Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck with Adam Cohen, is a former member of the New York Times Editorial Board, author of four books, including his latest, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics
One of America s great miscarriages of justice, the Supreme Court s infamous 1927 Buck v. Bell ruling made government sterilization of undesirable citizens the law of the land. Bestselling author Adam Cohen tells the story in Imbeciles of one of the darkest moments in the American legal tradition: the Supreme Court s decision to champion eugenic sterilization for the greater good of the country. In 1927, when the nation was caught up in eugenic fervor, the justices allowed Virginia to sterilize Carrie Buck, a perfectly normal young woman, for being an imbecile. Adam Cohen sets the context for the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck and thousands of others: a panic, fed by the pseudoscience of eugenics, that so-called feebleminded people constituted a threat to public safety and the nation s gene pool. The book serves as a cautionary tale about what may happen when those who have, or obtain, power use the institutions of government and the law to advance their own interests at the expense of those who are poor, disadvantaged, or of different hereditary stock.
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Produced by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash
please notify us if you plan to broadcast this program - knash@igc.org
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