Havelock Ellis Views on sterilization
Was he for or against sterilization?
Was Havelock Ellis for or against sterilization?
Ellis was strongly opposed to the idea of castration for eugenic purposes. In 1909, regulations were introduced at the Cantonal Asylum in Bern, which allowed those deemed 'unfit' and with strong sexual inclinations to be mandatorily sterilized. In a particular instance, several men and women, including epileptics and pedophiles were castrated, some of whom voluntarily requested it. While the results were positive, in that none of the subjects were found guilty of any more sexual offences, Ellis remained staunchly opposed to the practice. His view on the origin of these inclinations was that sexual impulses do not reside in the sexual organs, but rather they persist in the brain. Moreover, he posited that the sexual glands provided an important source of internal secretions vital for the functioning of the organism, and thus their removal could greatly injure the patient.  However, already in his time, Ellis was witness to the rise of vasectomies and ligatures of the Fallopian tubes, which performed the same sterilization without removing the whole organ. In these cases, Ellis was much more favorable, yet still maintaining that "sterilization of the unfit, if it is to be a practical and humane measure commanding general approval, must be voluntary on the part of the person undergoing it, and never compulsory." His opposition to such a system was not only rooted in morality. Rather, Ellis also considered the practicality of the situation, hypothesizing that if an already mentally unfit man is forced to undergo sterilization, he would only become more ill-balanced, and would end up committing more anti-social acts.  Though Ellis was never at ease with the idea of forced sterilizations, he was willing to find ways to circumvent that restriction. His focus was on the social ends of eugenics, and as a means to it, Ellis was in no way against 'persuading' 'volunteers' to undergo sterilization by withdrawing Poor Relief from them. While he preferred to convince those he deemed unfit using education, Ellis supported coercion as a tool. Furthermore, he supported adding ideas about eugenics and birth control to the education system in order to restructure society, and to promote social hygiene. For Ellis, sterilization seemed to be the only eugenic instrument that could be used on the mentally unfit. In fact, in his publication The Sterilization of the Unfit, Ellis argued that even institutionalization could not guarantee the complete prevention of procreation between the unfit, and thus, "the burdens of society, to say nothing of the race, are being multiplied. It is not possible to view sterilization with enthusiasm when applied to any class of people...but what, I ask myself, is the practical alternative?" CANNOTANSWER
Ellis was strongly opposed to the idea of castration for eugenic purposes.
Henry Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939) was an English physician, eugenicist, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and inclinations, as well as on transgender psychology. He is credited with introducing the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism, later adopted by psychoanalysis.

Ellis was among the pioneering investigators of psychedelic drugs and the author of one of the first written reports to the public about an experience with mescaline, which he conducted on himself in 1896. He supported eugenics and served as one of 16 vice-presidents of the Eugenics Society from 1909 to 1912.

Early life and career
Ellis, son of Edward Peppen Ellis and Susannah Mary Wheatley, was born in Croydon, Surrey (now part of Greater London). He had four sisters, none of whom married. His father was a sea captain, his mother the daughter of a sea captain, and many other relatives lived on or near the sea. When he was seven his father took him on one of his voyages, during which they called at Sydney, Australia; Callao, Peru; and Antwerp, Belgium. After his return, Ellis attended the French and German College near Wimbledon, and afterward attended a school in Mitcham.

In April 1875, Ellis sailed on his father's ship for Australia; soon after his arrival in Sydney, he obtained a position as a master at a private school. After the discovery of his lack of training, he was fired and became a tutor for a family living a few miles from Carcoar, New South Wales. He spent a year there and then obtained a position as a master at a grammar school in Grafton, New South Wales. The headmaster had died and Ellis carried on at the school for that year, but was unsuccessful.

At the end of the year, he returned to Sydney and, after three months' training, was given charge of two government part-time elementary schools, one at Sparkes Creek, near Scone, New South Wales, and the other at Junction Creek. He lived at the school house on Sparkes Creek for a year. He wrote in his autobiography, "In Australia, I gained health of body, I attained peace of soul, my life task was revealed to me, I was able to decide on a professional vocation, I became an artist in literature; these five points covered the whole activity of my life in the world. Some of them I should doubtless have reached without the aid of the Australian environment, scarcely all, and most of them I could never have achieved so completely if chance had not cast me into the solitude of the Liverpool Range."

Medicine and psychology
Ellis returned to England in April 1879. He had decided to take up the study of sex and felt his first step must be to qualify as a physician. He studied at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, now part of King's College London, but never had a regular medical practice. His training was aided by a small legacy and also income earned from editing works in the Mermaid Series of lesser known Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. He joined The Fellowship of the New Life in 1883, meeting other social reformers Eleanor Marx, Edward Carpenter and George Bernard Shaw.

