MASS CASTRATION
Dr. Harry Clay Sharp was a doctor at the Indiana Reformatory, and, as the state’s first prison, he instituted the first to impose vasectomy on a person in custody. Sharp had become an expert in human sterilization and over the course of the next few years he performed sterilization procedures on inmates. Dr. Sharp, knowing that involuntary sterilizations were not legal, worked to get stricter laws in order to provide sterilization for each male that came through the reformatory, whether it meant they were from an asylum, institution for the feeble minded, or prison. Sharp had totaled 176 vasectomies by 1904.
In Virginia, the laws for sterilization came under scrutiny with Emma Buck, who was deemed worthless after being widowed and living on the cusp of civilization; she had become the perfect candidate. Her daughter, Carrie, became the test case, after she had been discovered to be pregnant at the age of 17, and claims she was feebleminded and epileptic. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a judge in the case stated that, three generations of feeble individuals were enough for society. After the Supreme Court ruling, Carrie was sterilized on October 19, 1927. Sterilization had now become the absolute law, which left much room for others to follow. Old laws were revised and replaced. Castrations had become a norm in society for many states in America.
Whether or not sterilization was justified fluctuated wildly. Those who were sterilized were criminals, mental patients, and some were even just guilty due to lack of wealth. Hundreds of individuals were classified as ‘others’ or ‘moral degenerates’. 35,878 is the number of people that were sterilized or castrated before 1940, about 30,000 of which were subject to the surgery after the legislation of Buck v. Bell.
Sources:
Black, Edwin. War against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003. Print.
Sharp, H.C., M.D., “The Severing of the Vasa Deferentia and its Relation to the Neuropsychopathic Constitution,” The New York Medical Journal, vol. 75, March 1902, p.414.
M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University at Albany, SUNY.