Eugenics Record Office. BULLETIN No. 10A - DNA Patent Database ...

THE SCOPE OF THE COMMITTEE’S WORK. 61
tained in whole or in part by the public funds be examined as to innate
personal traits and family pedigree, and that all such inmates found to
be potential parents with undesirable hereditary potentialities and not
likely to be governed by the highest moral purpose shall be humanely
sterilized prior to release from their respective custodians. Such a
supplementary sterilization program will call for surgical sterilization
of inmates prior to their release from institutions as follows: beginning
with approximately 80 persons per year per 100,000 total population
in 1915 and increasing to approximately 150 persons per year per
100,000 total population in 1980.
4. Attention is called to the fact that the relation between the
segregation feature and the sterilization feature of the program here-
with proposed is automatic. If for humanitarian, social or other rea-
sons, objection is made to sterilization, let society keep the potential
parent with dangerous hereditary qualities segregated during the repro-
ductive period ; if the objection to sterilization can be overcome, then
convalescent inmates or persons having served their allotted commit-
ments in institutions, though they be potential parents with dangerous
hereditary qualities, can be first sterilized and then from a eugenical—
but not necessarily from a social—point of view safely be returned to
society. The committee feels that the proposed model sterilization law
(Chapter VIII, Bulletin 10 B) provides amply for safeguarding the
rights of the individual, for conserving humanitarian principles and at
the same time for protecting society against the deterioration of the
innate qualities of its members.
5. From a moral, social, and religious, as well as from a biological
and legal point of view, the program of segregation and sterilization
is, the committee feels, justified because
(a) It appears to be the duty of society to foster by all possible
means the innate, as well as the acquired physical, mental
and moral well-being of the race, and this program promises
the promotion of such an end.
(b) It proposes to sterilize and thus cut off the lines of descent
only of persons amply demonstrated in each particular case
to be unable to understand, or, if understanding, morally
unable to inhibit or control himself or herself in a manner
preventing the continuance of his or her unworthy traits.
To permit such individuals to reproduce their kind is neither
merciful nor just.