The 1897 English translation of Ellis's book Sexual Inversion, co-authored with John Addington Symonds and originally published in German in 1896, was the first English medical textbook on homosexuality. It describes male homosexual relations as well as adolescent rape. Ellis wrote the first objective study of homosexuality, as he did not characterise it as a disease, immoral, or a crime. The work assumes that same-sex love transcended age taboos as well as gender taboos. The first edition of the book was bought-out by the executor of Symond's estate, who forbade any mention of Symonds in the second edition.

In 1897 a bookseller was prosecuted for stocking Ellis's book. Although the term homosexual is attributed to Ellis, he wrote in 1897, "'Homosexual' is a barbarously hybrid word, and I claim no responsibility for it." In fact, the word homosexual was coined in 1868 by the Hungarian author Karl-Maria Kertbeny.

Ellis may have developed psychological concepts of autoerotism and narcissism, both of which were later developed further by Sigmund Freud. Ellis's influence may have reached Radclyffe Hall, who would have been about 17 years old at the time Sexual Inversion was published. She later referred to herself as a sexual invert and wrote of female "sexual inverts" in Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself and The Well of Loneliness. When Ellis bowed out as the star witness in the trial of  The Well of Loneliness on 14 May 1928, Norman Haire was set to replace him but no witnesses were called.

Eonism
Ellis studied what today are called transgender phenomena. Together with Magnus Hirschfeld, Havelock Ellis is considered a major figure in the history of sexology to establish a new category that was separate and distinct from homosexuality. Aware of Hirschfeld's studies of transvestism, but disagreeing with his terminology, in 1913 Ellis proposed the term sexo-aesthetic inversion to describe the phenomenon. In 1920 he coined the term eonism, which he derived from the name of a historical figure, the Chevalier d'Éon. Ellis explained:

Ellis found eonism to be "a remarkably common anomaly", and "next in frequency to homosexuality among sexual deviations", and categorized it as "among the transitional or intermediate forms of sexuality". As in the Freudian tradition, Ellis postulated that a "too close attachment to the mother" may encourage eonism, but also considered that it "probably invokes some defective endocrine balance".

Marriage 

In November 1891, at the age of 32, and reportedly still a virgin, Ellis married the English writer and proponent of women's rights Edith Lees. From the beginning, their marriage was unconventional, as Edith Lees was openly lesbian. At the end of the honeymoon, Ellis went back to his bachelor rooms in Paddington. She lived at Fellowship House. Their "open marriage" was the central subject in Ellis's autobiography, My Life. Ellis reportedly had an affair with Margaret Sanger.

According to Ellis in My Life, his friends were much amused at his being considered an expert on sex. Some knew that he reportedly suffered from impotence until the age of 60. He then discovered that he could become aroused by the sight of a woman urinating. Ellis named this "undinism". After his wife died, Ellis formed a relationship with a French woman, Françoise Lafitte.

Eugenics
Ellis was a supporter of eugenics. He served as vice-president to the Eugenics Education Society and wrote on the subject, among others, in The Task of Social Hygiene:

In his early writings, it was clear that Ellis concurred with the notion that there was a system of racial hierarchies, and that non-western cultures were considered to be "lower races". Before explicitly talking about eugenic topics, he used the prevalence of homosexuality in these 'lower races' to indicate the universality of the behavior. In his work, Sexual Inversions, where Ellis presented numerous cases of homosexuality in Britain, he was always careful to mention the race of the subject and the health of the person's 'stock', which included their neuropathic conditions and the health of their parents. However, Ellis was clear to assert that he did not feel that homosexuality was an issue that eugenics needed to actively deal with, as he felt that once the practice was accepted in society, those with homosexual tendencies would comfortably choose not to marry, and thus would cease to pass the 'homosexual heredity' along.

In a debate in the Sociological Society, Ellis corresponded with noted eugenicist Francis Galton, who was presenting a paper in support of marriage restrictions. While Galton analogized eugenics to breeding domesticated animals, Ellis felt that a greater sense of caution was needed before applying the eugenic regulations to populations, as "we have scarcely yet realized how subtle and far-reaching hereditary influences are." Instead, because unlike domesticated animals, humans were in charge of who they mated with, Ellis argued that a greater emphasis was needed on public education about how vital this issue was. Ellis thus held much more moderate views than many contemporary eugenicists. In fact, Ellis also fundamentally disagreed with Galton's leading ideas that procreation restrictions were the same as marriage restrictions. Ellis believed that those who should not procreate should still be able to gain all the other benefits of marriage, and to not allow that was an intolerable burden. This, in his mind, was what led to eugenics being "misunderstood, ridiculed, and regarded as a fad".

