We shall review only the bills which are
actually on the statute books in 1916, and shall not attempt to detail
all the provisions of them, but shall consider only the means by which
they propose to attain a eugenic end.
The state of Indiana allows the sterilization of all inmates of state
institutions, deemed by a commission of three surgeons to be
unimprovable physically or mentally, and unfit for procreation. The
object is purely eugenic. After a few hundred operations had been
performed in Jeffersonville reformatory, the law aroused the hostility
of Governor Thomas R. Marshall, who succeeded in preventing its
enforcement; since 1913 we believe it has not been in effect. It is
defectively drawn in some ways, particularly because it includes those
who will be kept in custody for life, and who are therefore not proper
objects of sterilization.
The Washington law applies to habitual criminals and sex offenders; it
is a punitive measure which may be ordered by the court passing sentence
on the offender, but has never been put in force. Sterilization is not a
suitable method of punishment, and its value as a eugenic instrument is
jeopardized by the interjection of the punitive motive.
California applied her law to all inmates (not voluntary) of state
hospitals for the insane and the state home for the feeble-minded, and
all recidivists in the state prisons.
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