Scarlet Poesie

Authors Note: this was originally written years ago before the covid-19 pandemic had started, and has been extensively reworded and updated since then due to my own education on the subject

I first wrote this article a few months before the pandemic, back when, as someone who isn’t disabled and was pretty clueless on the topic, I thought most people haven’t heard of eugenics. For those who are facing the deadly realities of eugenics, they already know what it is and how evil of a concept it is. As the pandemic has gone on, eugenics has been laid bare as the status quo for the capitalist states, and most liberals don’t really seem to care. They’re far too happy to just be “getting back to normal” that they don’t care about those with weak immune systems, such as the immunocompromised and the elderly, getting a possibly dying of the disease. The United Kingdom, the United States, and the social democrats’ darling Sweden have all abandoned those at risk so capitalism can continue. To analyze the modern state of eugenics, I would like to take a while to look at how we got here, and how eugenics was cooked up over time.

Eugenics as a term was first coined by Francis Galton in 1883, and two separate paths were immediately founded. One path, called “Positive” Eugenics, encouraged those of able minds and bodies to have more children so that there would be more healthy people in the world. Ignoring the blatant misogyny of the idea that women should have lots and lots of children so that we could have more people of a certain health standard, one could think that this “Positive” Eugenics was harmless, and compared to its philosophical counterpart, you’d be right. The other path was deemed “Negative” Eugenics, and that is the form that most people are aware of, the forced sterilization of those deemed unwanted or undesirable to have children, and this pathway was very popular in Scandinavia, Germany, and, of course, the United States. In the United States, eugenic programs were enacted to target anyone who was deemed “Degenerate”. This, of course, meant anyone who wasn’t upper class and white. The poor, the houseless, the imprisoned, indigenous people, African Americans, Latinos, Slavs, Jewish people, and many more groups of people were at risk of being targeted by Eugenicists. Forced sterilization had been occurring in the United States for years before the term Eugenics was coined, but the first law enacted in the United States enforcing eugenics was enacted in 1907, in Indiana. This law was lobbied by Harry Clay Shaw, who had been doing forced vasectomies in Indianan prisons since 1899 in an effort to eliminate the degeneracy of masturbation in prisons. From this first codified eugenic program, many more would follow across the United States. By 1935, 28 states had legalized Eugenic Sterilization, with seven more states having legislation pending, and only one state which had repealed Eugenic Sterilization laws, Nevada.

At this point in time, the topic of Eugenics and Sterilization had only been discussed with the goal of making it impossible for those the American State deemed undesirable from reproducing. This was done via vasectomies for those with testicles, and hysterectomies for those with a uterus. It is important to understand just how invasive a surgery like this is. A hysterectomy is the total removal of a uterus, requiring major surgery to remove the uterus and, possibly, the fallopian tubes, the ovaries, the cervix, and other surrounding structures. This isn’t the same as a person choosing to get their tubes tied, this is a total removal of major organs, and it is completely irreversible. It was rare for the state to enforce castration, and often only did/does vasectomies, although it did on occasion, and as you all probably know, castration is also irreversible. In the early days, it was mainly targeted against those who were in prison and those in mental asylums. Of course, the white supremacist state imprisons more people of color than it does white people, so those who would be forced to undergo forced sterilization in prisons were predominately Black and Hispanic women, as forced sterilization for women was higher than it was for men. This was not thinly-veiled racism, not at first, for it was blatant and admitted racism. Prominent Eugenicists claimed that criminals were criminals due to them being naturally more “bestial” than non-criminals. Where else has this argument been used before? We all know the answer. One only needs to look at the political cartoons of the 1800s to see what white cartoonists thought of anyone who wasn’t white, and these racist ideas were commonly held by those in power and in medicine at the time.

