In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

9 1 At the time Harry Laughlin’s Model Law was first published in 1914, twelve states had enacted sterilization laws.¹ During that same period, four others passed bills that governors subsequently vetoed, and two existing state laws were invalidated by the courts. Between 1914 and 1922, the year that Laughlin’s book appeared, five other states passed laws—but one early enactment was repealed, three more were overturned in court, and two other attempts at new or amended legislation were vetoed.² By the 1920s, this very spotty record of legislative progress left proponents of sterilization far from optimistic about the future of legally mandated surgery. Some 3,200 sterilizations had been performed on inmates of prisons, insane asylums, homes for the epileptic or feebleminded, and similar institutions of social welfare by 1922, but almost 80 percent of those operations took place in California.³ In other states, legal controversy still existed about the extent of patient/inmate rights and whether surgery could ever be a proper punishment for crime. Other problems included widespread disagreement about the value of sterilization in a campaign for “human betterment”—even among self-proclaimed eugenicists. Though some physicians who directed institutions of social welfare had been among the staunchest lobbyists for the laws, many others disapproved of the procedure on both moral and scientific grounds. The most dramatic case of medical resistance occurred in South Dakota. Despite a state law that authorized surgeries in a state institution, physicians who opposed the procedure there simply refused to operate.⁴ In the face of these obstacles, by 1923 the extensive and coordinated program Laughlin had proposed in 1914 seemed unlikely to materialize. In Virginia, Albert Priddy was blocked by the absence of legal authority that would support a wholesale campaign of surgery. Priddy’s legal embarrassment in the Mallory cases prompted him to lobby the General Board of State Hospitals. That group—made up of representatives from all Virginia A Virginia Sterilization Law 7 9 2 | Three Generations, No Imbeciles mental asylums—endorsed the campaign to sterilize the “unfit” and informally approached legislators for support. Hesitant to get behind what some saw as a radical measure, legislators joked that the law “might get all of us.”⁵ Priddy’s eugenics crusade stalled at the prospect of being mocked by lawmakers. But lack of legislative sanction for surgery was only a temporary barrier. He requested and received support from the Colony Board of Directors to visit the famous Chicago Juvenile Court of Judge Harry Olson .⁶ Then Priddy turned to Aubrey Strode, the Colony’s advocate in the Virginia General Assembly, to remedy his legal vulnerability. Strode had served in the Judge Advocate Corps of the Army during World War I. His Army commission, arranged by his boyhood friend Irving Whitehead, had taken him to France for several months.⁷ He returned to Virginia for a final session as state legislator following the Armistice. Though Strode was out of the country during the Mallory litigation, upon his return he wasted no time renewing his work for Priddy—drafting laws for the Colony. In 1920 Strode drafted two bills in an attempt to remedy the vagueness of earlier laws that had been scrutinized in the Mallory lawsuit. The first bill specified that lawsuits in which inmates of state mental hospitals challenged their confinement must be filed in the city where the inmate was hospitalized. It contained a provision requiring the state to pay the legal costs of hospital superintendents, like Priddy, who were sued. The second bill declared all persons already committed to state hospitals as feebleminded or epileptic by court order or “commissions of feeblemindedness” to be “lawfully committed patients.”⁸ In other words, patients currently in state hospitals were, retroactively and en masse, assumed to have been properly committed. Both bills became law. The new laws had the effect of protecting Priddy from other lawsuits like the Mallory case. Never again would he suffer the humiliation of being dragged into court in another part of the state, nor would he worry about the expense of funding a legal defense. Strode’s work gave Priddy a new layer of insulation against legal action and provided him with more power over those in his care. Priddy approached Strode again in 1921, asking for advice on how to restart the campaign for a state sterilization law. Strode’s research revealed that several state laws applying to inmates of public institutions had been declared unconstitutional. They violated provisions for due...

Share