No one had ever told her that the government had sterilized her. Respondent Bell . Deeply Troubling: Kristen Clarke on How Rush to Confirm Barrett Endangers Voting & Civil Rights, Preserving Roe: West Virginia Mom Tells Abortion Story in Heartfelt Speech Against Amy Coney Barrett, Dark Money & Barrett Nomination: The Link Between Big Polluters & the War on. ADAM COHEN: Absolutely. Galton and his followers said, “Well, if nature does this naturally, we can speed survival of the fittest along if we decide who gets to reproduce and who doesn’t, if we get the fit people to reproduce and we stop the unfit from reproducing.” So that was the idea in England. He had actually been a professor at Harvard Law School before he joined the U.S. Supreme Court. Author Adam Cohen writes about the case in his new book, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck. And this is a big controversy, where exactly she fit in. There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Harvard geneticists were in favor of eugenics. Manufacturers, After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. There was a case in Tennessee a couple years ago where a prosecutor was fired allegedly for making eugenic sterilization part of his plea negotiations. And it’s shocking also the degree to which there was friendship and cooperation between the America eugenicists and important scientists in America and the Nazis. So this Eugenics Record Office, which was a scientific pro-eugenics operation, was funded by the Carnegie Institution. You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition. Where did this happen? ADAM COHEN: Yeah, so one of the shocking things about that is that the Nazis actually followed us. She formed a strategic alliance with the eugenicists, in part to get more support for her birth control movement. They thought the black race was beyond saving. And there were states like Louisiana with large Catholic populations, where bills were voted down really because of the opposition of the Catholic Church. Decided. These were very primitive IQ tests from the time, that really didn’t test intelligence at all. We have to operate on you.” You know, if you say, “We want to stop you from having children,” maybe you get some pushback. AMY GOODMAN: So, explain what this term “eugenics” was, what the whole movement was, and who was a part of it, Adam. They just did that this year. Democracy Now! There’s a lot of fear in the land. We don’t know if Congress might pass these laws.