Esau Walton was not surgically sterilized in 1929 because he had already been institutionally sterilized at the Utah State Prison. Utah — along with 32 other white-male-dominated states — participated in what was known as the eugenics sterilization program from about 1925 to 1960.
These states deemed some groups of people imperfect — namely blacks, imbeciles, prostitutes and low class or any other “undesirable breeders.” These groups were forced to be permanently sterilized to prevent procreation.
Skip ahead to 2013 and one can find the descendants of past lawmakers and church leaders who approved and condoned human sterilization still in Utah and America writ large. They are the same people now fighting tooth and nail against abortion and birth control and women’s rights in general.
Are these separate movements born out of environmental and legal changes or sinister ancestral cultures that share more in common than meets the eye?
Politically, it seems a rebirth of ethics blanketed the previous moral abhorrence of sterilization. In fact, it is just another way to control and repress women, demonize the LGBT population and criminalize minorities and the poor.
What’s more, coercive reproductive practices are still very much alive in the United States. They now appear in the form of anti-abortion sentiments.
What used to be sterilization as a means to procure the “master race” is forcing pregnancies to full term, regardless of the safety or condition of the mother. These are, after all, babies that can easily be taken from the state-controlled uterus and planted in good Christian homes.
It’s also a practice perpetrated against LGBT individuals.
Walton, a black male, had stolen clothing and blankets for his family. He was arrested and labeled a hardened criminal and imprisoned. While serving his sentence, he was violently raped by a fellow white inmate. Then-prison warden, R.E. Davis, determined Walton was gay because of the incident and filed for Walton to be surgically sterilized so as to not pass on any of those so-called “bad genes.”
In Davis v. Walton (1929), the Utah Supreme Court spared Walton. However, it was a safe conservative judgment because Walton obviously could not procreate while incarcerated. The ruling, moreover, kept the white inmate unnamed.
However, the ruling did not spare three female cousins of Walton, who were sent to the Utah State Hospital to be sterilized.
The majority of the hundreds, if not thousands, forced sterilization victims in Utah were female. Eugenics solved the “supreme race” moral dilemma, as it was called, in dealing with the idea of offspring conceived by an unfavored population.
Utah buried its crimes and its perpetuation of sterilization, yet the same sentiments that drove that movement drive the anti-women’s rights and anti-LGBT movement today.
As a young teen, I remember my mom talking about the political fight waged by the Utah Legislature against letting the “retarded” kids out of the Utah State Hospital and into public schools.
Institutional sterilization was the more acceptable practice among Utah families. It was also the practice that could more easily be swept under the rug.
Women and racial and social minorities are oppressed and discounted in Utah. They always have been.
Eugenics and anti-abortion sentiments are two sides of the same coin. Both were born from the same white, patriarchal dominance, a set of privileges unwilling to make proper adjustments to fit the social fabric of America.
Eugenics and anti-abortion both white-male sentiments
April 2, 2013
autisticwarrior • Oct 22, 2013 at 5:29 pm
So you favour eugenic abortion when Americans do it but not when Nazis do it? Talk about confused. When do you hope your final solution will be accomplished then? Us disabled people aren’t going away any time soon, but thanks for your concern. We will be around long after the Dark Ages of abortion “choice” by “individuals” and failed states is a distant, unsettling memory. See you at the next Nuremberg genocide trials. By the way, your fellow eugenicists in Germany hated LGBT people, just thought you ought to know about that. In any case, as regards disabled people, we will NEVER submit to being liquidated, no matter how much you and your comrades despise us. The Nazi Empire didn’t last for a thousand years, although like the “choice” fetishists, they thought their tyranny would last forever. How long before women get sick of your “bourgeois individualism” and decide that disabled people actually have intrinsic value. If you expect us to hitch a ride on your cattle truck to oblivion in the abortion factories, you couldn’t be more wrong. People like you liberals/socialists complain about Bin Laden getting a sea burial; better than getting sucked up, hacked up and burnt in a furnace like we do. If your mass liquidation campaign is how you define “progress” and “civilisation,” I’m all for barbarism.
