Eugenics and Birth Control

BY KATHERINE GLADHART-HAYES

Stories about changing laws that impact reproductive health and rights are constantly in the news. Most often (in liberal media, at least), such stories portray a long push towards access against traditional moral arguments. Many people are unaware that abortion was legal in the United States until the 1840s. The history of these bans, and of other policies and practices around reproductive health, is closely tied to the biases and prejudices evident in the eugenics movement. Indeed, policies around birth control and abortion have both been shaped by eugenics or eugenics-like thinking.

ABOVE: Margaret Sanger, a 20th-century birth control activist who helped found what is now the Planned Parenthood Federation of America

While the early abortion bans of the 1840s predate the eugenics movement (which began in the 1880s), they reflected many of the same ideas and assumptions about the relative value of different groups. For example, proponents of these bills were concerned about declining birth rates among upper-middle-class white women relative to low-income women and women of color (1). At the turn of the century, some eugenicists began using the phrase “race suicide,” to express this long-standing fear that the white population, through greater access to abortion, would decline in numbers relative to people of color. The prevalence of racist assumptions about who “should” be breeding meant that just as white, middle class women achieved more access to birth control, other women were denied reproductive autonomy. The history of birth control, including sterilization, further demonstrates the tight ties between legislation related to reproductive rights and the history of both “positive” and “negative” eugenics (see page 8). Policies based on positive eugenics sought to encourage the “breeding” of those deemed “fit” while negative eugenics sought to limit the “breeding” of the “unfit.” The negative eugenics policies of forced sterilization targeted both communities of color and people with disabilities. Writing about forced sterilization of Indigenous women in the U.S., some scholars use the term “sterilization abuse” to encompass a range of non-consensual and coercive procedures (2). As late as the 1970s, some women reported that they were asked to consent to sterilization procedures while they were in labor (2). One woman reported being given “vitamins” that turned out to be birth control pills (2); another woman, at the age of 20, consented to a hysterectomy after being told the procedure was reversible (3). In studying the prevalence of such practices in the U.S., Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri concluded in 1974 that they targeted “full-blood Indian women” (3).

Distribution of birth control methods presented a range of practices and ethical gray areas. Some cases, such as those in which individuals were explicitly lied to regarding their care, demonstrate clear ethics violations. In other instances, the line between coercion and empowerment is less clear, as with distribution of birth control to Indigenous women in Northern Canada. Scholars Erika Dyck and Maureen Lux write that “[d]istributing birth control in the 1970s cannot be neatly described as uniformly coercive or unilaterally requested” as women found there to be both empowering and controlling aspects to birth control access (4). For married, middle-class white women, the language of eugenics and public health offered opportunities to advocate for greater control over their reproductive decisions. Dyck writes of women in Alberta between the 1930s and ’60s “conceptualizing reproductive rights as a form of modern, perhaps even scientific, feminism” (5). These individuals pushed against ideas that only the “unfit” could access sterilization procedures or birth control options and make decisions themselves.

The story of eugenics and birth control is complex. Eugenic policies both restricted and supported reproductive autonomy in different ways for different groups of people. While the U.S. and Canadian governments sterilized many individuals without their consent, negative eugenics policies allowing for sterilization also allowed some women greater access to reproductive care. Many proponents of birth control access are also strong supporters of abortion access. A nuanced understanding of how eugenics and eugenics-like thinking has shaped policies around these issues in restrictive ways allows for a thoughtful approach to justice and access, recognizing that access is not the most important question, if it isn’t accompanied by justice.

LEFT: Pamphlet published by the U.S. Department of Health and Wellness in 1974 to promote sterilization among Native Americans

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons