Should sterilization be mandated by the government?

I chose the article by Stephen Jay Gould, 1985, Carrie Buck’s Daughter, p. 256-260. The article points out that bad thing come in threes. Two bad things are just an accident but three is a pattern. This is how Virginia came up with their sterilization laws. The point being that, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Virginia passed the eugenic sterilization laws in 1924. At the time Carrie Buck was 18 years old and committed to an institution for the Epileptics and Feeble-Minded. Carrie herself was an illegitimate child and when entering the institution she was pregnant, and unmarried. Harry Laughlin testified that Emma Buck, Carrie’s mother tested to be seven years and eleven months , Carrie to be nine years on the Stanford-Binet test of IQ. Under these guidelines they were deemed imbeciles. “Generally feeble-mindedness is caused by the inheritance of degenerate qualities; but sometimes it might be caused by environmental factors which are not hereditary. In the case given, the evidence points strongly towards the feeblemindedness and moral delinquency of Carrie Buck being due, primarily to inheritance and not to environment.” Carrie Buck was sterilized. Nothing more was heard of the case until 1980 when Dr. K Ray Nelson began researching the records of the institution where Carrie had been sterilized. He found Carrie alive and well and after being tested my professionals they found her to be neither mentally ill nor retarded. They discovered that while Carrie was in the care of a foster home she was raped by a relative of the foster family and they wanted her institutionalized for sexual immorality and social deviance. Vivian was adopted by the family that had raised Carrie and it was found that she was a perfectly normal, average student. She died at the age of 8 of enteric colitis. The research showed that this famous case was based on falsehoods. There were no imbeciles in the three generations of Bucks. In my practice I have not had to deal with forced sterilization. I know that it was done and I know that it was often a court ordered sterilization for a mentally handicapped person, usually female. Just as a foot note Carries’ sister Doris was also sterilized but was told that she was having her appendix removed. Not until all of this was reopened did she know the truth. I really do not find any weaknesses in this article. It is easy to understand and to the point. It is a sad point in our history that people thought they had to right to pick and choice who could reproduce and who could not, based on facts that were unfounded.