Throughout his life, Ellis was both a member and later a council member of the Eugenics Society. Moreover, he played a role on the General Committee of the First International Eugenics Congress.

Sexual impulse in youth 
Ellis' 1933 book, Psychology of Sex, is one of the many manifestations of his interest in human sexuality. In this book, he goes into vivid detail of how children can experience sexuality differently in terms of time and intensity. He mentions that it was previously believed that, in childhood, humans had no sex impulse at all. "If it is possible to maintain that the sex impulse has no normal existence in early life, then every manifestation of it at that period must be 'perverse, he adds. He continues by stating that, even in the early development and lower function levels of the genitalia, there is a wide range of variation in terms of sexual stimulation. He claims that the ability of some infants producing genital reactions, seen as "reflex signs of irritation" are typically not vividly remembered. Since the details of these manifestations are not remembered, there is no possible way to determine them as pleasurable. However, Ellis claims that many people of both sexes can recall having agreeable sensations with the genitalia as a child. "They are not (as is sometimes imagined) repressed." They are, however, not usually mentioned to adults. Ellis argues that they typically stand out and are remembered for the sole contrast of the intense encounter to any other ordinary experience.

Ellis claims that sexual self-excitement is known to happen at an early age. He references authors like Marc, Fonssagrives, and Perez in France who published their findings in the nineteenth century. These early ages are not strictly limited to ages close to puberty as can be seen in their findings. These authors provide cases for children of both sexes who have masturbated from the age of three or four. Ellis references Robie's findings that boys' first sex feelings appear between the ages of five and fourteen. For girls, this age ranges from eight to nineteen. For both sexes, these first sexual experiences arise more frequently during the later years as opposed to the earlier years. Ellis then references G.V. Hamilton's studies that found twenty percent of males and fourteen percent of females have pleasurable experiences with their sex organs before the age of six. This is only supplemented by Ellis' reference to Katharine Davis' studies, which found that twenty to twenty-nine percent of boys and forty-nine to fifty-one percent of girls were masturbating by the age of eleven. However, in the next three years after, boys' percentages exceeded those of girls.

Ellis also contributed to the idea of varying levels of sexual excitation. He asserts it is a mistake to assume all children are able to experience genital arousal or pleasurable erotic sensations. He proposes cases where an innocent child is led to believe that stimulation of the genitalia will result in a pleasurable erection. Some of these children may fail and not be able to experience this either pleasure or an erection until puberty. Ellis concludes, then, that children are capable of a "wide range of genital and sexual aptitude". Ellis even considers ancestry as contributions to different sexual excitation levels, stating that children of "more unsound heredity" and/or hypersexual parents are "more precociously excitable".

Auto-eroticism 
Ellis' views of auto-eroticism were very comprehensive, including much more than masturbation. Auto-eroticism, according to Ellis, includes a wide range of phenomena. Ellis states in his 1897 book Studies in the Psychology of Sex, that auto-eroticism ranges from erotic day-dreams, marked by a passivity shown by the subject, to "unshamed efforts at sexual self-manipulation witnessed among the insane".

Ellis also argues that auto-erotic impulses can be heightened by bodily processes like menstrual flow. During this time, he says, women, who would otherwise not feel a strong propensity for auto-eroticism, increase their masturbation patterns. This trend is absent, however, in women without a conscious acceptance of their sexual feelings and in a small percentage of women suffering from a sexual or general ailment which result in a significant amount of "sexual anesthesia".

Ellis also raises social concern over how auto-erotic tendencies affect marriages. He goes on to tying auto-eroticism to declining marriage rates. As these rates decline, he concludes that auto-eroticism will only increase in both amount and intensity for both men and women. Therefore, he states, this is an important issue to both the moralist and physician to investigate psychological underpinnings of these experiences and determine an attitude toward them.

Smell 
Ellis believed that the sense of smell, although ineffective at long ranges, still contributes to sexual attraction, and therefore, to mate selection. In his 1905 book, Sexual selection in man, Ellis makes a claim for the sense of smell in the role of sexual selection. He asserts that while we have evolved out of a great necessity for the sense of smell, we still rely on our sense of smell with sexual selection. The contributions that smell makes in sexual attraction can even be heightened with certain climates. Ellis states that with warmer climates come a heightened sensitivity to sexual and other positive feelings of smell among normal populations. Because of this, he believes people are often delighted by odors in the East, particularly in India, in "Hebrew and Mohammedan lands". Ellis then continues by describing the distinct odours in various races, noting that the Japanese race has the least intense of bodily odours. Ellis concludes his argument by stating, "On the whole, it may be said that in the usual life of man odours play a not inconsiderable part and raise problems which are not without interest, but that their demonstrable part in actual sexual selection is comparatively small."

