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Eugenical Sterilization in the United States (1922), by Harry H. Laughlin

Eugenical Sterilization in the United States is a 1922 book in which author Harry H. Laughlin argues for the necessity of compulsory sterilization in the United States based on the principles of eugenics. The eugenics movement of the early twentieth century in the US focused on altering the genetic makeup of the US population by regulating immigration and sterilization, and by discouraging interracial procreation, then called miscegenation.

Format: Articles

Subject: Outreach, Legal, Ethics, Publications

Sterilization Act of 1924

The passage of the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 demonstrates how science has been used to drive policy throughout history. In the case of the Virginia sterilization law, the science used to draft the law was based on the principles of eugenics. With the help of Harry Laughlin's Model Sterilization Law, the state of Virginia was able to pass its own law allowing sterilization of the feebleminded, expressing sterilization as a health issue that needed to be protected from the public.

Format: Articles

Subject: Legal, Reproduction

Thesis: Informed Consent Laws for Abortion: What Do Women Have a "Right to Know?

The objective of this project was to determine the importance of informed consent laws to achieving the larger goal of dismantling the right to abortion. I found that informed consent counseling materials in most states contain a full timeline of fetal development, along with information about the risks of abortion, the risks of childbirth, and alternatives to abortion. In addition, informed consent laws for abortion are based on model legislation called the “Women’s Right to Know Act” developed by Americans United for Life (AUL).

Format: Essays and Theses

Subject: Legal, Ethics

"A Stochastic Model of Stem Cell Proliferation, Based on the Growth of Spleen Colony-Forming Cells” (1964) by James Till, Ernest McCulloch, and Louis Siminovitch

In 1964, authors James Till, Ernest McCulloch, and Louis Siminovitch, published A Stochastic Model of Stem Cell Proliferation, Based on The Growth of Spleen Colony-Forming Cells, which discussed possible mechanisms that control stem cell division. The authors wrote the article following their experiments with spleens of irradiated mice to demonstrate the existence of stem cells, had unknown properties.

Format: Articles

Subject: Experiments

“The Social and Psychological Impact of Endometriosis on Women’s Lives: A Critical Narrative Review” (2013), by Lorraine Culley, Caroline Law, Nicky Hudson, Elaine Denny, Helene Mitchell, Miriam Baumgarten, and Nicholas Raine-Fenning

In “The Social and Psychological Impact of Endometriosis on Women’s Lives: A Critical Narrative Review,” hereafter “Social and Psychological Impact of Endometriosis,” authors Lorraine Culley, Caroline Law, Nicky Hudson, Elaine Denny, Helene Mitchell, Miriam Baumgarten, and Nicholas Raine-Fenning review the extent at which endometriosis results in a negative quality of life for affected women.

Format: Articles

Subject: Reproduction, Disorders, Publications

Thesis: The Dynamic Landscape of Abortion Law in the United States

Much change has occurred in abortion laws over the past 50 years, this thesis tracks those changes principally through Supreme Court Cases, such as United States v. Milan Vuitch, Roe v. Wade, and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood among others. The landscape of abortion law in the US continues to shift today, as recently as 2017 with Plowman v. FMCH cases were being heard in courts that wrought subtle yet important changes in abortion law.

Format: Essays and Theses

Subject: Legal

Human Betterment Foundation (1928-1942)

In 1928 Ezra Seymour Gosney founded the non-profit Human Betterment Foundation (HBF) in Pasadena, California to support the research and publication of the personal and social effects of eugenic sterilizations carried out in California. Led by director Gosney and secretary Paul Popenoe, the HBF collected data on thousands of individuals in California who had been involuntarily sterilized under a California state law enacted in 1909. The Foundation's assets were liquidated following Gosney's death in 1942.

