Eugenics never quite went away

In Utah, it is legal to forcibly sterilize a person with a disability. And that fact may surprise some people, a University of Utah professor said.

“I think most people just assumed, ‘Hey, this is something that sort of disappeared in the ‘30s and ‘40s when people stopped proudly declaring that they were eugenicists,” said James Tabery, who has studied this topic in the Beehive State. “But it turns out that that’s not the case.”

…And while the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down the 1973 landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, the justices have never overturned Buck v. Bell, an earlier case that allows these sterilization laws to still be in place in Utah and 30 other states, plus Washington D.C., according to a report from the National Women’s Law Center released earlier this year.

And:

Since the start of 2017, there have been about 11 cases, involving 10 people, where sterilization requests have been made under Utah’s law, according to Tania Mashburn, spokesperson for the state courts.

Most of the information from those cases is private, she said, because “they deal with disabled and protected persons, and are usually filed under a guardianship case.” But Mashburn said that of those 11 cases, nine requests were granted. One was denied and was later refiled and granted.

Here is the article, noting that 31 states still have such forced sterilization laws.  And here is a report on that topic.  Via Anecdotal.