Views on women and birth control
Ellis favoured feminism from a eugenic perspective, feeling that the enhanced social, economic, and sexual choices that feminism provided for women would result in women choosing partners who were more eugenically sound. In his view, intelligent women would not choose, nor be forced to marry and procreate with feeble-minded men.

Ellis viewed birth control as merely the continuation of an evolutionary progression, noting that natural progress has always consisted of increasing impediments to reproduction, which lead to a lower quantity of offspring, but a much higher quality of them. From a eugenic perspective, birth control was an invaluable instrument for the elevation of the race. However, Ellis noted that birth control could not be used randomly in a way that could have a detrimental impact by reducing conception, but rather needed to be used in a targeted manner to improve the qualities of certain 'stocks'. He observed that it was unfortunately the 'superior stocks' who had knowledge of and used birth control while the 'inferior stocks' propagated without checks. Ellis' solution to this was a focus on contraceptives in education, as this would disseminate the knowledge in the populations that he felt needed them the most. Ellis argued that birth control was the only available way of making eugenic selection practicable, as the only other option was wide-scale abstention from intercourse for those who were 'unfit'.

Views on sterilization
Ellis was strongly opposed to the idea of castration for eugenic purposes. In 1909, regulations were introduced at the Cantonal Asylum in Bern, which allowed those deemed 'unfit' and with strong sexual inclinations to be mandatorily sterilized. In a particular instance, several men and women, including epileptics and paedophiles, were castrated, some of whom voluntarily requested it. While the results were positive, in that none of the subjects were found guilty of any more sexual offences, Ellis remained staunchly opposed to the practice. His view on the origin of these inclinations was that sexual impulses do not reside in the sexual organs, but rather they persist in the brain. Moreover, he posited that the sexual glands provided an important source of internal secretions vital for the functioning of the organism, and thus their removal could greatly injure the patient.

However, already in his time, Ellis was witness to the rise of vasectomies and ligatures of the Fallopian tubes, which performed the same sterilization without removing the whole organ. In these cases, Ellis was much more favourable, yet still maintaining that "sterilization of the unfit, if it is to be a practical and humane measure commanding general approval, must be voluntary on the part of the person undergoing it, and never compulsory." His opposition to such a system was not only rooted in morality. Rather, Ellis also considered the practicality of the situation, hypothesizing that if an already mentally unfit man is forced to undergo sterilization, he would only become more ill-balanced, and would end up committing more anti-social acts.

Though Ellis was never at ease with the idea of forced sterilizations, he was willing to find ways to circumvent that restriction. His focus was on the social ends of eugenics, and as a means to it, Ellis was in no way against 'persuading' 'volunteers' to undergo sterilization by withdrawing Poor Relief from them. While he preferred to convince those he deemed unfit using education, Ellis supported coercion as a tool. Furthermore, he supported adding ideas about eugenics and birth control to the education system in order to restructure society, and to promote social hygiene. For Ellis, sterilization seemed to be the only eugenic instrument that could be used on the mentally unfit. In fact, in his publication The Sterilization of the Unfit, Ellis argued that even institutionalization could not guarantee the complete prevention of procreation between the unfit, and thus, "the burdens of society, to say nothing of the race, are being multiplied. It is not possible to view sterilization with enthusiasm when applied to any class of people…but what, I ask myself, is the practical alternative?"

Psychedelics
Ellis was among the pioneering investigators of psychedelic drugs and the author of one of the first written reports to the public about an experience with mescaline, which he conducted on himself in 1896. He consumed a brew made of 3 Echinocacti (peyote) in the afternoon of Good Friday alone in his apartment in Temple, London. During the experience, lasting for about 24 hours, he noted a plethora of extremely vivid, complex, colourful, pleasantly smelling hallucinations, consisting both of abstract geometrical patterns and definite objects such as butterflies and other insects. He published the account of the experience in The Contemporary Review in 1898 (Mescal: A New Artificial Paradise). The title of the article alludes to an earlier work on the effects of mind-altering substances, an 1860 book Les Paradis artificiels by French poet Charles Baudelaire (containing descriptions of experiments with opium and hashish).

Ellis was so impressed with the aesthetic quality of the experience that he gave some specimens of peyote to the Irish poet W. B. Yeats, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an organisation of which another mescaline researcher, Aleister Crowley, was also a member.

Later life and death
Ellis resigned from his position of Fellow of the Eugenics Society over their stance on sterilization in January 1931.

