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Compulsory sterilization statutes: public sentiment and public policy.


 Contemporary professional approaches to mental illness are based on the conviction that important causal factors lie outside the individual in the social milieu. Traditional notions of mental illness, on the other hand, locate its cause in moral or constitutional inadequacies of individuals, either genetic or otherwise unchangeable, and call for the constraint or removal of affected individuals from society for its protection. It is suggested that compulsory sterilization statutes are an indicator of the extent to which traditional assumptions concerning the causes and control of mental illness persist despite professional redefinition. Although growing research evidence shows that most conditions covered by sterilization statutes are not hereditary, sterilization continues to be seen by many as a viable method of control. In 1968, 27 states still had compulsory sterilization statutes, although 8 states repealed or modified these statutes in the 1968-73 period. Where early sterilization laws emerged from the belief that conditions covered by the statutes were genetically transmitted, more recent interest in such statutes has been punitive and economically motivated. There is a further trend for the application of compulsory sterilization statutes to be masked by acceptance of voluntary sterilization as a method of population control. It is concluded that compulsory sterilization statutes will be repealed only when the public comes to accept the assumptions of complex causality and changeability as regards mental illness.