But do continue to enlighten us about how you are so “oppressed.” I’m sure everyone will be entertained by your Nietzschean rantings of your po-mo anti-“privilege” club. Let me guess; everything bad that’s ever happened to you is because of white people/men/middle class/Westerners right? At least you’ve had a chance for bad things to happen to you; that’s more than you’re prepared to let those you appear to think are “spastic untermenschen” to have. Funny thing is, I’ve never blamed every woman as a potential aborter of a disabled child; maybe Ressentistes like you could learn a lot from us. If we aren’t getting carved up by one of your “pro-choice” death scalpels that is. Keep up the Kool Aid, one day you might actually achieve something. But until that grand and glorious day, when you learn how to write an article without launching into pro-genocide tirades, try not to punch the next disabled child/adult you meet. The law may be an ass, but the world hasn’t got to the point of mass lynching of disabled people, thank God. If you do physically attack one of my brothers or sisters, all the self-pitying race/gender/culture baiting that you can muster won’t prevent you from being jailed as a common thug. By the way, I think you might be better writing for “godlikeproductions,” they seem to have quite a line in your kind of thing. Nice engaging with your vile spewings of idiotic world-loathing; hope I can find someone a bit more worthy of my time in future.
autisticwarrior • Oct 22, 2013 at 5:29 pm
So you favour eugenic abortion when Americans do it but not when Nazis do it? Talk about confused. When do you hope your final solution will be accomplished then? Us disabled people aren’t going away any time soon, but thanks for your concern. We will be around long after the Dark Ages of abortion “choice” by “individuals” and failed states is a distant, unsettling memory. See you at the next Nuremberg genocide trials. By the way, your fellow eugenicists in Germany hated LGBT people, just thought you ought to know about that. In any case, as regards disabled people, we will NEVER submit to being liquidated, no matter how much you and your comrades despise us. The Nazi Empire didn’t last for a thousand years, although like the “choice” fetishists, they thought their tyranny would last forever. How long before women get sick of your “bourgeois individualism” and decide that disabled people actually have intrinsic value. If you expect us to hitch a ride on your cattle truck to oblivion in the abortion factories, you couldn’t be more wrong. People like you liberals/socialists complain about Bin Laden getting a sea burial; better than getting sucked up, hacked up and burnt in a furnace like we do. If your mass liquidation campaign is how you define “progress” and “civilisation,” I’m all for barbarism.
But do continue to enlighten us about how you are so “oppressed.” I’m sure everyone will be entertained by your Nietzschean rantings of your po-mo anti-“privilege” club. Let me guess; everything bad that’s ever happened to you is because of white people/men/middle class/Westerners right? At least you’ve had a chance for bad things to happen to you; that’s more than you’re prepared to let those you appear to think are “spastic untermenschen” to have. Funny thing is, I’ve never blamed every woman as a potential aborter of a disabled child; maybe Ressentistes like you could learn a lot from us. If we aren’t getting carved up by one of your “pro-choice” death scalpels that is. Keep up the Kool Aid, one day you might actually achieve something. But until that grand and glorious day, when you learn how to write an article without launching into pro-genocide tirades, try not to punch the next disabled child/adult you meet. The law may be an ass, but the world hasn’t got to the point of mass lynching of disabled people, thank God. If you do physically attack one of my brothers or sisters, all the self-pitying race/gender/culture baiting that you can muster won’t prevent you from being jailed as a common thug. By the way, I think you might be better writing for “godlikeproductions,” they seem to have quite a line in your kind of thing. Nice engaging with your vile spewings of idiotic world-loathing; hope I can find someone a bit more worthy of my time in future.
ColoradoRob • Apr 2, 2013 at 2:04 pm
Rose! Two over-the-top absolute crazy articles in a row! This one is almost as good as the one where you claimed the mormons invaded and occupied Palestine with a violent illegal army.
I’m worried you’re walking dark paths that will lead you nowhere good, my friend.
ColoradoRob • Apr 2, 2013 at 2:04 pm
Rose! Two over-the-top absolute crazy articles in a row! This one is almost as good as the one where you claimed the mormons invaded and occupied Palestine with a violent illegal army.
I’m worried you’re walking dark paths that will lead you nowhere good, my friend.
Lewis • Apr 2, 2013 at 6:17 am
The passion in this article is impressive, however it would beneficial to forge a stronger link between white male oppression and Eugenics / Anti-Abortion.
Lewis • Apr 2, 2013 at 6:17 am
The passion in this article is impressive, however it would beneficial to forge a stronger link between white male oppression and Eugenics / Anti-Abortion.
Mr. Anonymous • Apr 2, 2013 at 5:44 am
You are so wrong. Planned Parenthood (the chief abortion provider in America) arose out of the Eugenics movement, which was an effort to ensure the racial purity of blood lines, and was spearheaded by Margaret Sanger, who was… I think… a woman. Opposition to abortion can come from many philosophies, the primary being religion. That has nothing to do with being particularly white or male. Only devout.
Mr. Anonymous • Apr 2, 2013 at 5:44 am
You are so wrong. Planned Parenthood (the chief abortion provider in America) arose out of the Eugenics movement, which was an effort to ensure the racial purity of blood lines, and was spearheaded by Margaret Sanger, who was… I think… a woman. Opposition to abortion can come from many philosophies, the primary being religion. That has nothing to do with being particularly white or male. Only devout.