Facing Eugenics: Reproduction, Sterilization, and the Politics of Choice by Erika Dyck (review)

Erika Dyck’s Facing Eugenics is an outstanding contribution to the history of eugenics and disability studies. The first book-length study of sexual sterilization in twentieth-century Alberta was deservedly shortlisted for this year’s Sir John A. Macdonald Prize. Emphasizing that Albertan eugenics “did not follow a singular track” nor “affect[ed] people uniformly,” Dyck employs extant patient files and testimonies in order to underline this variance. Demonstrating how authorities imposed sterilization on “mental defectives,” while actively denying healthy Albertans access to the operation, Dyck encourages “deeper reflections on the enduring meanings of the controversies surrounding the politics of reproductive choice.” Facing Eugenics complements recent works by Randall Hansen, Desmond King, and Alexandra Stern that have refocused the historical record on individual experiences under eugenic legislation.

Proceeding thematically, Dyck begins by highlighting the pathologization of undesirable behaviour by medico-legal authorities in the 1920s. In this regard, Alberta’s powerful feminist movement, among other political proponents, became “key motivators” of sterilization legislation. Their “race-class purity attitudes,” mixed with an existing climate of nativist and fiscal concerns, underpinned the 1928 Sexual Sterilization Act and established a closer link between undesirable and “defective” behaviour.

This link is explored further in the next chapter, as Dyck adeptly approaches the “complicated” relationship between eugenics and aboriginal peoples. Effectively sidestepping “conspiratorial allegations,” chapter 2 charts the changing attitude of eugenicists toward aboriginal people: from one of faith in a Darwinian solution to the “Indian problem,” to the aggressive targeting of aboriginal women toward the program’s end, when federal policy changes facilitated the mass sterilization of aboriginal people.

Perhaps the strongest element of Dyck’s study considers how gendered ideals shaped sterilization policies. Chapters 3 and 4 explore how the “mythology” surrounding sterilization “changed considerably” during the interwar period. Increasing demand for contraceptive sterilization saw women challenge a “patriarchal legal system and a patronizing set of moral and religious arguments.” Dyck’s equal focus on masculinity presents a welcome and underexplored aspect of this story. Dyck notes how the evolving ideal of masculinity around the 1950s recast the vasectomy, once believed to undermine masculinity, as a “rational, economical, even manly operation,” and saw increasing numbers of men request the operation.

Another compelling feature of Dyck’s study is her use of patient-oriented archive collections. While the case studies in previous chapters are pieced together from the extant Eugenics Board files, the evidence used for chapters 5 and 6 originates from the survivors themselves. Alberta is almost unique in the willingness of its survivors to share their experiences, and the sources provided by Doreen Befus and Leilani Muir reveal important features about life under, and after, eugenics in Alberta. Befus’s diary and writings, used in chapter 5, highlight her own successes and difficulties following deinstitutionalization, and the assistance she provided for other “handicappi.” The following chapter discusses Muir’s prominent legal action against the Albertan government for her wrongful sterilization, which “catapulted the issue of Canadian eugenics into the public discourse” and signalled a shift away from “explicit feminist perspectives” in such debates.

The final chapter focuses on the legacy of eugenic thought on debates over birth control and abortion in the 1970s. Dyck argues that greater access “did not usher in an uncomplicated era of reproductive choice.” Instead, the author highlights how physicians, donning “updated language to describe ability and disability,” fought to maintain their authority over reproductive choice and continued to pathologize women’s behaviour.

Dyck reveals a complex history of reproductive politics, and one that implicates an array of social and political authorities. Her study is well researched, and documented in forty-one pages of endnotes. Notwithstanding its breadth, Dyck’s examination flows with clarity throughout, and its uncomplicated thematic framework and thorough contextualization make the text accessible to non-expert readers. The author’s greatest success lies in her ability to personalize this sweeping history through the evocative accounts of individuals who experienced it. This approach...