Buck v. Bell

Buck v. Bell was a 1927 Supreme Court case that ruled a "Virginia statute which authorized sterilization"Buck v. Bell was totally constitutional.
==Facts of the case==
The case came about when Carrie Buck , a seventeen-year old girl who had recently become pregnant after being raped by the nephew of her foster parents, was sent to the State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded and ordered to be sterilized under a recently passed Virginia law, primarily on the basis that her biological mother had received a similar diagnosis several years beforehand, therefore giving the doctors the impression this was a hereditary trait. The specific term that was used to describe Bell's condition was "feeblemindedness,"Carrie Buck which "was a term that first emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in the United States to describe individuals exhibiting a lack of productivity or other behaviors viewed as 'backward.'"Feeble-mindedness Essentially, Bell was picked because of "the belief that she had inherited her feeblemindedness from her mother and that her daughter showed signs of slow mental development as well."Carrie Buck (1906–1983)
The diagnosis of Buck's mother was "based less on a medical finding than on the doctors’ perception of her sexual behavior." Looking through Carrie's school records, "her records indicate normal progress each year." Similarly, Carrie's daughter Vivian, although by no means a genius, was believed by those observed her to be of perfectly average intelligence.Carrie Buck’s Daughter
Buck's lawyer was also a man named Irving Whitehead, "whose weak defense of Carrie Buck almost assured that the law [which allowed Buck to be sterilized] would stand" according to one source. Whitehead "called no witnesses to challenge the charges made about Carrie’s mental health or to question the science behind the eugenical theory espoused by the so-called expert witnesses despite evidence and opportunities to do so." This is hardly surprising given that Whitehead was a fellow supporter of eugenics who "had served on the Board of Directors of the Virginia Colony and that Aubrey E. Strode, the author of the Virginia law, had previously acted as legal counsel to the Board."Buck v. Bell: The Test Case for Virginia’s Eugenical Sterilization Act "Whitehead failed because he intended to fail", wrote one scholar.Paul Lombardo. Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, The Supreme Court, and Buck V. Bell. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
===Things get worse===
The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, which was packed with forces who were against Buck from the start. As one article puts it:
Taft infamously wrote the foreword to the 1915 book How to Live: Rules For Healthful Living Based on Modern Science, written by Irving Fisher and Eugene Lyman Fisk, which declared that "As the science of eugenics gather as greater wealth of evidence and subjects it to vigorous analysis, its ability to guide the race to higher levels will become more positive and far-reaching."How to Live: Rules For Healthful Living Based on Modern Science by Irving Fisher and Eugene Lyman Fisk
Oliver Wendell Holmes similarly had a reputation for supporting eugenics that went back "long before the Buck v. Bell case came to the Supreme Court."The Supreme Court Ruling That Led To 70,000 Forced Sterilizations Holmes was also the author of the majority opinion, which agreed with the notion that Carrie Buck, her mother, and her daughter, were what the doctors described them as, causing him to conclude that "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This was after he declared "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind."Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200
==Legacy==
The ruling would result in over 70,000 people being forcibly sterilized in the United States, and Nazi Karl Brandt, who was involved with Aktion T4 and was responsible for thousands of forced sterilizations himself, would cite the ruling in his defense at the Nuremberg trials (though he was nevertheless sentenced to death).How Nazi War Criminals Defended Themselves With a U.S. Supreme Court Case, Jay Willis, Balls and Strikes 9 January 2023 Buck v. Bell has still not been overturned to this day.Could Forced Sterilization Still be Legal in the US?, Leita Powers, Syracuse Law Review 15 October 2020
==References==
Category:Ableism
Category:Eugenics supporters
Category:Government incompetence
Category:United States history
Category:United States law
Category:United States politics
Category:United States Supreme Court cases