The limits of eugenics / by Albert Galloway Keller.

  • Albert Galloway Keller
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The limits of eugenics / by Albert Galloway Keller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    born; if, therefore, we may legislate to prevent their conception in one way why not in another? Have we any more right to interfere in one case than in the other? If we legislate to prevent certain marriages because the re¬ sults are according to sociologic standards economically detrimental, I insist that we can, for like reasons, legislate to accomplish the same result in the manner proposed. It is as much an interference with natural laws in one case as in the other. The marriage ceremony itself is a restriction on the laws of nature, a necessity incident to civilized life; we legislate to compel its observance in order to prevent the evils incident to the propagation of children without legal protectors and caretakers during infancy and child¬ hood. By natural laws the mother cares for the child during the infantile period but the laws of civilization as against natural laws demand that the male parent shall support and protect both mother and child during this same period. May we not legislate to prevent breeding a race that are physically incapable of thus supporting their offspring but when born throw them upon the community which has had nothing to do with their creation? I grant that according to Christian and civilized laws the incapable, physically or mentally, should be cared for, but should he be bred? It is frequently urged that these classes should be segregated to prevent breeding. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why this involuntary seclusion is not in the nature of a punishment for no crime; as reprehensible as to do a slight and painless surgical operation. In this bill the word “criminal” does not occur. I do not advocate the sterilization of the criminal as such—it is to prevent the propagation of the race of imbeciles and degenerates, leading in later generations to the delinquent and criminal that I argue. In this and some other states there are laws forbidding marriages between epileptics and other grave nervous affections because of the likelihood that the children of such unions will inherit like diseases, and become burdens on the community in which they live. Before this law was enacted it was shown that female paupers or imbeciles cared for in one town had been, through the influence of and abetted by the selectmen, married to some degenerate male of another more or less remote town—thus transferring the burden of caring for her and the children arising from the union to the second town. This sharp practice was regarded as quite a legitimate, if not a praiseworthy, transaction, quite in the nature of “good” horse trade until the law in spite of some opposition put the stamp of a felony upon it. I beg to quote, without comment, as my time is about to expire, the fol¬ lowing, viz.: In a cantonal asylum in Switzerland four persons, two females and two males, were confined who while not strictly insane were mentally defective, feeble-minded or imbecile, but physically vigorous, able and will¬ ing to work for themselves; there were no strictly medical reasons for keep¬ ing them under duress. Sexual inclinations were strong in all four. Both women, aged 25 and 36, respectively, had illegitimate children likewise