Ellis spent the last year of his life at Hintlesham, Suffolk, where he died in July 1939. He is buried in Golders Green Crematorium, in North London.

Works

 The Criminal (1890)
 The New Spirit (1890)
 The Nationalisation of Health (1892)
 Man and Woman: A Study of Secondary and Tertiary Sexual Characteristics (1894) (revised 1929)
 translator: Germinal (by Zola) (1895) (reissued 1933)
  with J.A. Symonds
 Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897–1928) six volumes (listed below)
 
 Affirmations (1898)
 
 The Nineteenth Century (1900)
 
 
 A Study of British Genius (1904)
 
 
 The Soul of Spain (1908)
 
 
 The Problem of Race-Regeneration (1911)
 The World of Dreams (1911) (new edition 1926)
 
 
 The Task of Social Hygiene (1912)
 
 The Philosophy of Conflict (1919)
 On Life and Sex: Essays of Love and Virtue (1921)
 
 Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922)
 
 
 Sonnets, with Folk Songs from the Spanish (1925)
 Eonism and Other Supplementary Studies (1928)
 Studies in the Psychology of Sex Vol. 7 (1928)
 The Art of Life (1929) (selected and arranged by Mrs. S. Herbert)
 More Essays of Love and Virtue (1931)
 ed.: James Hinton: Life in Nature (1931)
 
 
 ed.: Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection, by Walter Savage Landor (1933)
 Chapman (1934)
 My Confessional (1934)
 Questions of Our Day (1934)
 From Rousseau to Proust (1935)
 Selected Essays (1936)
 Poems (1937) (selected by John Gawsworth; pseudonym of T. Fytton Armstrong)
 Love and Marriage (1938) (with others)
 
 Sex Compatibility in Marriage (1939)
 From Marlowe to Shaw (1950) (ed. by J. Gawsworth)
 The Genius of Europe (1950)
 Sex and Marriage (1951) (ed. by J. Gawsworth)
 The Unpublished Letters of Havelock Ellis to Joseph Ishill (1954)

References

Bibliography

Further reading

 
 
   (U.S. title)

External links

 Havelock Ellis papers (MS 195). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library 

 
 Henry Havelock Ellis papers from the Historic Psychiatry Collection, Menninger Archives, Kansas Historical Society
 
 
 

1859 births
1939 deaths
19th-century English non-fiction writers
20th-century English non-fiction writers
Alumni of King's College London
Alumni of St Thomas's Hospital Medical School
British sexologists
English eugenicists
English psychologists
People from Croydon
Psychedelic drug advocates
British relationships and sexuality writers
Medical writers on LGBT topics
British social reformers
Transgender studies academics
Victorian writers
Translators of Émile Zola
V.C. vs Slovakia was the first case in which the European Court for Human Rights ruled in favor of a Romani woman who was a victim of forced sterilization in the state hospital in Slovakia. It is one of many cases of forced sterilization of Roma women brought to the Court by the Slovak feminist group Center for Civil and Human Rights from Košice.

The woman, known by the initials V.C., was forcibly sterilized in the state hospital, Prešov Hospital, in Eastern Slovakia on 23 August 2000, during the delivery of her second child. According to her medical records, shortly before her delivery was terminated by caesarean section, and while she was in labour and having contractions every three minutes, the hospital staff pressured her to sign a one sentence declaration as "a request for sterilization". She was told that unless she signed that declaration, she or her baby would die. V.C. did not understand what sterilization meant but she signed nonetheless, in fear for her life. She was sterilized during the procedure.

Later, she learned that the sterilization was not necessary for saving her life, since it is merely a form of contraception. V.C. was greatly traumatized by the forced sterilization. Her husband divorced her, she was ostracized by the community, experienced a hysterical pregnancy, and had to undergo psychiatric counselling.

In 2004, V.C. sued for damages from the Prešov hospital in Slovakian courts, including the Constitutional Court of Slovakia. All her petitions were rejected. In 2007, she brought a complaint against Slovakia to the European Court. The European Court held a hearing into the case on 22 March 2011. On 8 November 2011 the Court found a violation of her rights; her right to freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment (under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights) and the right to private and family life (under Article 8 of the Convention). The Court rejected the claims of the Slovak Government that sterilization was "medically necessary" since sterilization is not a life-saving surgery and V.C.'s informed consent was needed. In the court's view, the approach of the Prešov Hospital was not compatible with the Convention as it did not permit V.C. to take a decision of her own free will, after consideration of all the relevant issues.

The Slovak Government was ordered to pay V.C. compensation of 31,000 EUR and reimbursement of her legal costs.

