Sterilization

• Author: Kenneth L. Karst
• Pages: 2528-2529

Page 2528

Late in the nineteenth century, when simple and safe medical procedures for sterilization became available, the eugenics movement began to promote compulsory sterilization laws. A few laws were enacted specifying sterilization as punishment for sex crimes, but they were rarely enforced. In 1907 Indiana adopted a law authorizing sterilization of persons deemed "feebleminded," or, as one leading proponent put it, "socially defective." Other states soon followed. The Supreme Court lent both practical and moral support in its 1927 decision in BUCK V. BELL, upholding the constitutionality of Virginia's law. By 1935 more than thirty states had adopted forced sterilization laws, and 20,000 "eugenic" sterilizations had been performed. The victims of such laws tended to be poor; indeed, in the view of eugenics proponents, poverty and other forms of dependence were the marks of the "socially inadequate classes" that needed eradication.

Times have changed, and constitutional law has changed. Concurring in GRISWOLD V. CONNECTICUT (1965), Justice ARTHUR GOLDBERG said, "Surely the Government, absent a showing of a COMPELLING subordinating STATE INTEREST, could not decree that all husbands and wives must be sterilized after two children have been born to them." After SKINNER V. OKLAHOMA (1942) the point seems incontestable. Yet some state courts, following Buck, still uphold laws authorizing the involuntary sterilization of institutionalized mental patients. Although only fifteen years separated the Buck and Skinner decisions, their doctrinal foundations were worlds apart. Skinner, calling procreation "one of the basic civil rights of man," insisted on STRICT SCRUTINY by the Court of the justifications supporting a compulsory sterilization law. Buck, on the other hand, had employed a deferential form of RATIONAL BASIS review, analogizing forced sterilization to forced VACCINATION.

Skinner's crucial recognition was that sterilization was more than an invasion of the body; it was an irrevocable deprivation of the right to define one's life and one's identity as a biological parent. Vaccination implies no such consequences for one's self-identification and social role. The constitutional issues presented by sterilization thus bear a strong analogy to the issues raised by laws restricting other forms of BIRTH CONTROL and abortion. (See FREEDOM OF INTIMATE ASSOCIATION.) The Supreme Court has characterized all these forms of state...