History Note
The awful price of freedom
by Luther Granquist
In May 1975 the Minnesota legislature
repealed a law authorizing sterilization of “feebleminded” persons
committed to the guardianship of the Commissioner of Public Welfare
and a law prohibiting a marriage if one of the persons was “imbecile,
feeble-minded, or insane.” The sterilization law was passed
in 1925; the marriage prohibition several years before that. Both
laws reflected the strong feelings of the time that mental retardation
was hereditary and that “feeble-minded” persons were
a threat to society as a whole.
In a speech in 1928 about
Heredity as a Factor in Feeble-Mindedness, Dr. J. M. Murdoch, Superintendent
of the School for the Feeble-Minded at Faribault, stated that the “lives
of feeble-minded persons should be made as satisfactory and complete
as our most advanced methods can make them, but we must see that
they do not propagate.” He
said that only those “feeble-minded” persons who had
been trained at the institution so that they could get along with
supervision in the “outside world” would be considered
for sterilization. By the time he spoke in 1928, 155 persons had
been sterilized at Faribault with the result, in his words, that “at
least 155 lines of descent carrying defective gene have been cut
off.”
Frederick Kuhlmann, a psychologist who was Director of Research
for the Minnesota State Board of Control, the predecessor of the
Department of Human Services, agreed in a speech in 1927 that “reproduction
is effectively prevented by segregation in an institution.” But
he emphasized that simply having been sterilized was not a reason
to discharge someone from guardianship or from the institution: “To
sterilize an immoral moron and then turn her loose is unthinkable.
To do so would aggravate an evil much greater than that of feeble-mind-edness.” We
must remember, he added, “that a sterilized moron is still
a moron ….”
From 1925 to 1945 more than
2200 women and men were sterilized in Minnesota. Although the law
required consent of a spouse or next of kin, if available, the practice
was to sterilize persons before they would be discharged. Faribault’s medical and nursing
staff held regular “case conferences” to discuss possible
placements out of the institution. The minutes of these conferences
in 1942 routinely included entries like, “…recommend
sterilization and concur in the plan of the welfare board to place
her in her aunt’s home.” After World War II, the number
of sterilizations decreased and, as attitudes changed, sterilizations
were rarely performed after 1960.
From 1925 until 1959 Mildred Thomson was the person who ultimately
exercised state guardianship powers. Speaking shortly after the sterilization
law was passed, she emphasized that the county social workers providing “outside
supervision” (outside the state institution) must actually
be “interested in the likes and dislikes, joys and sorrows
of the ward ….” She admonished them not to speak of “the
feeble-minded” in the abstract, but consider each person individually.
But she accepted without apparent question the need for sterilization.
With sterilization, she said, “we do not have to consider the
result of a possible evasion of supervision … another illegitimate
and possible feeble-minded child ….” She concluded: “Thus
many a girl, and boy also, can be satisfactorily paroled [discharged]
after such an operation, when it could not have been so considered
previously.”
Thomson was no ogre. When she retired, parent groups rightly praised
her, in part for supporting their organizations but also for her
staunch support of the interests of hundreds of persons with mental
retardation. The fact remains, however, that she also supported a
law that made sterilization the price of freedom for many of them.
That law has been repealed, but a wrong had been done to many persons
by the state, and not just by Thomson or Murdoch or Kuhlmann. Other
states have apologized for similar wrongs. Minnesota has not. ![]()
The History Note is a monthly column sponsored by the
Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities,
www.mnddc.org or www.mncdd.org and www.partnersinpolicymaking.com