Those in mental asylums didn’t end up much better than those in prisons. Eugenics in asylums was mostly indiscriminate, targeting anyone who was incapable of consenting to such procedures. Common targets were those deemed insane and those with low IQs, as they were commonly claimed to pose a genetic risk to the world. Prior to 1927, Eugenicists were concerned about the legality of forced sterilization of those in asylums, as they were not legally imprisoned, but this changed with the Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell in 1927. The Commonwealth of Virginia had passed a law requiring the sterilization of those deemed “Intellectually Disabled”, and to test if the law would pass constitutional scrutiny, the “Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded” proposed the sterilization of Carrie Buck, an 18-year-old who was admitted to the asylum after she was raped by her adoptive mother’s nephew. Her doctor, Dr. Albert Priddy, also was the doctor of Carrie’s birth mother, who was a patient at the asylum. Priddy claimed Carrie had a mental age of 9, and her mother had a mental age of 8, supposedly showcasing how their “feeblemindedness” was hereditary. He claimed that their mental age was demonstrated by their “prostitution” and “immorality”, referring to Carrie’s child, who was conceived out of rape, and his assertion that her mother had 3 children and didn’t know who their fathers were. Carrie rejected the idea that she should be sterilized, and the case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled 8-1 that Carrie could be sterilized against her will and it didn’t violate the constitution. She was eventually sterilized in October that year, and to this very day, this case is the legal precedent regarding forced sterilization of the mentally ill. Following the decision, sterilizations skyrocketed, as states rewrote their sterilization laws to mirror the Virginian statute. The law remained on the books as is until 1988 and again in 2013 when it was amended to require informed consent.

The term Eugenics”, however, soon fell out of favor with the American public around the 1940s. This is entirely because of Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler wrote many compliments of America and how he would like to emulate the practices in Germany. In Mein Kampf, he wrote “There is today one state, in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception of citizenship are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.” In 1933, the Nazis wrote their own sterilization laws, which also mirrored the Virginian statute. All this was laid bare before the American people during the Nuremberg Trials, where Nazi officials quote Justice Oliver Holmes, the man who wrote the majority opinion in the Buck v. Bell case, as a justification for their own horrific sterilization laws. With all this out in the open, it was obvious that the American Eugenics community needed to rebrand in order to distance themselves from the Nazis. This took the form of rebranding and rewording, but various practices remained and in some cases, the process was only just beginning. Rebranding, such as the change from the “Oregon Board of Eugenics” to the “Oregon Board of Social Protection” was common throughout the nation.

Perhaps some of the most horrific crimes of forced sterilization and eugenics in America are evident in two places: Puerto Rico, and the settler-colonial reservation system. The results of American Colonialism and Imperialism in Puerto Rico had devastating effects, creating mass poverty and robbing the land of 70% of the population for sugar plantations. American Eugenicist Clarence Gamble, the heir to the Proctor and Gamble soap company, blamed high birthrates on the island for the poverty, and thought that if the birthrates went down, so would poverty. Gamble had already traveled across the globe preaching this idea, traveling to Appalachia, Sri Lanka, Hawai’i, Egypt, Japan, India, Palestine, Pakistan, and South Africa. Now he had his eyes set on Puerto Rico. He set to work training Puerto Rican doctors on sterilization techniques, and staffed birth control clinics, set up by FDR, with his own pro-eugenic staff. His team did not inform the women that the process they would be going through was irreversible, and for women who had already had 2 or 3 children, they would deny medical care if the women would not let them perform the sterilization, or “The Operation”, as they called it. Officially, the Puerto Rican territorial government repealed the law legalizing sterilization in 1960, but the practice still continued. By 1968, 30 years into Gamble’s involvement in Puerto Rico, the island had the highest sterilization rate in the entire world. While sterilizing the population, he also used them as test subjects for various medications, such as the Pill, a common birth control method. Many of those in the experiment did not consent to the study, reminiscent of the Tuskeegee Syphilis Study, and when they complained of side effects of the drug they were taking, Gamble blamed the women for being “too dumb” to follow the proper instructions on how to take the medication, and summarily ignored the reports of death via pulmonary tuberculosis and congestive heart failure. In 1976, the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare did a study and found that over 37% of women in Puerto Rico who were of childbearing age were sterilized. The vast majority of these women were in their 20s.

