The Politics of Mass Sterilization: Eugenics, Public Policy, and the Emergence of the Worldwide Population Control Movement

David Valone
College of Liberal Arts (History), Quinnipiac University

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     Last modified: February 15, 2005
     Presentation date: 07/14/2005 9:15 AM in MACK 238
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Abstract
Session on Public Policy Creation organized by John Emrich

The creation of a world wide population control movement after the end of the Second World War came about as a result of policy decisions by western governments working to check the population growth within their former colonial possessions. While population control has often been couched in economic and environmentalist rhetoric, much of the underlying intellectual and technical infrastructure for the movement came from biologists and social scientists who had cut their teeth in the eugenics movement of the first half of the twentieth century. This paper will explore the connection between eugenic theory and practice and the emergence of the population control movement.

In particular I examine the activities of the Human Betterment Foundation for Voluntary Sterilization (HBFVS) and its efforts to influence policy in the US and abroad. This organization, operating out of New York City, had close personal and financial ties with the Human Betterment Foundation (HBF) of Pasadena, California. Both organizations sought to promote sterilization worldwide as a means first of eugenic improvement and later as a route to population control. Although the HBF was dissolved in 1942 after the death of its founder, Ezra Gosney, the HBFVS continued to carry on the work of promoting “voluntary” sterilization throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The lobbying efforts of such organizations had considerable influence. In the early 1970s, population control became a national security priority during the Nixon administration. The HBFVS continues to operate today under a different name, and in its latest incarnation it was commended by the United Nations in 2002 for its promotion of sterilization in the Third World. Today, sterilization is the leading form of contraception around the world, and an ongoing policy priority in many regions.

Multiple Paper Session:
Other papers in this session:
The First Clone War: Creating a National Recombinant DNA Policy in the United States
The Politics of Mass Sterilization: Eugenics, Public Policy, and the Emergence of the Worldwide Population Control Movement
A New Approach to the Ethics and Public Policy of Biotechnology
Critical assessment of the impact of ELSI programs