Schrodinger’s Cat, Eugenics, and the Compulsory Sterilization of Welfare Mothers: Deconstructing an Old/New Rhetoric and Constructing the Reproductive Right to Natality for Low-Income Women of Color

Authors

Beverly Horsburgh, St. Thomas University School of Law

Abstract

In Part I of this Article, I briefly trace the history of racism, sexism, and class bias in western scientific thought as well as the legal consequences that ensued in this country from scientific prejudice. In Part II, I turn to eugenics in our own time and explore the sterilization abuse of poor women of color as a disguised form of eugenics. I argue that the lack of popular sympathy for the reproductive problems of these women, due to their negative dehumanizing stereotyping and the pervasive influence of sociobiology, facilitates public acceptance of harsher measures in the future. I refer, in particular, to the vast amount of private funding dedicated to scientific scholarship that explicitly or indirectly promotes limits on the birthrate of the poor. I also discuss existing eugenic practices brought about by advanced reproductive technology and research projects that could lead to new forms of population control. I suggest complacent social attitudes toward these enterprises contribute to a climate increasingly tolerant of the scientific regulation of human breeding. In Part III, I project into the future, revealing the dangerous rhetorical nexus linking the sterilization of mentally handicapped women with the sterilization of single mothers on welfare. I explain that the possibility of extending the doctrine on compulsory sterilization is exacerbated by the subordination of poor Black women's identity in various legal domains. Located at the intersectional axis of race, gender, and class, these women are ignored when it comes to racial discrimination because of their gender, overlooked when it comes to sex discrimination because of their race, and neglected by advocates in the battered women's movement as well as in poverty law. All that is known of them is their vilification in the popular rhetoric. As such, low-income women of color are disabled from creating a humanizing discourse that refutes their stigmatization and allows them to be seen in their human entirety as whole individuals. Furthermore, cast out of the legal regime on the right to reproductive choice and punished for exercising their right to procreate, poor Black women are powerless to stop further encroachments on their reproductive freedom that evolve in other areas of the law. In conclusion, I propose lowincome women of color require a new reproductive right, the right to natality. In that birthing is a new beginning for each generation because newcomers with unique qualities, unknown before, come into existence; the potential for rebirth is the source and expression of humankind's inherent freedom to change the world. The right to natality affirms welfare mothers' right to bring forth newcomers and in so doing to be free to contribute to the resurgent recreation of the universe. The right to natality also provides a means for poor Black women to claim their fully human status, counter the demonization of their identity, and safeguard their personhood from eugenic measures. While a rights discourse does not always lead to political changes and the current political atmosphere is not conducive to helping the poor, naming the right to natality for single Black mothers helps to cut through categorical rhetoric, restructure the welfare debate, construct a dialectic, and expose the underlying eugenic rationale of welfare reform.

Keywords

Gender and the Law, Jurisprudence, Sterilization, Birth and Reproduction, Banking and Finance Law, Globalization, Foreign Affairs, International Law

Disciplines

Banking and Finance Law | International Law | Jurisprudence | Law | Law and Gender

Recommended Citation

Beverly Horsburgh, Schrodinger’s Cat, Eugenics, and the Compulsory Sterilization of Welfare Mothers: Deconstructing an Old/New Rhetoric and Constructing the Reproductive Right to Natality for Low-Income Women of Color, 17 Cardozo L. Rev. 531 (1996).
Available at: https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/clr/vol17/iss3/4