Format: Articles

Subject: Organizations, Reproduction

Buck v. Bell (1927)

In 1927, the US Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell set the legal precedent that states may sterilize inmates of public institutions because the court argued that imbecility, epilepsy, and feeblemindedness are hereditary, and that the inmates should be prevented from passing these defects to the next generation. On 2 May 1927, in an eight to one decision, the US Supreme Court ordered that Carrie Buck, feebleminded daughter of a feebleminded mother and herself the mother of a feebleminded child, be sterilized under the 1924 Virginia Eugenical Sterilization Act. Buck v.

Format: Articles

Subject: Legal, Reproduction

Stump v. Sparkman (1978)

On March 28, 1978, in Stump v. Sparkman, hereafter Stump, the United States Supreme Court held, in a five-to-three decision, that judges have absolute immunity from lawsuits involving any harm their judicial decisions cause. Linda Sparkman, who was unknowingly sterilized when she was fifteen years old in 1971, sued Harold Stump, the county circuit court judge who signed the petition to allow Sparkman’s mother to have her sterilized. Sparkman’s mother stated to Stump that she wanted her daughter sterilized because of Sparkman’s alleged mental deficiencies and sexual promiscuity.

Format: Articles

Subject: Legal, Ethics, Reproduction

Oregon State Board of Eugenics

In 1917 the Oregon State Legislature, in Salem, Oregon, passed a bill titled, 'To Prevent Procreation of Certain Classes in Oregon.' Passage of the bill created the Oregon State Board of Eugenics, an organization that presided over the forced sterilization of more than 2,600 Oregon residents from 1917 to 1981. In 1983, Legislation abolished the State Board of Eugenics, by that time called the Oregon State Board of Social Protection.

Format: Articles

Subject: Organizations, Reproduction

Harry Hamilton Laughlin (1880-1943)

Harry Hamilton Laughlin helped lead the eugenics
movement in the United States during the early twentieth century.
The US eugenics movement of the early twentieth century sought to
reform the genetic composition of the United States population through
sterilization and other restrictive reproductive measures. Laughlin
worked as superintendent and assistant director of the Eugenics
Research Office (ERO) at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold
Spring Harbor, New York, alongside director Charles Davenport.

Format: Articles

Subject: People, Reproduction

Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942)

In 1942, the United States Supreme Court Case of Skinner v. Oklahoma ruled that states could not legally sterilize those inmates of prisons deemed habitual criminals. Skinner v. Oklahoma was about the case of Jack Skinner, an inmate of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, who was subject to sterilization under the Oklahoma Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act of 1935. The case, decided on 1 June 1942, determined that state laws were unconstitutional if those laws enabled states to forcibly sterilize inmates deemed to be habitual criminals.

Format: Articles

Subject: Ethics, Legal

The Galton Society for the Study of the Origin and Evolution of Man (1918–1935)

Charles Benedict Davenport, Madison Grant, and Henry Fairfield Osborn founded the Galton Society for the Study of the Origin and Evolution of Man, or the Galton Society, in New York City, New York, in 1918. The Galton Society was a scientific society that promoted the study of humans in terms of race in service to the US eugenics movement. The Galton Society was named in honor of Francis Galton who first coined the term eugenics in 1883. Galton and other eugenics proponents claimed that the human species could improve through selective breeding that restricted who could have children.

Format: Articles

Subject: Organizations

Adolf Ziegler

The scientific field of embryology experienced great growth in scope and direction in Germany from approximately 1850 to 1920. During this time, Adolf Ziegler and his son Friedrich crafted hundreds of wax embryo models, representing a shift in how embryos were viewed and used. Their final products, whether human or trout embryos, showcased the now lost collaboration between wax modeling artists and embryologists.

Format: Articles

Subject: People

"The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" (1952), by Alan M. Turing

In 1952 the article "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" by the British mathematician and logician Alan M. Turing was published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. In that article Turing describes a mathematical model of the growing embryo. He uses this model to show how embryos develop patterns and structures (e.g., coat patterns and limbs, respectively). Turing's mathematical approach became fundamental for explaining the developmental process of embryos.

