Ann Leary’s 2022 novel The Foundling follows a young white woman, Mary Engle, who in the 1930s lands a job as secretary to Dr. Agnes Vogel. The fictional Dr. Vogel is the founder and director of the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age, an institution based on many real-life institutions, including one… Read more →
Tag: Eugenics
Can every baby be a Gerber Baby? A century of American baby contests and eugenics
In 2018, Gerber made headlines for selecting baby Lucas as the winner of its Spokesbaby Contest, making Lucas the first Gerber baby with Down syndrome in the company’s 95-year history. As then-President and CEO of the well-known baby food company Bill Partyka explained in a 2018 press release, “Every year, we choose the baby who… Read more →
Jim Bob’s Humbug: Freaks, Fitter Families, and 19 Kids and Counting
On May 25, 2022, Joshua Duggar (34) was sentenced to 151 months in federal prison and 20 years’ probation after being found guilty at the end of last year on two counts of receiving and possessing child sexual abuse materials (CSAM). The scion of America’s most famous “Quiverfull” family, Josh Duggar first came to the… Read more →
What Britney Spears’s Forced IUD Can Teach Us About Women’s History
When Britney Spears announced that she was forced to use long-term birth control in the form of an IUD and wasn’t being allowed to have another child, the world was shocked. If the fight for reproductive rights usually centers on access to birth control and abortions, it’s in part because there’s no debate that forcefully… Read more →
“Containment and Control, Not Care or Cure”: An Interview with Elizabeth Catte on Virginia’s Eugenics Movement
In Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia, Dr. Elizabeth Catte expertly investigates and contextualizes the local history of eugenics in Staunton, Virginia. The story of the former Western State Lunatic Asylum—now renovated as a luxury hotel and pricey condos—demonstrates how race, gender, class and capitalism intersect in the American eugenics movement to… Read more →
“I Assumed It Was Urgent”: Helen Hurd’s Story
As an archivist, I gain deep knowledge of people through their personal papers. I come to appreciate their senses of humor or feel moved by their personal tragedies. A decade ago, I became intrigued by a woman whose collection contains signed photographs of 1920s movie stars. Helen Hurd’s journey from Hollywood reporter to Rutgers University… Read more →
Changing the Narrative: The Importance of Centering Choice
On September 14, Dawn Wooten, a former nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, filed a whistleblower complaint alleging there was a complete lack of protection against COVID-19. Wooten also testified that doctors at the center performed hysterectomies on detainees at alarmingly high rates. When speaking about one physician, Wooten stated, “everybody… Read more →
Pathologizing Politics: Eugenics and Political Discourse in the Modern United States
Carrie Buck was three months shy of her twenty-second birthday when she was forcibly sterilized on October 19, 1927. Buck’s fate was based on the 1924 Virginia eugenic sterilization law, which marked individuals for sterilization based on vague and misleading concepts such as immorality, defectiveness, weak-mindedness, and promiscuity.1 Eugenicists, social hygienists, and lawmakers passed state… Read more →
What to Expect When You’re Expecting in the Nineteenth-Century U.S.
Type “pregnancy” into any internet search engine today, and you’ll literally get a billion results. This plethora of information at our fingertips feels quite modern, and yet it has a long history: American women have long turned to the printed word for advice about their reproductive bodies. In the nineteenth century, there were many competing… Read more →
The Politics of Reproductive Rights Legislation in the “Modern” South
On May 15, 2019 Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed legislation that will make the state’s abortion laws the most restrictive in the United States. Furthermore, it will establish extremely stringent penalties for violating these laws. The Human Life Protection Act, as it is formally named, would ban abortion in nearly every instance, including rape and… Read more →