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. Some of the society members were scientists from a wide range of disciplines who supported the now disproven notion that fundamental biological differences exist between races that may justify the control of human reproduction. The Galton Society drew on the scientific credibility and influence of its members to advocate for eugenics programs, such as immigration restriction laws, in the US.

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. Historians have associated Sharp’s use of the procedure, primarily on prison inmates, with eugenics, a movement with the goal of bettering humans via selective reproductive practices. With vasectomy, Sharp was able to sterilize people whom he did not deem fit to reproduce. Beyond simply pushing forward a new surgical method of sterilization, Sharp’s political advocacy led to the use of his technique as a method of eugenicist control over human reproduction, especially in Indiana.

A vasectomy is a surgery that works to inhibit reproduction by interrupting the passage of sperm through the vas deferens, a tube in the male reproductive system. The procedure is a method of inhibiting an individual’s ability to cause pregnancy through sexual intercourse without altering the other functions of the penis and testes. In the US, into the early 1900s, proponents of eugenics, the belief that human populations can be made better by selecting for so-called desirable traits, used the procedure to forcibly sterilize people whom they deemed undesirable. Despite its early associations with eugenics, physicians’ use of vasectomy eventually transitioned into an option for elective contraception. Even with the various shifts in motivation for performing vasectomies, as of 2023, patients have the choice to undergo a sterilization procedure if they want to restrict their own ability to have children.

In 1933, an act of the North Carolina legislature created the Eugenics Board of North Carolina, or EBNC, to oversee the practice of sterilization, which is the removal of an individual’s ability to reproduce, in the state. Beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the US eugenics movement involved both state and non-governmental entities attempting to improve human populations through selective breeding, which included sterilization of those labeled as genetically inferior. In North Carolina, the EBNC headed the state government’s eugenics program and oversaw decisions related to the sterilization of poor and disabled people. By the time of the dissolution of the EBNC in the late 1970s, an estimated 7,600 people had undergone forced sterilization under the board’s approval. Some of them later received funds in the 2010s from the state government in one of the first programs to provide compensation to involuntarily sterilized individuals. The EBNC presided over the sterilizations of thousands of people in North Carolina, prompting one of the first attempts at eugenics reparations in the US.

Paul Bowman Popenoe was a researcher, writer, and social advocate who studied breeding in the United States during the twentieth century, first in plants and then in humans. Popenoe advocated for eugenic policies in California and beyond in the early twentieth century, and he introduced and promoted marriage counseling as a professional service in the US during the mid-twentieth century. The US eugenics movement, in which Popenoe participated, was a scientific and political project in which eugenicists attempted to improve human populations through selective breeding. Participants of the movement often advocated for the implementation of compulsory sterilization laws for certain “undesirable” populations. Though largely disavowed as of 2026, eugenics persisted well into the twentieth century. Through dozens of publications and a lifetime of public advocacy, Popenoe supported policies that led to the forced sterilization of thousands of people in California and popularized counseling as an intervention into people’s marriages and reproductive choices.