Comparison Of Eugenics Movement And Carrie Buck

Eugenics Movement and Carrie Buck

The 1920’s in America was an era designated to an emerging new culture for the typical American society. Society’s values were changing and new ideas were coming about socially and morally. After World War I, the movement of eugenics swept through America and heavily influenced society. Eugenics was the reasoning for the coercive sterilization of men and women who seemed to have undesirable genetics. After the war, immigration laws were put in place to control the growth of the population and naturalization. The war and immigration played the largest role on the emergence of eugenics. In 1927, the supreme court ruled in favor of the sexual sterilization of a young woman named Carrie Buck. This paper discusses

Eugenics was prominent during the twenties and aimed to improve the human population by reducing the likeliness of defective genetic traits. Eugenics was practiced mainly in institutions for patients who possessed traits that could be passed through reproduction. During the time of eugenics, a young woman named Carrie Buck was sterilized in order to prevent passing on the traits that she and her mother possessed. Carrie and her mother were both institutionalized and considered “feeble minded”, therefore they were seen as unable to contribute to the procreation of the human race. These ideas of perfecting the human race resembled that of Hitler’s, as described in the Mein Kampf. America never went as far as Hitler, for the policies were intended to help advance society, without causing direct harm

The supreme court was approaching the subject by looking out for the population as a whole, rather than as individuals. The intentions of the movement were to eliminate the passing of specific traits that socially unfit person’s possessed and to isolate traits that were considered socially superior. The social incentives were based off of a utilitarian point of view, in that it may have hurt individuals, but it will ultimately better society. The values of this time period can be seen as continuing segregation, not just with race, but with disability and mental illnesses. The reasoning behind the eugenics movement, as stated by the supreme court, was “instead of waiting to execute degenerative offspring for crime… society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind”. The supreme court ruled in favor of the sterilization of Carrie Buck, for the evidence presented proved that she would not produce offspring that would be beneficial to society. By overlooking individual’s rights, the courts made decisions that were only favorable to the isolated groups, thus furthering the separation in the country. The social implications from the influence of immigration increased segregation through non-modifiable factors such as race and