Eugenic States: A Contextual Archive Main Menu Introduction Critical Themes in the History of Eugenics Eugenic Practices in California, Iowa, and North Carolina What We Can Say with Data Acknowledgements

Consent

3 The State and Institutions
State lawmakers, medical officials, and public figures invested in eugenic thought argued that consent was required to approve sterilizations and perform the medical procedure. However, when we look closer at stories from people who confronted sterilization in state institutions and interactions with state officials, we begin to see a complicated story about how individuals referred for sterilization could be forced into the procedure through coercion.

Families were significant figures in each state’s sterilization proceedings because state officials often pursued their approval to provide consent for sterilization. In some cases, family members fought to prevent the procedure from taking place. Many state eugenics laws noted that gaining the consent of an individual, family member, or legal guardian was a mandatory step to approve an individual’s sterilization. However, the presence of state laws that required the consent of the patient, family member, or guardian did not mean that sterilization procedures could not be performed if consent was absent. Iowa eugenics laws passed in 1929 required that the state eugenics board must obtain consent, but made an exception that “Should the consent not be forthcoming, the board may institute court proceedings whether its findings and conclusions ‘shall be affirmed.’” The defendant can appeal to the supreme court. Similarly, the North Carolina Eugenics Board reserved the right to override the wishes of family members or to go forward with a sterilization procedure if no one was present to provide authorization. State by state, the conditions that required consent varied, and lack of consent could be overturned if the right conditions were met.

The families and legal guardians of individuals referred for sterilization sometimes tried to resist sterilization orders. In one 1937 request from Sonoma State Hospital in California, the mother of an eighteen-year-old woman referred for the procedure refused to provide consent for sterilization and instead noted that the decision should be left to her daughter. In other cases, the family members repeatedly denied consent for the procedure, as state health officials noted in one patient’s file: “The father has persistently refused to give his consent for sterilization.” Although the explanations for the a family’s refusals were not always listed in patient records, institutional documents sometimes provided a small window into their reasoning. Some families refused to subject their relatives to the procedure due to religious concerns. In a 1941 case from California, a mother refused sterilization for her two daughters on the grounds that her children were not admitted to Sonoma State Hospital for the purpose of sterilization. Minutes from a 1950 Eugenics Board hearing in North Carolina showed that a fifteen-year-old white girl’s guardian argued that the girl should instead undergo “socialized training” and “individual care” under institutional supervision because the guardian protested that the operation would “[deprive] her of the natural procreation of children” in case “she matures sufficiently.” These records reflected that people did, at times, intervene and objected against sterilization when they believed it would negatively impact their relatives.

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