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Page 45
The State's present policy therefore, fosters the fertility of the
unfit, and discourages the fertility of the fit. This disastrous policy
must be changed without delay. The State can arrest the gradual
degradation of its people, by sterilizing all defective women and the
wives of defective men falling into the hands of the law. Mr. Henry M.
Boies in "Prisoners and Paupers" suggests life-long isolation. He
says:--"It is time however that society should interpose in this
propagation of criminals. It is irrational and absurd to occupy our
attention and exhaust our liberality with the care of his constantly
growing class, without any attempt to restrict its reproduction. This is
possible too, without violating any humanitarian instinct, by
imprisonment for life; and this seems to be the most practicable
solution of the problem in America. As soon as an individual can be
identified as an hereditary or chronic criminal, society shall confine
him or her in a penitentiary at self-supporting labour for life.
Every State should have an institution, adapted to the safe and secure
separation of such from society, where they can be employed at
productive labour, without expense to the public, during their natural
life. When this is ended with them, the class will become extinct, and
not before. Then each generation would only have to take care of its own
moral cripples and defectives, without the burden of the constantly
increasing inheritance of the past. When upon a third conviction the
judicial authorities determine the prisoner to belong to the criminal
class, the law should imperatively require the sentence to be the
penitentiary for life, whatever the particular crime committed."
M. Boies defines a criminal as one in whom two successive punishments,
according to law, have failed to prevent a third offence.
If such a criminal is a woman, she should be offered the alternative of
surgical sterility or incarceration during the child bearing period of
her life; if a man, his wife should be offered this remedy against the
procreation of criminals in exchange for her husband, on the expiry of
his sentence, or the protection of divorce.
No woman in the child-bearing period of life should be released from an
Asylum, until this operation has been performed. If a man is committed,
his wife should have the option of divorce or be sterilized before his
release.
A central Board should issue marriage certificates, after consideration
of confidential medical reports upon the health, physical condition, and
family history of the parties to a proposed marriage contract.
Medical officers should be appointed in the various centres of
population by the central Board, and fees on reports should be paid
after the manner of Life Insurance fees.
In fact the Life Insurance system would serve as a good model, for the
establishment of a system of marriage control, and if questions
involving a more detailed family history were added to a typical Life
Insurance report form, it could hardly be improved upon, for the
purpose of marriage health reports.
If upon consideration of the medical report of the contracting parties,
in accordance with the law upon the subject, a certificate of marriage
were refused, a certificate of sterilization by tubo-ligature, forwarded
to the Board by a Surgeon, should entitle to the marriage certificate.
No law should attempt to step in between two lovers, who have become
attached to each other by the bonds of a strong affection, lest a
greater evil befall both themselves and society.
A marriage certificate of health should state the complete family
history as well as the physical condition of the parties to a proposed
marriage, and such certificates should be issued only by the Central
Board of Experts, who would receive the medical reports of its own
medical officers.
When the principle of artificial sterilization is accepted by the State,
the organization necessary to ensure that only the fit shall procreate,
will only be a matter of arrangement by experts.
One danger looms ahead however if the operative means of producing
artificial sterility are popularised.
Every surgeon of experience knows how readily large numbers of married
women encourage surgical treatment for ovarian and even uterine
complaints, if they become aware that such treatment is followed by
sterility. It is not at all an uncommon thing for women in all ranks of
life, to encourage, and even seek removal of the ovaries in order to
escape an increase in the family.
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