Only in America - Wow! The things I didn't know.
Courtesy of The Freelance Star (17 Feb 09)
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2009/022009/02172009/446062VIRGINIA STATUTE INSPIRED HITLER
Virginia, along with the rest of the United States, allowed compulsory sterilization before Adolf Hitler ever took power. One of Hitler's first moves when he came to power was the Sterilization Act, which was based on Virginia's statute, according to a 1993 documentary.
Through the 1970s, more than 70,000 Americans were sterilized under "eugenics," the science of good breeding. Those judged by the state to be defective or inferior were targeted, according to the documentary "The Lynchburg Story: Eugenic Sterilization in America."
Virginia passed its eugenics law in 1924 and routinely sterilized the blind and deaf, epileptics, those with tuberculosis and the homeless and poor.
More than 8,000 children and teenagers were sterilized at the Lynchburg Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded until 1972.
A test case of Virginia's sterilization law reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927. A woman who became pregnant after she was raped was deemed "morally delinquent" and "socially inadequate" and was sent to Lynchburg to be sterilized.
The court upheld the state's decision to sterilize.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the majority opinion in the case. He called the woman the feeble-minded daughter of a feeble-minded mother, who'd had several illegitimate children.
"Three generations of imbeciles are enough," he said.
The way he saw it, forced sterilization was the same as compulsory vaccination.
