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This 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, several of the remaining twentieth-century
eugenic sterilization statutes have finally been repealed, and
reparations to sterilization survivors have been paid in two
states. Discussion of the Buck case has once again engendered
controversy in the courts. The Wisconsin Supreme Court invoked Buck
most recently in a debate over the power of the state to enact
restrictions on citizens and businesses during the COVID-19 crisis,
and the US Supreme Court cited Three Generations, No Imbeciles in
arguments over the newest state laws seeking to limit access to
abortion. This updated edition collects and analyzes information
related to events and trends discussed in the earlier volume and
includes a completely new afterword, "Looking Back at Buck," that
explains how the case remains a key feature of public discourse
about disability, government power, and reproductive rights. It
also presents restored copies of the letters of Carrie Buck and
points readers to an online archive of legal documents, images, and
other material relevant to the case. The book remains a key
resource for law school faculties, legal and medical historians,
and anyone with an interest in the history of reproduction in the
United States. "Startling."-Reason "Compelling and well-researched
. . . Three Generations, No Imbeciles gives Carrie Buck's
long-untold story the attention it deserves."-Harvard Law Review
"Three Generations provides valuable, new, and timely revelations
for students and professional scholars across many
disciplines."-Disability Studies Quarterly "Meticulously detailed
and researched history . . . this book is enjoyable, thought
provoking, and troubling in equal measure. I highly recommend
it."-Psychiatric Services
"Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Few lines from 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. Paul Lombardo's startling
narrative exposes the Buck case's fraudulent roots. In 1924 Carrie
Buck-involuntarily institutionalized by the State of Virginia after
she was raped and impregnated-challenged the state's plan to
sterilize her. Having already judged her mother and daughter
mentally deficient, Virginia wanted to make Buck the first person
sterilized under a new law designed to prevent hereditarily
"defective" people from reproducing. Lombardo's more than
twenty-five years of research and his own interview with Buck
before she died demonstrate conclusively that she was destined to
lose the case before it had even begun. Neither Carrie Buck nor her
mother and daughter were the "imbeciles" condemned in the Holmes
opinion. Her lawyer-a founder of the institution where she was
held-never challenged Virginia's arguments and called no witnesses
on Buck's behalf. And judges who heard her case, from state courts
up to the U.S. Supreme Court, sympathized with the eugenics
movement. Virginia had Carrie Buck sterilized shortly after the
1927 decision.
In 1907, Indiana passed the world s first involuntary
sterilization law based on the theory of eugenics. In time, more
than 30 states and a dozen foreign countries followed suit.
Although the Indiana statute was later declared unconstitutional,
other laws restricting immigration and regulating marriage on
"eugenic" grounds were still in effect in the U.S. as late as the
1970s. A Century of Eugenics in America assesses the history of
eugenics in the United States and its status in the age of the
Human Genome Project. The essays explore the early support of
compulsory sterilization by doctors and legislators; the
implementation of eugenic schemes in Indiana, Georgia, California,
Minnesota, North Carolina, and Alabama; the legal and social
challenges to sterilization; and the prospects for a eugenics
movement basing its claims on modern genetic science."
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