A RACIAL DANGER
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The discussion of the sterilization of defectives in the columns of your journal suggests that England might not be wise to adopt the way of meeting the difficult situation caused by the remarkable fecundity of the unfit already chosen by seventeen American State legislatures in the years since 1907, when Indiana enacted the first law of that nature.
Unwise and hasty legislation does less harm in the United States than elsewhere ; first, because the laws are so badly' enforced, and secondly because the Courts decide generally On the final constitutionality of these measures. If such statutes were adopted in England they would really be carried out,* and therein lies the difference, Much of the opposition to` these measures exists not in the danger incident on the' operation, which is slight in both sexes and infinitesimal'on the male, but from the fear that an attempt might be made to apply them to a large number of the unfit, who, while not desirable parents, are in no_sense feeble-minded or certifiable as suitable' inmates for institutions. Many hereditary epileptics are men-; tally normal themselves but likely to produce defective off_ spring, and the children of neurotic persons are also not infre4 quently unfit.
. Again, serious proposals-are made to sterilize consumptives: though the disease is not hereditary at all, while it may be
admitted the physical constitution of such parents can be transmitted. It is the danger of the excessive doctrinairism of many convinced Eugenists being carried out to the full that prevents a large number of people, who are favourable to the sterilization of the really defective, approving of the legalization of such compulsory Operations. Here in the United States only two States, Indiana and California, have really enforced these laws, and 4,000 operations only have been performed in eighteen years. The figures of the 236 cases- alluded to by " M.D.-," in your issue of January 23rd, apply to males, boys in the Indiana State Refoimatory from 1907- to -1910. The • suggestion by Mr. Harold Cox in your issue of December 12th, 1925, that no operations be performed without -the consent of the parents or guardians of the indi- • vidual is a reasonable safeguard. Admirable also is his con- demnation of the use of sterilization as a minishment for sexual Offences.—I am, Sir, &c.,
R. E.' HurenisoN.
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