Photo by Jenny Gerow

U.Va. bioethicist Paul Lombardo stands next to the road marker on Preston Ave. that explains the precedent-setting case, Buck v. Bell, which enacted eugenic sterilization laws.

March 2, 2004

By Brandon Marshall Miller

Almost exactly one year ago on March 11, 2003, Paul Lombardo, a lawyer and professor of biomedical ethics at the University of Virginia, delivered a presentation on Genetics, Genetic Technology and Public Policy to the California State Senate Select Committee in Oakland. Three hours later, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer and Governor Gray Davis, both of whom were running for governor, each publicly issued an official apology for their state's role in the involuntary sterilization of more than 20,000 Californians.

With that move, California became just the latest state to join a wave of such apologies that began in May 2002 when Virginia Gov. Mark Warner issued an apology for the Commonwealth's role in the forced sterilization – or eugenics – movement of the early 20th century. The apology came as Virginia, at Lombardo's urging, erected a historical marker to commemorate Buck v. Bell, the 1927 case that endorsed the constitutionality of eugenics.

The Buck v. Bell case focused on Carrie Buck, an indigent, white girl who became pregnant at age 17 and was sent to the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded in Lynchburg, Va. There, she was judged to have inherited the traits of immorality and low intelligence, which the state wished to eradicate through sterilization. The U.S. Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision, upheld the legality of Virginia’s eugenic policy.

Ultimately, 30 states adopted eugenic laws to combat mental illness and other diseases as part of their public-health policies. These policies resulted in the involuntary sterilization of an estimated 60,000 people.

Since Virginia's apology two years ago, Oregon, North Carolina and South Carolina also have apologized for their participation in the practice of forced sterilization. Indiana (the first state to perform sterilization processes) and Michigan currently are discussing whether to follow suit.

"There's certainly a value to the apologies — at the very least to the people who were sterilized," said Lombardo, a legal scholar and director of the Program in Law and Medicine at U.Va.'s Center for Biomedical Ethics. And although many of those who were sterilized still do not want to identify themselves, those who do come forward say that the apologies endorse their innocence and acknowledge that the government was wrong.

States that have not apologized seem to be hesitating because of concerns over legal liability. But Lombardo believes that such concerns are overblown. Because of the Supreme Court ruling upholding Buck v. Bell, many sterilizations were done legally. Under the circumstances, winning a lawsuit would be difficult, he said.

It was, in fact, Buck v. Bell that ignited Lombardo's interest in eugenics when he was a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia in the 1970s. At that time, a class-action lawsuit sought compensation for people who had been sterilized, drawing media attention to Charlottesville native, Carrie Buck. The case provided Lombardo with a topic for his Ph.D. dissertation, and also pushed him toward legal study.

In 1992, after years of research and publishing on eugenics, Lombardo received a gift that profoundly influenced his work going forward.

Julius Paul, then a professor of political science at the State University of New York in Fredonia, was retiring and offered to give Lombardo 17 boxes of documents he had gathered over the course of his career.

Unlike Lombardo, a historian and legal scholar, Paul was a political scientist who conducted research from a civil-liberties and constitutional-law perspective. He was particularly interested in the way public policy intersected with issues of bodily and personal privacy.

From the 1950s to the early 1990s, when Paul was gathering his research, eugenics and sterilization were not very controversial issues. Hospital and political officials were willing to discuss what they were doing. At the same time, he found limited public interest in the issue.

"What I probably failed to realize is how long it takes to rid the public arena of the mistakes of the past," Paul said.

Eventually, however, as the issue gained visibility, many states began refusing to discuss their participation in the eugenics movement publicly. And some states, such as Oregon, even destroyed their documentation on the subject.

Since Paul gave Lombardo his boxes of research in 1992, the social, political and legal climates have changed, and in recent years, Lombardo has received a gratifying response to his research.

"The history of eugenics in America is worth knowing," Lombardo said. "We need to be reminded that blind faith in science or law is dangerous; we have the same potential for overselling science and enshrining our biases in the law today as we did one hundred years ago. The hopeful message of progress can still seduce us into thinking we have been inoculated against error."

Julius Paul agrees. "As the state apologies come forth, it is imperative that we more fully understand the implications of this history and what it can teach us in the 21st century," he said.

The apologies now being offered by individual states represent a long-needed healing process for the victims of these misguided public policies.

"So far, five states have done the right thing," Lombardo said. "Victims in more than 20 other states are still waiting."

To learn more about eugenics and to see Paul Lombardo discuss Carrie Buck, visit www.dnai.org/index.html, a Web site hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where the Eugenics Record Office — the epicenter of American eugenics — was founded in 1910.