Session: Reckoning with Eugenics and Sterilization Policy
U.S Eugenics, Reckoning Lessons, and Bioethics
Thursday, October 12, 2023
9:45 AM – 11:00 AM ET
Location: Chasseur (Third Floor)
“Eugenics” is invoked in (at least) two seemingly distinct subjects of public discourse today: debates about the ethics of contemporary genetic technologies (for example, genetic screening/testing, gene editing/selection); and the reckonings of governments, institutions, and organizations for their past participation in the harms of eugenic sterilization, institutionalization, and marriage restriction. Whereas the field of bioethics actively addresses genetic technologies, it has granted relatively narrow attention to the 20th century U.S. eugenics movement. Importantly, richer, and fuller understandings of the histories and ethics of U.S. eugenics could make bioethics a stronger and more trustworthy partner in ethics discussions of genetic and genomic technologies.
Bioethics could learn from state governments and academic institutions as they attempt to redress their eugenic pasts through apologies, renamings, financial reparations, and truth commissions. To varying degrees, these efforts have engaged members of the communities deeply impacted by eugenics and have identified the intersecting structural dynamics of racism, ableism, classism, and sexism central to eugenics. Attending to lessons learned from California (financial reparations) and Vermont (truth commission), this paper explores the potential of bioethics to co-create safe, even healing moral spaces of public engagement regarding eugenics past and present.