Down here in Virginia the finer citizens are toasting Governor
Mark Warner, who has stepped forward to
apologize for the state’s former policy of sterilizing the
“unfit.” The governor issued the apology on the 75th anniversary of
the Supreme Court’s decision (that’s the U.S. Supreme Court) that
backed the state’s eugenics program — a program, as the Associated
Press points out, that was a model for similar policies in 30 other
states.
There are those, to be sure, who will chide Warner for what they
consider to be a particularly crude case of moral streaking. Coming
out against forced sterilization, at first blush as least, seems to
be a safe gambit, much like coming out against slavery and against
the practice of burning witches at the stake. It is also true that
Warner is an easy target. He rode to victory on a torrent of his
own money. In these parts, purchasing an office is a practice still
associated with carpetbaggers.
Yet charges of cynicism and cheap moral posturing are somewhat
off base. The fact is, if one could put this eugenics policy to a
vote, there’s a good chance that much of it would gain wide
support. That’s not only in Virginia, but across the nation.
Let’s consider some the main points of the sterilization
program, which was in operation from 1924 to 1979 and which
rendered some 7,450 people unable to reproduce (all told, some
60,000 U.S. citizens were sterilized). As the AP explained: “The
law targeted virtually any human shortcoming that was believed to
be hereditary, including mental illness, mental retardation,
epilepsy, alcoholism and criminal behavior. Even people deemed to
be ‘ne’er-do-wells’ were sometimes targeted.” In one instance a
fellow named Raymond W. Hudlow was forcibly sterilized — because
he was a runaway.
The first thing one notes is how sparingly the policy was
implemented. To suggest that between the years 1924 and 1979, only
7,450 Virginians qualified under these guidelines is of course
ridiculous. Many millions of potential victims slipped through the
cracks.
Indeed, tens of millions could have been snipped if the
“ne’er-do-well” category were fully exploited. Many people, after
all, consider a mere slacker or perpetual porch-sitter to be a
ne’er-do-well. Many, if not most, high school students fall into
that category, as do a sizable number of college students and
almost all their professors. Anyone with their name on the welfare
roles, or who checked in to a 12-step program, might also go under
the knife.
And there seems little doubt that many citizens would not be
appalled, and indeed would likely applaud, a policy that terminated
the bloodlines of the mentally ill, retarded, and criminal (drunks
might be spared, since so many homes include one). We are, after
all, living in a world that is quite receptive to eugenics of other
types. As Joycelyn Elders once famously crowed, most children with
Down syndrome are now snuffed in the womb. Other types of unwanted
pregnancies are aborted by the tens of millions. In that spirit,
Gov. Warner recently stood against legislation that would ban
partial-birth abortion, clearly a form of infanticide.
Elsewhere, the attempt to weed out genetic disorders proceeds.
To most people that is a laudable mission — science at its best.
Perhaps one day the only time humans will see a drunk,
kleptomaniac, or someone with crossed eyes or webbed toes will be
in a museum or picture book. It is also hoped that eugenics will
help weed out various causes of mental instability, thus breaking
the cycle that is passed through generations and causes such
misery.
The other side of the coin, to be sure, is that there’s a good
chance of abuse. By locking certain popular traits into the
species, humanity might become frightfully homogenous. We could,
theoretically at least, morph into pretty much the same person.
This will be good news to the people who like to go about saying
“we are one!” For others of us, however, the picture is a great
deal grimmer. The only way our descendants might meet someone
interesting, or at least different, will be if aliens arrive from
outer space.
Meantime, hail Warner. The governor is clearly a creature of his
age, and probably would have embraced the sterilization program at
its inception, just as he embraces our more modern forms of
eugenics. At the same time, his posturing wasn’t as cheap as it
might initially appear, and might even put him at some danger
should his car break down in certain neighborhoods. Then again, it
probably won’t hurt him a bit in the darker hollows, where some
families have undertaken several generations of inbreeding to
achieve their perfectly pointed heads, despite the threat of
government intervention.