Format: Articles

Subject: Publications

Harry Clay Sharp (1870-1940)

Harry Clay Sharp was a surgeon who performed one of the first recorded vasectomies with the purpose of sterilizing a patient. Sterilization is the practice that makes a person unable to reproduce, and vasectomy accomplishes that by severing the vasa deferentia, the sperm-carrying tubes in the male reproductive system. Historically, sterilization procedures have varied in techniques, goals, and risks, but Sharp’s method of vasectomy allowed restriction of a patient’s reproductive functions without significantly affecting other bodily functions.

Format: Articles

Subject: Legal, Ethics, People, Organizations, Technologies

"Experiments in Plant Hybridization" (1866), by Johann Gregor Mendel

During the mid-nineteenth century, Johann Gregor Mendel experimented with pea plants to develop a theory of inheritance. In 1843, while a monk in the Augustian St Thomas's Abbey in Brünn, Austria, now Brno, Czech Repubic, Mendel examined the physical appearance of the abbey's pea plants (Pisum sativum) and noted inconsistencies between what he saw and what the blending theory of inheritance, a primary model of inheritance at the time, predicted.

Format: Articles

Subject: Experiments

Madison Grant (1865–1937)

Madison Grant was a lawyer and wildlife conservationist who advocated for eugenics policies in the US during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In his 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race; or, The Racial Basis of European History, Grant argued that what he called the Nordic race, which originated from northwest Europe, was biologically and culturally superior to all other people, including other Europeans.

Format: Articles

Subject: People

In re Marriage of Witten (2003)

In re Marriage of Witten, decided by the Iowa Supreme Court in 2003, held that neither Tamera nor Arthur (Trip) Witten could use or destroy several cryopreserved preembryos created during their marriage using in vitro fertilization (IVF), unless the former couple could reach a mutual agreement. Tamera and Trip Witten, unable to conceive conventionally during their marriage, had attempted to start a family together using IVF at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha, Nebraska.

Format: Articles

Subject: Legal

Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)

In 1990, the United States Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the ADA, which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities by employers, governments, or public accommodations. Following gains made during the civil rights movements of the 1900s, people with disabilities sought similar anti-discrimination legislation. The ADA was the culmination of decades of protest and advocacy from the disability rights movement. After the ADA, federal law protected people with an impairment that limited major life functions like sight or mobility from discrimination.

Format: Articles

Subject: Disorders, Organizations, Legal

Turpin v. Sortini (1982)

The Supreme Court of California reversed the Superior Court of Fresno County's decision to dismiss the Turpins' claims in the case Turpin v. Sortini on 3 May 1982. The case was based upon a wrongful life claim, in which a disabled child sues physicians for neglecting to inform its parents of potential genetic defects, resulting in harm to the child when it is born. The Turpin case determined tha a physician could be liable for failing to inform parents of potential birth defects in the fetus.

Format: Articles

Subject: Legal, Reproduction

Davis v. Davis (1992)

In Davis v. Davis (1992), the Supreme Court of Tennessee decided a dispute over cryopreserved preembryos in favor of Junior Lewis Davis, who sought to have the preembryos destroyed over the objections of his former wife, Mary Sue Davis. The decision in Davis, although not binding in other states, suggested a framework for resolving similar disputes in the US. That framework established that courts should follow the wishes of those who contribute their sperm and egg cells, or gamete providers, to create preembryos.

Format: Articles

Subject: Legal

Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act (1921)

In November 1921, US Congress passed the National Maternity and Infancy Protection Act, also called the Sheppard-Towner Act. The Act provided federal funds to states to establish programs to educate people about prenatal health and infant welfare. Advocates argued that it would curb the high infant mortality rate in the US.

Format: Articles

Subject: Legal, Outreach

Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt (2016)

In the 2016 case Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, the US Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the Texas requirements that abortion providers have admitting privileges at local hospitals and that abortion facilities meet ambulatory surgical center standards. Whole Woman’s Health represented abortion care providers in Texas and brought the case against the commissioner for the Texas Department of State Health Services, John Hellerstedt.

Format: Articles

Subject: Legal, Reproduction

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