Everyone should know that the United States has been openly hostile and antagonistic towards the native population of the continent since the white settlers first arrived, and continues to be so to this day. While the United States could not openly genocide the Native people following World War Two, it could commit genocide in more clandestine ways. This involved the inherently racist reservation system that was enforced on what little land the indigenous nations had left. Healthcare on the reservations was managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, meaning the United States had every say in what procedures indigenous people would have available, and which ones they would be forced to endure. The Indian Health Services, which provides all health services on reservations, would often enforce sterilizations on women after they had given birth, at a rate as high as every 1 in 7 births given at IHS hospitals. In a study looking at IHS hospitals in Phoenix, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, and Aberdeen, South Dakota, between the years 1973 and 1976, 3,406 indigenous women were sterilized. These were done because the doctors at these hospitals believed that the women were “not smart enough” to understand how to use other means of contraceptives, so instead would forcibly make sure they would not get pregnant again. For some nations, this process would outright eliminate them. ~70,000 women were sterilized during the 1970s, around 25% of people who were able to give birth were no longer able to. This was an ethnic cleansing attempt by the United States. This forced sterilization is in ADDITION to the kidnapping of native children from their mothers and off the reservation and either forcing them to attend reeducation schools to become white, or sent to the foster system to be raised by white parents. This is not some distant past, this is recent. People are still suffering from the consequences of these colonial practices.

When we look at eugenics in America in the modern day, it is still extremely prevalent. Before we even look at the pandemic, which is its own monster, let us look at the other forms of eugenics that were and still are prevelant before the pandemic. It is still legal to perform hysterectomies on prisoners in America, as the Supreme Court ruling is still upheld, even if the specific statutes are no longer on the books. In California, forced sterilization is still common, specifically targeting Hispanic and Asian women. In other areas of the nation, class-based sterilization is commonly being done. Men who cannot afford to pay child support are occasionally forced to undergo vasectomies at the request of the court system. Perhaps what is even more insidious, however, is the combination of IUDs and Welfare. SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or Food Stamps, have various requirements by states that people must pass in order to qualify for the assistance. Certain states require that if a person may get pregnant, they MUST get an IUD, a form of birth control where a piece of plastic is inserted into a vagina. IUDs have a 99% preventative rate, and last 3-10 years. This, essentially, prevents poor people from having children at gunpoint. If a person were to refuse this, they will not have access to Food Stamps. This also goes for some requirements of Medicaid and Housing Programs. Don’t undergo this restrictive medication? Then face starvation, homelessness, disease, and other sufferings. This harks back to some of the original ideas of eugenics, of poverty being related to bad genetics, and poverty being hereditary.

For disabled people, the United States has always been openly hostile towards them. Lack of access to lifesaving medical care and treatments is commonplace. The United States makes no efforts to help those who need it. The services the fascist state does provide to disabled people are a joke. The United States sends $841 per month in 2022 to individuals who *qualify* for disability. In a country where rent can be thousands of dollars per month, this is nothing. What it is, is intentional. The United States is, at its core, a liberal fascist country. It wants to implement fascist policies while appearing liberal and progressive. The country gives a pittance to those in need, knowing full well that it is not enough, and is actively hoping disabled people die. The pandemic did not create this policy, but in fact, America’s pandemic policy is the natural continuation of these preexisting eugenics policies. No federal mask mandate, a total of $3,200 to last three years, no expansion of Medicaid or even entertaining the idea of a nationalized healthcare system, and promoting the idea that the pandemic is somehow “over” despite 12,000 new cases just today, which are criminally undercounted thanks to the CDC constantly changing the criteria. And no one should be shocked capitalist nations are following a eugenics policy. Capitalism only cares about those it can drain profits from, and discards all those who don’t benefit from its exploitation scheme. The elderly, the disabled, the homeless, capitalism actively advocates for their deaths. It isn’t a unique phenomenon due to the settler-colonial conditions of America, but a process embedded in every capitalist state across the globe.

To combat an evil it is important to understand the history and evolution of an evil. Eugenics is an evil, one that must be eliminated in society. It will never, however, be eliminated in a capitalist society. It’s baked into the equation, to eliminate it would be to eliminate part of capitalism. To oppose eugenics means to oppose capitalism. What’s equally important to understand is that to oppose capitalism means to oppose eugenics. Socialists and communists who do not take a stand to oppose eugenics, who laud the elimination of mask mandates, who don’t stand against ableism and racism in every form, who don’t stand up for those actively being killed by the fascist state for merely existing, are fascists. There are many who claim the label of socialist who don’t do these things, and it is important to stomp them out, label them for what they are, fascist sympathizers and outright fascists.