Regarding your recent coverage of the European sterilization problem (“Europe’s taboo, sterilization, now out of shadows,” Main news, Aug. 28):
I am disappointed by the Tribune’s failure to discuss the United States’ complicity in the sterilization projects of the 1920s.
Many states passed sterilization laws around the same time as Switzerland. Primarily, these laws allowed the unconsented sterilization of mentally retarded women. When these laws were challenged as unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld them in Buck vs. Bell, saying, “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.” Consequently, many women were sterilized subject to these laws.
At the Nuremburg trials, Buck vs. Bell was cited by the defendants as justification for their actions in Nazi Germany, arguing that even the U.S. recognized the validity of altering the genetic pool to improve the population.
The Buck vs. Bell decision has never been overruled and stands as good law in the United States to this day. Perhaps we ought to focus on cleaning up our own glass house before we start chucking stones at Europe.
