
least
shifting them to another level of the government (Ladd-Taylor,
“‘Sociological
Advantages’ of
Sterilization,” p. 295).
By
the 1930s, Minnesota was considered to be the most
“feebleminded-conscious”
state in the United States because of its comprehensive program for
people
living with mental disabilities (Ladd-Taylor, “‘Sociological
Advantages’ of
Sterilization,” p. 283). The greatest number
of sterilizations in Minnesota took place in the 1930s because relief
rolls
expanded due to the Depression.
In
the 1930s and 1940s, sterilizations in Minnesota were rather high as a
result
of people’s belief that the ward had the ability to raise a family.
(Before
1946, more feeble-minded people were sterilized in Minnesota and
Michigan than
in the entire South combined.) Today
however, we do not feel the same way.
In
fact, from 1945 on, the number of sterilizations results from the
belief that
surgery is not always the best way to deal with the mentally retarded.
People
started to care about what was best for the patients holistically,
discussing
their sterilizations by respecting the patients’ will (Paul, p. 393.)
There
were fewer sterilizations during World War II not because of knowledge
about
Nazi eugenics, but because there was a shortage of medical and nursing
persons.
And,
even though there was a scandal over the sterilizations performed at
the state
institution, sterilizations continued but were reduced in number until
1975,
when the law was changed (Ladd-Taylor, “‘Sociological Advantages’ of Sterilization,” p.
282.)
Groups targeted and victimized
“Defective”
individuals included the feeble-minded and insane persons that were
hospitalized. Most
of the sterilizations
were of poor, sexually active women who violated the traditional
standards of
morality and allegedly had children who they could not support
(Ladd-Taylor,
“Coping With a 'Public
Menace,'” p. 243.) As
Molly Ladd-Taylor put it, “most women sterilized in Minnesota during
the
interwar years were either young sex ‘delinquents,’ often unmarried
mothers,
who were committed as feeble-minded through the court system, or
slightly older
women with a number of children on public assistance” (“‘Sociological
Advantages’ of
Sterilization,” p. 289.)
One
of the known victims was Lola. She came from a family in which
her father had committed suicide and her mother, a polio survivor, was
deemed
incompetent by social workers. Lola was sent to a correctional facility
at age
sixteen after authorities suspected her to have had sex with older men
repeatedly. She was sterilized in 1938 at the age of 21. She was “a
girl who
needs a family… [and] got sterilized instead”
(Ladd-Taylor, “‘Sociological
Advantages’ of
Sterilization,” p. 290.)
Major proponents
(Photo origin: Minnesota Historical Society; available at http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/117eugenics.html)
Charles
Fremont Dight was the founder of eugenics in Minnesota.
Dight was a physician in Minneapolis, who
believed that the state should control the reproductive patterns of the
unfit. He was born
in Mercer, Pennsylvania in
1856. Dight
graduated from University of
Michigan in 1879 with a degree in medicine.
He eventually moved on Faribault, where he served as
resident physician
at Shattuck School until 1892. This
might have been Dight’s first experience with the mentally handicapped,
and
their institutions, which also happened to be the same place as the
Minnesota
School for the Feebleminded (Phelps, p. 100.)
Dight was an outspoken socialist who had served on the
Minneapolis city
council before he took on eugenics (Ladd-Taylor, "Coping
With a 'Public Menace,'” p. 241.)
He pushed for eugenics education, changes in the marriage
laws, and the
segregation and sterilization of “defective” people.
Dight organized the Minnesota Eugenics
Society in 1923 and started to campaign for a sterilization law. He launched a legislature
crusade for the
sterilization of the “defectives.”
He
did not think that that segregation of the unfit was enough; they
needed to be
sterilized so that they did not pass their undesirable traits through
procreation (Phelps, p. 101.) Dight’s
biggest adversary was the Catholic Church, who opposed his ideas on
moral grounds
(Phelps, p. 104.) Foremost
among Dight’s
goal was convincing the state legislature to enact encompassing
sterilization
laws for the mentally handicapped.
He
confronted the legislature each biennium in this regard from 1925 to
1935”
(Phelps, p. 99.) Dight
tried to get the
sterilization law to extend to the feeble-minded and insane persons
that we not
institutionalized, but he was unsuccessful.
Overall, he pushed for stricter sterilization laws in
Minnesota, but
they did not pass. In 1933, Dight wrote a letter to Adolf Hitler
wishing Nazi
efforts in eugenic sterilization “to be a great success” and noted in a
letter
to the Minneapolis Journal that “if carried out effectively,
[compulsory
sterilization of the disabled] will make [Hitler] the leader of the
greatest
rational movement for human betterment the world has ever seen”
(http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories/letterHitler.pdf).
“Feeder institutions” and institutions where sterilization were performed
(Photo
origin: Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities;
available at http://www.mnddc.org/past/1990s/1990s-3.html)
The
Faribault State Hospital in Minnesota served the entire state until the
late
1950s. Patients in
the institution were
of all ages and had varying degrees of mental retardation. The state’s School for
Feebleminded was led
from 1885 to 1917 by Dr. Arthur C. Rogers.
It was one of the nation’s foremost institutions for the
feebleminded. The
institution closed on
July 1, 1998 and was replaced by a correctional facility (Ladd-Taylor, “Coping With a 'Public Menace,'”
p. 246.)
Opposition
American
Catholics were the main opponents of Eugenics (Leon), and social
workers and
some state officials opposed it as well (Ryan, p. 272.) Overall, however, there was
very little public
discussion about the feeble-minded, which resulted in indifference
towards
them.
Bibliography
Ladd-Taylor,
Molly. 2005. "Coping With a
'Public Menace': Eugenic Sterilization in Minnesota." Minnesota
History
59, 6: 237-248.
Ladd-Taylor, Molly. 2004. “The ‘Sociological Advantages’ of Sterilization: Fiscal Politics and Feebleminded Women in Interwar Minnesota.” Pp. 281-99 in Mental Retardation in America: A Historical Anthology, eds. S. Noll and J. Trent. New York: New York University Press.
Leon,
Sharon. 2004. "Hopelessly Entangled in Nordic Pre-suppositions:
Catholic Participation in the American Eugenics Society in the 1920s." Journal
of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 59, 1: 3-49.
Paul,
Julius. 1965. "'Three Generations of Imbeciles Are
Enough': State Eugenic Sterilization Laws in American Thought and
Practice." Washington, D.C.: Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
Phelps,
Gary. 1984. "The Eugenics Crusade of Charles Fremont Dight." Minnesota History
49, 3: 99-109
Ryan,
Patrick J. 2007. "'Six Blacks from Home': Childhood, Motherhood, and
Eugenics in America." Journal
of Policy History 19,
3:
253-281.