A Little Rail around the Top: Compulsory Sterilization, Its History in Mississippi, and a Call to Compensate Victims

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Lott
Keyword(s):  
Compulsory Sterilization

“Thinking the Unthinkable”: The Prospect of Compulsory Sterilization in India

1977 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meredith Minkler
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Birth Rate ◽  
Population Policy ◽  
Policy Statement ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Compulsory Sterilization ◽  
The Government ◽  
Demographic Impact ◽  
Medical Infrastructure

The National Population Policy Statement adopted by the Government of India in April 1976 gave states the mandate to adopt coercive and compulsory sterilization measures toward the end of bringing under control the nation's massive population growth. Many states have since adopted stringent measures which penalize couples having three or more children, and four states additionally have proposed legislation for compulsory sterilization. While the demographic impact of compulsory sterilization after the third child is undisputed, the administrative feasibility of such an undertaking has been widely questioned, particularly in light of the inadequacy of India's medical infrastructure in the rural areas. Critics further have raised questions concerning the social and ethical implications of compulsory sterilization and of measures which penalize the poor through means which may have adverse effects on their health and welfare. Finally, opponents of the new sterilization measures have suggested that they divert attention from the need for more basic changes in the nation's economic and social structure. While the need for bringing down India's continued high birth rate is widely recognized, alternative population measures—e.g. increased abortion facilities and an enforcement of the raised age at marriage-have been advocated in lieu of the compulsory sterilization measures currently being proposed.

The Race to Forget? Bi-racial Descendants of the First Rhineland Occupation in 1950s West German Debates about the Children of African American GIs*

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-539
Author(s):  
Julia Roos
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Compulsory Sterilization ◽  
German Children ◽  
First World

Abstract After the First World War, the German children of colonial French soldiers stationed in the Rhineland became a focal point of nationalist anxieties over ‘racial pollution’. In 1937, the Nazis subjected hundreds of biracial Rhenish children to compulsory sterilization. After 1945, colonial French soldiers and African American GIs participating in the occupation of West Germany left behind thousands of out-of-wedlock children. In striking contrast to the open vilification of the first (1920s) generation of biracial occupation children, post-1945 commentators emphasized the need for the racial integration of the children of black GIs. Government agencies implemented new programmes protecting the post-1945 cohort against racial discrimination, yet refused restitution to biracial Rhenish Germans sterilized by the Nazis. The contrasts between the experiences of the two generations of German descendants of occupation soldiers of colour underline the complicated ways in which postwar ruptures in racial discourse coexisted with certain long-term continuities in antiblack racism, complicating historians’ claims of ‘Americanization’ of post-1945 German racial attitudes.

Governing Juridical Sex: Gender Recognition and the Biopolitics of Trans Sterilization in Finland

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jemima Repo
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Gender Recognition ◽  
Genital Surgery ◽  
Governance Practices ◽  
Compulsory Sterilization ◽  
Points Of Resistance ◽  
Male To Female ◽  
Disciplinary Technology

AbstractIn many countries, compulsory sterilization is still a precondition for amending juridical sex. Drawing on feminist and queer debates on the entanglement of recognition with governmentalization, this article moves beyond a human rights frame to examine how struggles for legal gender recognition are bound up with the production and discipline of trans subjectivities, bodies, and relationships. It argues that rights and recognition may not only reinscribe regulation, but also they are a means of rendering trans subjects governable. By theorizing gender identity as a biopolitical discourse that produces trans subjects, the article genealogically examines the problematization of “gender identity” in Finnish welfare population governance practices leading up to the 2003 Finnish gender recognition law. The analysis demonstrates how the discourse of “equality” was key for producing a clearly defined trans population that could be identified, assessed, and, hence, governed. While the sterilization requirement was justified as a replacement for former castration laws which had been used by male-to-female transsexuals to access genital surgery, it also acted as a disciplinary technology to neutralize the alleged threats to normative forms of kinship that could be produced through gender recognition. Finally, the article considers points of resistance and avenues for further research.

HAROLD COX AND COMPULSORY STERILIZATION.

1923 ◽  
Vol 4 (43) ◽  
pp. 1167-1167
Author(s):  
HAROLD COX.
Keyword(s):  
Compulsory Sterilization

Compulsory Sterilization Practices

1976 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Suzanne Tessler
Keyword(s):  
Compulsory Sterilization

Secret suffering: the victims of compulsory sterilization during National Socialism

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-487
Author(s):  
Stefanie Westermann
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Human Reproduction ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Third ◽  
Compulsory Sterilization ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Genetically Determined ◽  
The 19Th Century

From the second half of the 19th century, eugenics claimed the medical and social need to intervene in human reproduction. During National Socialism, 300,000–400,000 people in Germany were subjected to compulsory sterilization because they had psychological diseases, impairments and social behavioural problems, which were regarded as genetically determined. After the end of the Third Reich, these interventions were not recognized as National Socialist injustice, and the victims were initially excluded from ‘compensation’. As shown in letters and interviews, the victims of compulsory sterilization suffered physically and psychologically throughout their lives. In particular, feelings of social ‘inferiority’, and of shame and suffering from compulsory childlessness and broken relationships, are found in many of the sources examined.

Making the World Safe for Eugenics: The Eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin's Encounters with American Internationalism

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason McDonald
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
World Government ◽  
The World ◽  
Compulsory Sterilization ◽  
Cold Spring ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Domestic Level

Harry H. Laughlin's main claim to fame was as director of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, from which position he exerted considerable influence upon early twentieth-century campaigns to restrict immigration and to institute compulsory sterilization of the socially inadequate. Laughlin also had an absorbing fascination for the idea of a single world government. Over the course of forty years, he produced a voluminous body of mostly unpublished work on the subject. In examining Laughlin's musings on internationalism, this article provides a glimpse into how a leading American eugenicist would have projected onto the world stage the policies he was zealously endeavoring to implement at the domestic level. Laughlin sent samples of his work to many of America's leading internationalists. Their responses to Laughlin's ideas reveal much about the character of internationalism in the United States during the era of World War I, especially the extent to which his racist and imperialist assumptions were shared by other members of the internationalist movement. Consequently, this article provides yet another example of how liberal and conservative impulses were neither easily distinguishable nor mutually exclusive during the Progressive Era.

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