The Eugenic Movement

http://www.vasectomy-information.com/moreinfo/eugenics.htm

Overview:

This source is an article that explains the eugenic movements in America and Europe. This source explains the different laws, court cases and dates as well as statistics to show what the eugenic movements did to encourage the legalizing of eugenic and sterilization laws. The main focus of this article is the laws, dates, and courts that occurred throughout these movements in Europe and America.

Argument:

            This journal begins by giving a brief background of what eugenics is and where eugenics came from. The main argument of this journal is viewing the events that took place in order to encourage eugenics and sterilization to be legal in America and Europe.  In America, people who were criminals were being sterilized so that they wouldn’t reproduce any more criminals. These movements were defend by using the excuse of a healthy society, a better world, in order to have a healthy state. Eventually in America twenty- nine of the fifty states were allowed to sterilize insane people and of the twenty-nine states twelve of them sterilized criminals. Between 1909 and 1924 more than 6,000 people in America were sterilized. In Europe, the eugenic movement of 1907 was called Eugenics Education Society which was later cut short to Eugenics Society. This movement was set up to get people aware of the problems of eugenics. Then there was also the use of eugenics that was used in Germany but used incorrectly and was used as discrimination instead of a cure for the sick. Overall, this journal shows how there were voluntary movements that were set up in different countries to encourage eugenics and sterilization as an answer.

Source:

            This document is a journal by M.J. Drake, I.W. Mills and D. Cranston that come from “The Chequered History of Vasectomy". This is a very reliable source that is a published journal and can also be considered as a primary source. This is not a biased journal but an informative journal that discussed the movements that were occurring in America and Europe to try and encourage eugenics and use sterilization as the answer to eugenics.