Re-examining Supreme Court support for sterilization: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough, ”Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., 1927 Supreme Court decision.
You can read the entire article here. My suggestion for the future of this country is that we must be informed, be very informed. for more information you might check Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell. Needless to say, the next two Supreme Court nominations will be very important."The fix was in," says Lombardo, in a phone interview. After proceeding through Virginia's Supreme Court of Appeals, Buck's case headed in 1926 to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court was then headed by Chief Justice William Howard Taft, the former president, who "for more than 30 years," writes Lombardo, "lent his support to some of the most prominent leaders of the eugenics movement." After hearing arguments from Strode and Whitehead, Taft assigned the writing of the opinion in the Buck case to Justice Holmes.
Holmes "had no compunctions about 'restricting propagation by the undesirables and putting to death infants that didn't pass examination.'," writes Lombardo. Holmes was a friend of the British eugenicist Harold Laski, who often spoke out against charity as "fostering the weaker part of mankind." Holmes parroted the writings of earlier eugenicists, Lombardo notes, when he wrote in his famous opinion: "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."
Categories: Sterilization, Abortion, Supreme Court Judge selection, The Eugenics Connection
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