References

Sources
 Judgement of the European Court of 8 November 2011 on Application no. 18968/07
 Record of the hearing at the European Court of Human Rights on 22 March 2011

European Court of Human Rights cases involving Slovakia
Antiziganism in Slovakia
Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights
Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights
Romani in Slovakia The Alberta Eugenics Board was an agency created by the Alberta government in 1928 that attempted to impose sterilization on a disabled subset of its population, in accordance with the principles of eugenics. It remained active until 1972, when it was dissolved.

Origin
In 1928, the Alberta government (Alberta, Canada) passed eugenics legislation that enabled the involuntary sterilization of individuals classified as mentally deficient (now known as persons with a developmental disability or mental disorder), with the consent of the patient or his/her guardian or next-of-kin. To implement the Sexual Sterilization Act, a four-member Alberta Eugenics Board was created to recommend individuals for sterilization. The Act was amended in 1937 to allow sterilization without consent. In 1972, the Act was repealed and the Board dismantled. During its 43 years in operation, the Board approved nearly 5,000 cases and 2,832 sterilizations were performed. The actions of the Board came under public scrutiny in 1995 with Leilani Muir's successful lawsuit against the Alberta government for wrongful sterilization.

Eugenics: Like begets like
Although Mendelian inheritance principles were well understood by geneticists in 1928, advocates of the eugenics movement held onto the unfounded premise that "like begets like". They believed that social degenerates would procreate and pass on their "undesirable" traits to their offspring. Although it was known at the time, for recessive disorders, like does not always beget like, and with dominant disorders, there is only a 50% risk of transmission to the child. The progeny of parents with mental deficiencies are not always born with an inherited disorder. Mental disorder phenotypes are influenced by environmental interactions, such as German measles, and are often independent of an individual's genome.

Historical context
The province of Alberta was the first part of the British Empire to adopt a sterilization law, and was the only Canadian province that vigorously implemented it. Eugenics was widely discussed in the U.S. at the time and British Columbia and Alberta were influenced by American trends. During early debates regarding the sexual sterilization bill in Alberta, there were many references made to U.S. legislation. As Canada was being populated by immigrants, the eugenics movement was emerging and gaining the support of influential sponsors, such as J.S. Woodsworth, Emily Murphy, Helen MacMurchy, Louise McKinney, Irene Parlby, Nellie McClung, and  Robert Charles Wallace. In Alberta, eugenics supporters had seemingly positive intentions with the goal of bettering the gene pool and society at large. The burden put on hard-working farm mothers by mentally-challenged children with adult sex drives was a major impetus to UFA cabinet minister Irene Parlby.

In 1918, the Canadian National Committee on Mental Hygiene (CNCMH) was established by Dr. Clarence Hincks. The Committee's aim was "to fight crime, prostitution, and unemployment" which it claimed was strongly tied to feeble-mindedness. One of the projects that the CNCMH and Hincks took on, along with Dr. C.K. Clarke, was conducting provincial surveys of mental institutions in 1919, and making subsequent recommendations to the provincial government. Visiting several institutions, the results of their survey, published in 1921, attributed social inefficiency and corruption to mental inadequacy, and recommended sterilization as a preventative measure. They claimed to have found "scientific proof" linking feeble-mindedness to social issues.

At the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) party convention in 1922, in response to this survey, the Alberta government was called on to draft and implement legislation for the segregation of feeble-minded adults. The government was also asked to investigate the feasibility of implementing a sterilization program in Alberta. R.G. Reid, the  Minister of Health, assured eugenics supporters that the provincial government was in favour of a sterilization program, and was only waiting for public opinion to catch up.

The United Farm Women of Alberta lobbied for sterilization laws, and members used their connections with the UFA government to get legislation passed. At a campaign in 1924, president Margaret Gunn proclaimed, "Democracy was never intended for degenerates". The rationale that eugenics supporters gave was that families with "defective" offspring were a financial burden on the province, especially in times of economic adversity.

On March 25, 1927, George Hoadley, Minister of Agriculture and Health in John E. Brownlee's UFA government, introduced a sexual sterilization bill. The bill faced enormous opposition, primarily from the Conservative and Liberal parties, and did not pass the second reading. Hoadley promised to reintroduce it the following year and, on February 23, 1928, the bill was passed. On March 21, 1928, the lieutenant governor gave royal assent to the  Sexual Sterilization Act. Brought in by the UFA, the Act remained in place under the following Social Credit governments of William Aberhart and Ernest Manning, which amended the Act in 1937 to allow sterilization without consent, and the first year of the Progressivr Conservative government. After Peter Lougheed's Progressive Conservative government took power, the Alberta Eugenics Board was finally disbanded and the Sexual Sterilization Act repealed in 1972.

