Carrie Buck was a victim of the American eugenics movement, being sterilized without consent under a 1924 Virginia law. She challenged the law in court but lost. Later, it was revealed that she was not feeble-minded and was likely sterilized to cover up a family shame. The court decision legitimized compulsory sterilization laws in the US, which were repealed in the 1960s and 1970s.
Carrie Buck (1906-1983) is a woman well known for the role she played in the American eugenics movement. She was the victim of a 1924 Virginia law requiring sterilization for the so-called feeble-minded, even though she challenged the law in court. In retrospect, Buck’s treatment has been widely condemned, along with the treatment of numerous other institutionalized patients who have been sterilized without consent, and sometimes without their knowledge.
Carrie was born to Emma Buck, an apparently rather poor and possibly sexually promiscuous woman. Carrie was taken in by her mother after her birth and placed in the care of foster parents, doing quite well in school before being pulled out to work around the house. At 17, Buck became pregnant with her, and her adoptive parents sent her to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. When her baby Vivian was born, her adoptive parents took care of the baby and Carrie remained in the institution.
The head of the institute filed a request to be able to sterilize Carrie Buck, claiming she was “a threat to the gene pool”. In 1927, Carrie sued the institution in Buck v. Bell, and the Supreme Court upheld the 1924 Sterilization Act. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the majority opinion, which included the famous line, “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.” to justify the sterilization of Buck, his mother and his sisters. Only one judge disagreed with the decision.
As it turns out, Carrie Buck wasn’t feeble-minded by any stretch of the imagination. It appears that she was a perfectly normal and healthy young woman; the only condition she suffered from was poverty. Her pregnancy was later revealed to be the result of a rape by one of her adoptive relatives, and some historians have suggested that Carrie was pawned and sterilized to cover up the family’s shame. After being spayed, Carrie Buck was released and went on to marry, later stating that she greatly regretted the fact that she couldn’t have more children. Her daughter, Vivian, died at the age of eight.
The 1927 court decision legitimized compulsory sterilization laws in the United States, spurring many states to add those laws to the books. It wasn’t until 1942 that the practice of compulsory sterilization began to decline, with most states repealing such laws in the 1960s. Virginia’s 1924 law was not repealed until 1974.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
