“It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit for continuing their kind.”
-Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Buck V. Bell Case (1927)
A poor, uneducated orphan, she became the test case for sterilization. Institutionalized after being impregnated, Carrie fit the stereotype of a “feebleminded” girl.
"How Buck vs. Bell began, Paul Lombardo." Cold Spring Harbor, date uncertain
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“Many American boys... had been sterilized under eugenic laws passed by the the United States Supreme Court under the 1927 case of Buck v. Bell. Over 80,000 Americans would be forcibly sterilized under that legal precedent.”
― A.E. Samaan, H.H. Laughlin: American Scientist, American Progressive, Nazi Collaborator (2015)