Board structure
The Alberta Eugenics Board was created in order to administer the province's eugenics program. The Sexual Sterilization Act required that a four-person Board determine, on a case by case basis, whether sterilization was appropriate for a particular individual. The  Act gave the Board power to review cases of patients living in or discharged from mental institutions and order their sterilization, if deemed necessary. A unanimous decision required, as was consent from the patient, parent, or guardian and was essential for the surgical procedures to proceed. The Act put in place specific requirements for its board members: two members were required to be medical practitioners, nominated by the Senate of the University of Alberta and the Council of the College of Physicians. The other two non-medical members were appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council, and had esteemed reputations.

The original four members
The first members appointed to the Alberta Eugenics Board were:
Dr. E. Pope, Edmonton
Dr. E.G. Mason, Calgary
Dr. J.M. MacEachran, Edmonton
Mrs. Jean H. Field, Kinuso.

Dr. MacEachran, a philosopher and professor at the University of Alberta, was appointed Chair, and he served continuously in this position for nearly 40 years, resigning in 1965. He was succeeded by Dr. R.K. Thompson, a medical doctor who chaired the Board until the Sexual Sterilization Act was repealed in 1972. Over the Board's 43-year duration, there were only 21 board members. Between 1929 and 1972, all four members were present for approximately 97% of the 398 meetings that were held.

Board meetings and procedures
The first meeting of the Alberta Eugenics Board took place in January 1929. At the second meeting, in March 1929, the Board established a protocol to be followed during its quarterly meetings. At meetings the superintendents of Alberta mental institutions presented cases to the Board, along with prepared presentation summaries for each individual considered for sterilization. These summaries documented: family history, sexual history, medical history and diagnosis, personality, psychosocial development, education, results of IQ testing, criminal record, ethnicity, religion, age, and other information that could be used to inform the Board's decision.  Presenting mental institutions in Alberta included: the Alberta Hospital in Ponoka, the Provincial Training School (later known as Alberta School Hospital/Deerhome, and Michener Center) in Red Deer, and the Alberta Hospital in Oliver.

Patients were then interviewed by the Board and recommendations were made for sterilization. If they could not attend, members sometimes saw the patient in their institutional ward. Consent was initially required for all operational procedures, either from the patients, their parent or guardian. A competent surgeon was appointed to the case; however the Act stated they were not liable to any civil action. Various types of operations were performed: vasectomies, salpingectomies (tubal ligation), orchidectomies (removal of the testes), oophorectomies (removal of the ovaries), and sometimes hysterectomies. Operations took place in approved hospitals designated by the Board. In addition to the appointed board members and presenters, it was not uncommon for other professionals, support staff, or visitors to attend patient interviews.

Typically, 4–15 people attended Board meetings, averaging 8.4 persons per meeting. On average, the Board spent approximately 13 minutes reviewing each case, and members discussed about 13 cases per meeting. The Board retained individual-level files for all of the cases considered. One of the Board's main concerns was tracking the number of people processed. In addition to the routine case reviews, members spent time during 63% of its meetings discussing general issues, signing forms, and reviewing correspondence.

Amendments to the Sexual Sterilization Act
By 1937, 400 operations had been completed and amendments to the Act were made. The first amendment came shortly after the Social Credit government came into power in 1935. The new Minister of Health, Wallace Warren Cross, was dismayed that only hundreds of individuals had been sterilized when thousands could have been done but were not due to consent requirements. Following the change in legislation, if individuals were regarded as mental defectives, consent was no longer necessary for their sterilization. A month after this amendment a special Alberta Eugenics Board meeting was held in order to review past cases of individuals who were now eligible for sterilization.

Another part of the 1937 amendment increased the Board's power: sterilization procedures were approved if the Board deemed an individual "incapable of intelligent parenthood". The success of this amendment was celebrated in 1937 in an article published by two mental health professionals, R.R. MacLean and E.J. Kibblewhite, where they noted the increasing simplicity with which the Board could proceed with its business.

In 1942, an additional amendment widened the application of the Act to include more mental patients. Non-psychotic individuals with syphilis, epilepsy, and Huntington's Chorea were now encompassed by the Act; however, for reasons unknown, the Board maintained that consent was still required for these cases.

Board actions
Between 1929 and 1972, 4,785 cases were presented to the Alberta Eugenics Board, and 99% of these cases were approved. Of all the approved cases, 60% were completed resulting in the sterilization of 2,832 of Alberta's children and adults in the Board's 43-year history. There was a high correlation between absence of consent requirement and subsequent sterilization: 89% of all presented and approved cases did not require consent for sterilization to occur, as opposed to 15% of cases where consent was necessary.

