Handbook for speakers / issued by the Joint Committee on Voluntary Sterilization.

Date:
[1934?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Handbook for speakers / issued by the Joint Committee on Voluntary Sterilization. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/40 (page 5)
    schools and capable, in most instances, of economic independence as it will have for defectives discharged from institutions. A larger number of defectives enter the general community each year from the schools than are discharged from institutions, and their present complete freedom from control constitutes a power¬ ful argument for voluntary sterilization. These two recommendations of the Wood Committee provide an index of how sterilization can be turned into a method ancil¬ lary to segregation in dealing with mental defectives. In the words of Mr. E. S. Gosney (an American philanthropist who founded The Human Betterment Foundation—to be referred to again later—which has instituted enquiries into the workings of sterilization in California), eugenic sterilization is no cure-all, no short cut to a eugenic millenium. It is not a measure which supplants or renders unnecessary any of the present machinery for dealing with social problems. In its bearings upon mental deficiency, it is accessory or supplementary to segregation. Lec¬ turers must therefore be careful not to represent sterilization as a substitute for or alternative to segregation. Its legalisation will, for some time to come, effect no economies and should not in any way absolve local authorities from discharging their duties in providing adequate institutional accommodation for defectives. That the findings and recommendations of the Wood Com¬ mittee afford an index of how sterilization could be usefully employed was recognised by the Board of Control (Annual Report for 1928, Part 1, page 63), which made use of the following words which are effective for quotation:— Roughly speaking, out of 300,000 mental defectives in England and Wales, one-third will require institutional provision and two-thirds some form of community care, that is, care out¬ side an institution. It is in the case of the latter that the risk of procreation arises, and the case for sterilization, if such a case exists at all, is strongest. It can hardly be denied that the 200,000 defectives who must remain in the community are wholly unfitted for parenthood. Though it does not necessarily follow that the children of defective parents will themselves be defec¬ tive, they are liable to be exposed to the miseries and hardships of being brought up by a mother or father incapable of self- control who will almost certainly neglect them, and who may, by reason of mental instability and ungovernable temper, aggra¬ vate by cruelty the results of ignorance and neglect. EFFECTS OF WOOD REPORT. In 1930 the legaHsing of eugenic sterilization was advocated by The Eugenics Society on slightly more restricted grounds than were subsequently recommended by the Brock Committee, and on July 21st, 1931, Major A. G. Church, Member for Central Wandsworth, asked 5