Eugenic States

North Carolina

In 1929, North Carolina passed a eugenic sterilization law that permitted the sterilization of individuals who were “mentally diseased, feeble minded, or epileptic” and whose sterilization was considered “in the interest of the mental, moral, or physical improvement of the patient of inmate or for the public good. North Carolina’s law was part of a nationwide effort to eliminate feeblemindedness and the social problems that accompanied it by drawing on both the latest findings of eugenic science and the development of intelligence testing. Eugenic science gained the ear of policy makers in the last quarter of the 19th century when many feared that immigration and the development of birth control threatened a strong United States dominated by a native-born white population. During the 1910s and 1920s, eugenicists helped to shape legislation that aimed to stem this perceived threat by restricting marriage, controlling immigration, and sterilizing members of the community whose offspring they considered to be undesirable. 
 

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