by Lutz Kaelber

American eugenics refers to compulsory sterilization laws adopted by over 30 states that led to more than 60,000 sterilizations of individuals. Many were sterilized because of a disability or because they belonged to socially disadvantaged groups living on the margins of society. The maps below complement the University of Vermont project led by Prof. Lutz Kaeber. Eugenics: Compulsory Sterilization in 50 American States provides data and detailed reports on legislative history and sterilzation practices (and victims) for each state in the United States. Here with Professor Kaelber's help we map some of the data while encouraging you to visit the main project site and read the state-by-state reports.

American eugenic laws and practices implemented in the first decades of the twentieth century also influenced Hitler's compulsory sterilization program, which between 1934 and 1945 led to approximately 350,000 compulsory sterilizations and was a stepping stone to the Holocaust. See Prof. Lutz related project: "Eugenics" and Nazi "Euthanasia" Crimes.

Even after the details of the Nazi sterilization program became widely known after World War II, sterilizations in some American states did not stop. Some states continued to sterilize residents into the 1970s.

While Germany has recently taken important steps to acknowledge the horrors of its past, including compulsory sterilization, the United States arguably has not. For some states, there still is a paucity of reliable information how and where sterilizations occurred. Hospitals, asylums, and other places where sterilizations were performed have typically chosen not to document that aspect of their history.

The maps and charts below show the number of forced sterilzations carried out in each state and eugenics laws state by state and year by year.

Move between maps and timelines using tabs below

Sources: All data for the above maps and tables are from Eugenics: Compulsory Sterilization in 50 American States directed by Lutz Kaelber, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Vermont.  

Methods are explained on that website: For each state for which information is available, there is a short account of the number of victims (based on a variety of data sources), the known period during which sterilizations occurred, the temporal pattern of sterilizations and rate of sterilization, the passage of law(s), groups indentified in the law, the prescribed process of the law, precipitating factors and processes that led up a state’s sterilization program, the groups targeted and victimized, other restrictions placed on those identified in the law or with disabilities in general, major proponents of state eugenic sterilization, “feeder institutions” and institutions where sterilizations were performed, and opposition to sterilization. A short bibliography is also provided.

While this research project was initially intended to give short accounts for each state, it quickly moved beyond this goal. For those states for which detailed monograph-length studies are available, it merely summarizes existing scholarship, but for other states for which such information is not readily available, it establishes the core parameters within which a state's eugenic sterilizations were carried out. As part of this research the current state of the facilities where sterilizations occurred or that served as feeder institutions is addressed.

This research brought into relief one particular piece of information that might not be known even to the specialists in the field. In Nazi Germany, during the peak years of sterilization between 1934 and 1939, approximately 75-80 sterilizations occurred per year per 100,000 residents. In Delaware, during the peak period of sterilizations (late 1920s to late 1930s), the rate was 18, about one fourth to one fifth of Germany's during its peak period, or half of Bavaria’s in 1936.[1] While the difference in the sterilization rate for a totalitarian regime with a federal sterilization law soon to commit mass murder on a historically unprecedented scale and a democratically governed state in a democratic nation remains significant,[2] it is much smaller than one might perhaps expect.

Contributions to this project were made by sophomore honors students at the University of Vermont as part of an Honors College course on Disability as Deviance and other courses 2009-2011. Students wrote up the primary accounts, which were then edited and amended by Lutz Kaelber, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Vermont, who is solely responsible for its contents and any errors or omissions. Research that went into this project was supported in parts by grants of the College of Arts and Science’s Dean’s Office and the Center for Teaching and Learning, and by funds of the University of Vermont's Honors College. Visit Eugenics: Compulsory Sterilization in 50 American States for detailed reports on each state.