SOCIAL EUGENICS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20089, 4 May 1927, Page 9

SOCIAL EUGENICS

FEEBLE-MINDED CASES. LAW OF VIRGINIA UPHELD. • (Press 4 ssoolatlon—By Telegraph—Copyright.) WASHINGTON, May 3. (Received May 3, at 7.45 p.m.) One of the most, important legal decisions affecting the practice of social eugenics was rendered by the Supremo Court of the United States to-day, upholding the Virginia Jaw providing for the sterilisation of the feeble-minded. The case was dealt with on an order ot tho superintendent of the State Colony of epileptics and feeble-minded for the operation of salpinoglomy on a feeble-minded young woman, the mother of an illegitimate feeble-minded child, and whose own mother was also feeble-minded. The woman’s guardian brought the action on the ground that the Virginia law was void, as it conflicted with the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution, because it denied the plaintiff due process of law and equal protection under law. Mr Justice Holmes, in giving his decision, said it would be better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring, for crime or let them starve because of their imbecility, society prevented those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principal of sustaining compulsory vaccination was broad enough to cover tho proposition of sterilisation.—A. and N.Z. Cable.