Description
Book SynopsisThis updated edition includes a new afterword that identifies the role the Buck story plays in the Supreme Court's review of emerging state laws that seek to limit access to abortion. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. Few lines from U.S. Supreme Court opinions are as memorable as this declaration by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in the landmark 1927 case Buck v. Bell. The ruling allowed states to forcibly sterilize residents in order to prevent feebleminded and socially inadequate people from having children. It is the only time the Supreme Court endorsed surgery as a tool of government policy. Though Buck set the stage for more than sixty thousand involuntary sterilizations in the United States and was cited at the Nuremberg trials in defense of Nazi sterilization experiments, it has never been overturned. It has been more than a decade since Paul A. Lombardo's classic Three Generations, No Imbeciles first exposed the Buck case's fraudulent roots. During that time, seve
Table of ContentsPreface to Updated Edition
Introduction
Prologue: The Expert Witness
1. Problem Families
2. Sex and Surgery
3. The Pedigree Factory
4. Studying Sterilization
5. The Mallory Case
6. Laughlin's Book
7. A Virginia Sterilization Law
8. Choosing Carrie Buck
9. Carrie Buck versus Dr. Priddy
10. Defenseless
11. On Appeal: Buck v. Bell
12. In the Supreme Court
13. Reactions and Repercussions
14. After the Supreme Court
15. Sterilizing Germans
16. Skinner v. Oklahoma
17. Buck, at Nuremberg and After
18. Rediscovering Buck
Epilogue: Reconsidering Buck
Afterword: Looking Back at Buck
Acknowledgments
Appendix A: The Supreme Court Opinion in Buck v. Bell, by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Appendix B: Virginia Eugenical Sterilization Act, 1924
Appendix C: Laws and Sterilizations by State
Appendix D: Carrie Buck's letters
Notes
A Note on Sources
Index
