From the President
Eugenics: We can learn from history
By Jeane Anastas,
Social work was in the news late in 2011 when stories about
efforts to compensate people in North Carolina who had undergone involuntary sterilization
into the 1970s aired on a “Rock Center with Brian Williams” segment called “State
of Shame” and appeared in the New York Times.
Uniquely in North Carolina, it was state-employed social
workers who decided which people — generally poor or in care as “impaired,”
often African-American and more often women — would undergo these procedures.
Based on interviews conducted in 1997, the recorded voices of social workers
involved in carrying out this state policy were heard in the “State of Shame”
broadcast, which understandably drew a reaction from our membership.
Such policies and practices were informed in part by eugenic
beliefs that the less “fit” —meaning poor, infirm or otherwise “less desirable”
— people, should not reproduce in order to reduce the burden of care and
expense that others (the taxpayers) would bear. The state of North Carolina has
just decided to compensate those who were victimized by this policy, which was
described as the most far-reaching among the laws in the 31 states that had
While eugenics has had a “bad name” since the Nazi atrocities
in World War II, social work’s history, like that of psychology, psychiatry and
medicine, is deeply entwined with this once-respectable science. It is only by
facing and reflecting on this history that we can avoid similar mistakes now
and in the future.
Eugenics, championed by late 19th -
and early 20th-century scientists — including statisticians like Francis
Galton, whose technical work we continue to rely on today — was once seen as a
respectable method for reducing poverty. It has been documented that Jane
Addams of the settlement movement and Mary Richmond of casework both believed
in eugenics as a way to reduce poverty over time. Margaret Sanger, who
championed access to contraception and women’s ability to control their own
reproduction, also believed in eugenics, or the betterment of society as a
whole through limiting reproduction among the poor and “less fit.” This belief,
of course, conflates the pernicious effects of poverty and social exclusion on
health and well-being with its causes.
While most know that eugenics was considered good science and
flourished before World War II in the United States, fewer know that it had
many proponents for decades after, even though they condemned extermination
strategies as “going too far.” History in North Carolina painfully reminds us
of this fact. What began with a concern about poor whites and “the
feebleminded” later targeted black women with “illegitimate” children.
NASW officials in 1957 agreed to provide member mailing labels
to the Human Betterment Association (the leading eugenics group) for an
education campaign promoting eugenics to health and social welfare workers, but
a second request for member mailing labels in 1961 was unanimously denied by
the NASW board. Today we have many ethical and practice standards in place that
should prevent social work involvement in involuntary sterilizations.
We must not delude ourselves, however, that these issues are
things of the past. Many clients served by social workers have historically
been disproportionately affected by policies that seek to limit their
reproductive freedom (see TANF and pregnancy) or limit choices about it (see
federal policies on funding for abortions for poor women). Social work scholars have identified prenatal
sex selection, access to reproductive health care for people identified as
disabled, and implications of the decoding of the human genome as areas of
contemporary concern that can involve social biases with roots in eugenic
Our profession must embrace critical thinking when it comes to
policies and practices related to reproduction specifically and vulnerable
groups more generally. History lives on, often uncomfortably, but if we are
able to reflect honestly on it we can bend the curve toward human rights.
From February 2012 NASW News. © 2012 National
Association of Social Workers. All Rights Reserved. NASW News
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