Extermination as Charity: Eugenics and Disability

By Xander Evans

If you could invent something, a pill or machine or sorts, that could end all disability forever, would you? What would that world look like? During the heyday of the eugenics movement, which sought to “improve” the genetic condition of humanity, eugenicists felt that they should end disability forever using sterilization and controlled breeding. They were, in their minds, creating a better future for humanity where no one had to suffer from the consequences of “bad genes.” This conviction of righteousness allowed for a massive amount of Americans to support efforts that would encourage the increase of desirably people and the extermination of “undesirable” people, resulting in the forced sterilizations of over 70,000 Americans who were deemed “unfit to reproduce[1].” The sterilization efforts against disabled people were motivated by an idea that eradication of the neurodivergent was somehow a charity.

The eugenics movement is often associated with Nazism and horrific experiments on people for the sake of a “master race.” This is the reputation the movement deserves, as it is rooted in racism and bigotry, but the larger eugenics movement in the late-1800s until the mid-1900s presented itself in a very warm light. Sir Francis Galton, the man who created the term “eugenics” defined it as “ ‘the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race’ as well as those that ‘develop them to the utmost advantage.’” Eugenics advocates believed that in order for society the world, to improve, those with desirable traits should reproduce and those with undesirable traits should not[2]. This naturally led to racist beliefs about “inferior races,” and also led to the idea of the neurodiverse being lesser than the neurotypical. This was not exclusive to radical conservatives of the 1800s, as even the Social Democrat party of Sweden advocated for and passed eugenicist laws that sterilized the neurodivergent as recently as 1941, arguing that the laws would save money for social programs in the long run[3]. The primary motivator for a movement that sought to bring about the extermination of those who were deemed lesser was not born out of a desire to destroy, but a desire to improve the world around them.

The first eugenicist sterilization laws were passed in the US in 1907 in Indiana. The law decreed that criminals, along with the mentally disabled, which were referred to at that time as “idiots,” “imbeciles” or “feeble minded,” should be sterilized in the event that they are found to be unable to be treated[4].  In 1922, the publication of Harry H. Laughlin’s book Eugenical Sterilization in the United States began a further rush for states to pass sterilization laws. The book contained 17 chapters, including the status of sterilization laws, the types of people who should be sterilized, and even model laws and paperwork that lawmakers could use to enact sterilization policies[5]. States took notice, and rapidly passed their own eugenic sterilization laws, which listed “feeble mindedness” as grounds for sterilization alongside criminality and the rise of communities of color. Categories such as “idiot” or “imbecile” became actual scientific terms, with the word “moron” being invented to denote the highest degree of mental disability. Eugenics sterilization laws did not only target intellectual disabilities, as those with epilepsy or psychotic disorders. Though their stated goal was to rid the world of social vices and promote better living, something that many would consider to be a noble cause, the method of doing so was based upon seeing certain people as inherently lesser and as something to be removed from the world[6]. 

Eugenics advocates would insist on a relationship between mental disability and criminality, further motivating people into supporting sterilization laws. John Langdon Hayden Down identified a condition that he labelled “Mongolian imbecility,” which he considered to be a evolutionary backsliding that removed not only intelligence, but morality entirely. People with “Mongolian imbecility” would be incapable of making moral choices because they simply were not evolved enough to do so. This condition would later be renamed “Down’s Syndrome,” after its discoverer[7]. This assumed connection remained active well into the 1950s in some regions of the United States, even after the eugenics movement largely fell out of favor in the 1940s after Nazi atrocities became well known. In southern states, namely North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia, eugenic sterilization boards existed and approved the sterilization of hundreds of mentally disabled people every year. As patients were brought in to mental institutions in these areas, social workers would often collect social histories that read like eugenics family studies. Sterilizations were approved as recently as the 1960s to prevent pregnancies within mental institutions, and to prevent newly released individuals from “reproducing and creating new problems[8].”

Think back to the beginning of the article, the question of ending disability. The problem does not arise from the answer to this question, but from the question itself. The very suggestion that there is a way to cure people of “lesser traits” is what led to horrific forced sterilization. The question itself supposes that a person can speak about everyone’s relationship with their own mental health and supposes that neurodiversity is something that could even be ended. Some neurodiverse people may want a “cure” for whatever disability they have, others may not, and others do not even view themselves as disabled. The entertaining of this question in the modern day can have implications on genetic manipulation technology today, with the concept of “designer babies” becoming more and more realistic. Traits would be considered “higher” or “lower” value, and results in harmful views about disability that are born out of ignorance, as most able-bodied and neurotypical people view disabled life as worse than it actually is[9].  After all, what parent would want to give their kid an “easier life” before they’re even born? Eugenic sterilization laws come from a place of ignorance and an assumption that disability is something that could even be considered curable, and the attitude persists into the modern day.

Sources:

[1] “The Supreme Court Ruling That Led to 70,000 Forced Sterilizations.” NPR, NPR, 7 Mar. 2016, www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/07/469478098/the-supreme-court-ruling-that-led-to-70-000-forced-sterilizations. 

[2] BURKE, CHLOE S., and CHRISTOPHER J. CASTANEDA. “The Public and Private History of Eugenics: An Introduction.” The Public Historian, vol. 29, no. 3, 2007, pp. 5–17. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2007.29.3.5. Accessed 16 Mar. 2025. 

[3] Dikötter, Frank. “Race Culture: Recent Perspectives on the History of Eugenics.” The American Historical Review, vol. 103, no. 2, 1998, pp. 467–78. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2649776. Accessed 16 Mar. 2025.

[4] Grandsoult, Victoria. “‘The American Dream’: How the United States Has Executed Eugenic Legislation to Model the Ideal American.” Global Campus Europe, New University of Lisbon, July 2018, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/repository.gchumanrights.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/4d6298c3-6150-4e78-b1d8-6b63dd065103/content.

[5] Gur-Arie, By: Rachel. “Eugenical Sterilization in the United States (1922), by Harry H. Laughlin.” Eugenical Sterilization in the United States (1922), by Harry H. Laughlin | Embryo Project Encyclopedia, Arizona State Univeristy, 8 Dec. 2015, embryo.asu.edu/pages/eugenical-sterilization-united-states-1922-harry-h-laughlin. 

[6] Devlieger, Patrick. “Eugenics and Disability” in Rethinking Disability: World Perspectives in Culture and Society. Garant, 2016. 

[7] Douglas C. Baynton. “‘These Pushful Days’: Time and Disability in the Age of Eugenics.” Health and History, vol. 13, no. 2, 2011, pp. 43–64. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5401/healthhist.13.2.0043. Accessed 16 Mar. 2025.

[8] Castles, Katherine. “Quiet Eugenics: Sterilization in North Carolina’s Institutions for the Mentally Retarded, 1945-1965.” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 68, no. 4, 2002, pp. 849–78. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3069776. Accessed 18 Mar. 2025.

[9] Lynch, Erin. “Designer Babies? The Ethical and Regulatory Implications of Polygenic Embryo Screening - Petrie-Flom Center.” Petrie, 23 Feb. 2024, petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2024/03/11/designer-babies-the-ethical-and-regulatory-implications-of-polygenic-embryo-screening/.