Proposed sterilization of certain mental and physical degenerates : an appeal to asylum managers and others / by Robert Reid Rentoul.

  • Rentoul, Robert, 1939-
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Proposed sterilization of certain mental and physical degenerates : an appeal to asylum managers and others / by Robert Reid Rentoul. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    unctious hypocrisy must not be permitted to write on the tombstone “Thy will be done,” when a contemp- tible effort has been made to drag the Creator into a situation in which only the parents have played the chief part. The Marriage of Degenerates Forbidden. Can the intermarriage of degenerates be prevented ? In the United States a number of the State legislatures have proposed that no one should be permitted to marry until the man and woman have secured per- mission to do so from an examining board; the board making an inquiry into the mental and physical con- ditions of those who propose to marry. Some of these States have actually adopted such a law. In Minne- sota the Act of 1901 enacts that no woman under forty-five years of age, or man of any age—except he marry a woman over forty-five—shall marry, if suffer- ing from epilepsy, imbecility, insanity, or feeble-minded- ness, the legal penalty for so doing being a fine of 1000 dollars, or imprisonment for three years, or both. Other workers in other States, such as Wisconsin, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Michigan, and Colorado, are trying to secure similar legislation. Such legisla- tion appears to be one which has not been sufficiently thought out, and should not have been put forward. If permission to marry be refused, it will inevitably lead to a condition in which many would live together out of wedlock. Such legislation would not therefore lessen the number of degenerate offspring. No one should be forbidden to marry because of their being a degenerate. But neither should they be advised to. My contention is, that certain scheduled degenerates should be forbidden by legislature to perpetuate t/ieir
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