West Coast History of Science Society Meeting
University of California, San Francisco
April 11th - April 14th, 2002[Program]
The Organization of Compulsory Sterilization and Eugenics in California, 1909-1950Alex Wellerstein
UC BerkeleyCalifornia's first human sterilization statute of 1909 provided for the compulsory sterilization of people incarcerated in state institutions: psychiatric hospitals, penal institutions, and homes for the "feeble-minded." By 1951, around 11,491 mental patients had been sterilized under the law, predominantly through vasectomies and salpingectomies. California led the nation in the number of mental patients involuntarily sterilized; by 1921 over 83% of the country's compulsory sterilizations had taken place in California, and by 1951 California' totals remained yearly half of the national total. The traditional approach to this phenomena in California, as in the rest of the USA, and to eugenics in general, has been on a national and macroscopic scale, dealing primarily with the published spokesmen and the information from those people and organizations who claimed credit for these actions. My paper is based on three case studies of specific locations and a careful re-reading of legislation, with the aim of reevaluating the manner and mechanism of California's compulsory sterilization. It frames questions about the way historians approach American eugenics that break significantly with previous methodology.