Beginning in the 1940s, women were more likely to be presented to the Board than men, even though they constituted less than 40% of all patients in the feeder institutions. On average, 64% of all women whose cases were presented to the Board were sterilized in comparison to 54% of men. Of the 2,832 sterilization procedures completed, 58% were performed on females. The over-representation of women may reflect gender role expectations, where these women were considered "incapable of intelligent parenting".

In addition to women, the Board targeted youth and young adults for sterilization. Although they made up less than 20% of the Albertan population at the time, they comprised 44% of all presented cases and 55% of all sterilization cases. Children and patients who were age 40 and older were notably under-represented, as the Board focused its efforts on individuals in the "child-bearing years" – those who were able and most likely to reproduce.

Over four decades, Indigenous people (i.e., First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) were the foremost targets of the Board's actions. Only representing 2–3% of Alberta's population, they comprised 6% of all presented sterilization cases. Of all aboriginal cases presented to the Board, 74% resulted in sterilization.

Regarding the feeder institutions, the Alberta Hospital in Ponoka was responsible for about 60% of all cases considered, followed by the Provincial Training School and Deerhome in Red Deer with 25%, and the Alberta Hospital in Oliver with 14%.

Board controversy
The majority of Alberta Eugenics Board activities were conducted in secret, sheltered from public criticism and legislative scrutiny. This secrecy and lack of transparency, combined with the cooperation of the provincial government and feeder institutions, resulted in the Board pursuing illicit activities not encompassed by the Act. The fact that the Board approved 99% of all presented cases calls into question the validity and accountability of its procedures. Some cases were approved even when patients' IQ scores were above the criterion score established by the Board for sterilization. At times, surgeons performed operations without the Board's approval. Sterilization procedures were also ordered for individuals who were already infertile – most notably, a group of 15 boys with Down syndrome where testicular biopsy tissue was surgically removed for the purpose of medical research.

Repeal
The Progressive Conservative party led by Peter Lougheed came to power in 1971 and, a year later, passed the Alberta Bill of Rights. Shortly after, the new provincial government revoked the Sexual Sterilization Act and folded the Alberta Eugenics Board, citing three reasons: 
 Primarily, the Act violated fundamental human rights. 
 It was based on medical and genetics theories which are now of questionable scientific validity.
 It was full of legal ambiguities, most notably in the section exempting surgeons from civil liability.

In the mid-1990s, Leilani Muir, a victim of involuntary sterilization in 1959, sued the Alberta government for wrongful sterilization. The case went to full trial in 1995, Muir won the case in 1996, and she was awarded nearly C$1 million in damages and legal costs. Since Muir's precedent-setting trial, over 850 victims have filed lawsuits against the Alberta government; the majority of these have been settled out of court and C$142 million in damages have been awarded.

See also
Compulsory sterilization in Canada

Notes

References
Cairney, R. (1996). "'Democracy was never intended for degenerates': Alberta's flirtation with eugenics comes back to haunt it". Canadian Medical Association Journal, 155(6): 789-792.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). (1999, Nov 9). "Alberta apologizes for forced sterilization". CBC News. Retrieved on October 11, 2012 from, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/1999/11/02/sterilize991102.html
Christian, T.J. (1973). The mentally ill and human rights in Alberta: A study of the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act. Edmonton: Faculty of Law, University of Alberta.
Frost, E.M. (1942). Sterilization of Alberta: A summary of the cases presented to the Eugenics Board for the Province of Alberta from 1929 to 1941. Masters Thesis. Edmonton: University of Alberta.
Grekul, J., Krahn, H., & Odynak, D. (2004). "Sterilizing the 'feeble-minded': Eugenics in Alberta, Canada, 1929-1972". Journal of Historical Sociology, 17(4): 358-384. ISSN 0952-1909
McLaren, A. (1990). Our own master race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885-1945. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
"Muir v. The Queen in Right of Alberta". (1996). Dominion Law Reports, 132 (4th series): 695-762. Retrieved on October 16, 2012 from, http://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abqb/doc/1996/1996canlii7287/1996canlii7287.pdf
Pringle, H. (1997, Jun). "Alberta barren". Saturday Night, 12(5): 30-37; 70; 74.
Puplampu, K. (2008). "Knowledge, power, and social policy: John M. MacEachran and Alberta's 1928 Sexual Sterilization Act". The Alberta Journal of Education Research, 54(2): 129-146.
Wahlsten, D. (1997). "Leilani Muir versus the philosopher king: Eugenics on trial in Alberta". Genetica, 99: 185-198.

Developmental disabilities
Eugenics organizations
Alberta law
Alberta
Political history of Alberta