- Utah's eugenic sterilization program targeted at least 830 people, a new study claims.
- Around 50 were children aged between 10 and 14 years old.
When a teenage girl, in 1928, told her bishop that she had been raped by her brother, she was labeled an idiot.
Instead of getting help, she was taken to the Utah State Hospital and sterlized against her will. The bishop later admitted she had likely been sold into sex work by her family.
Disturbing stories such as this have been uncovered as part of a new study into the scale of Utah's 50-year "eugenic assault."
Starting in the early 1900s, 32 states passed laws to enable state officials to recommend sterilization for those thought to be "unfit," "feeble-minded," or "immoral."
Most states backtracked their program in the 1950s, but Utah continued sterilizing victims until 1974, the study published Wednesday found.
At least 830 women, men, and children were coercively sterilized in Utah, it said. The procedures were carried out on children as young as 10.
In all likelihood, 54 of these victims are still alive today and researchers are now calling on Utah to apologize and take accountability for its role in the program.
"There are very likely people walking around in Utah today with the scars of this injustice," James Tabery, professor of philosophy at the University of Utah and an author on the study, told Insider.
Victims as young as 10 were sterilized
Utah's sterilization program peaked in the 1940s and didn't end until 1974. As the program grew, increasingly younger people were sent for sterilization, Tabery said.
Of the 830 people who were sterilized in Utah, 50 are known to have been children aged only between 10 and 14 years, per the study. At least another 198 were aged between 15 and 19. One child was under ten years old when she was sterilized, per the study.
The idea of forced sterilization was simple: Eugenics told people at the time that immorality was determined by genes. So that would mean the social elite were in their place because of their superior genetics.
It then followed those society saw as misfits, for instance the impoverished, those charged with crimes, and the disabled, should not be allowed to pass on their genes.
"By the mid-20th century, it became abundantly clear for human genetics that that's just not the case," said Tabery, who co-wrote the study with Nicole Novak, assistant professor at the University of Iowa.
Most states that carried on with their program didn't change the law. But Utah, in 61, went through the trouble of updating their law to make sure it could stand the test of time.
"They came up with a new justification that let them lower the bar for what they had to prove to sterilize somebody," he said.
Instead of having to prove that something was heritable, "you just have to decide that the people aren't going to be able to be good parents," said Tabery.
"I find it absolutely appalling. I have an eight-year-old daughter. That these children could, at that age, already be deemed either unfit to pass on their genes or incapable of parenting, it's really sad," said Tabery.
'He felt there was nothing he could do to prevent the operation'
Like many other states in the US, the people who were deemed unfit in Utah — labeled as "feeble-minded"— would be sent to off to state institutions — first at the Utah State Hospital they at the Utah State Training School from 1931.
"There was shame associated with having a child with a disability," said Tabery.
"Now, the focus is on having them live comfortably with their family. But at the time in the US, they were institutionalized," he said.
At the Utah State Training School, students were meant to learn practical skills like housework, sewing, and shoe mending. Students lived in 88-bed bunks under the supervision of matrons.
Those sent to those institutions usually had to stay between three and six years of training, according to the Utah Historical quarterly.
Sterilization was mandatory for release, according to the Utah Historical quarterly. So victims often felt like they didn't have a choice,
That's the case of George, a 36-year-old man who received a vasectomy when he was 19. George, the report said, would have liked to have children "but went along with the operation anyway".
"It appears that he felt there was nothing he could do to prevent the operation," per the report.
Sam, a 17-year-old in the 1970s, initially "strongly rejected" the idea of sterilization because he wanted to have children but was subdued over the months.
Sam gave the interviewer the impression that "he thought the sterilization was inevitable and that there was not much that he could do to prevent the operation," per the report.
Victims didn't always know they were sterilized
It didn't take much to be categorized as "feeble-minded."
"That was a catchall term for all sorts of things. It could be an intellectual disability, it could be that you're just poor, anything that kind of made you seem a bit dull, the staff could get you labeled feeble-minded," he said.
There was a whole host of operations carried out on the victims. These ranged from a simple vasectomy or a tubal ligation, called commonly as having your tube tied, to having the testicles and ovaries removed.
According to a 1930s thesis, at least one victim also had her clitoris removed.
Some victims may not even be aware of what happened to them.
"It was either a function of them being so profoundly disabled that they just sort of weren't capable of understanding what was going on. Or they told that something else was happening like their appendix was coming out," he said.
One of these was Fred, a 21-year-old, who worked as a janitor at the training center in the 1970s, according to one report.
Fred recalled having an operation and his genital being slabbed with a red substance, likely disinfectant. But Fred "had virtually no understanding of the sterilization," per the thesis. "He still thought that he could have children."
Difficult to find victims
"It's not easy" to find information about the victims, Tabery said.
There's been no formal reparation process in Utah and victims remain mostly anonymous.
"There's a lot of shame surrounding it. It's not the kind of thing that you find people are eager to talk about," said Tabery.
To find the information reported in the study, the researchers read contemporaneous academic theses from master students who studied sterilizations at the time.
They also worked with Utah State Developmental Center to get data about sterilizations. Formally called the Utah State Training School, where most of the sterilization happened in Utah.
The results of their investigation were published in the peer-reviewed journal The Lancet Regional Health - Americas.
"Even though we weren't able to kind of identify and interview any of these people, these theses from 50 years ago, do have these reflections in there," said Tabery.
No accountability
Utah is far from being the state with the most victims. California is thought to have recommended upwards of 20,000 people for sterilization.
But per capita, Utah's program was "fairly aggressive," just "given the fact that there just weren't a lot of people here," said Tabery.
But unlike other states like California, North Carolina and Virginia, Utah is yet to apologize or start a reparation process, per Tabery.
"What's so powerful about things like apologies from governors or legislatures, it sends a message to those survivors who are still around that the fault wasn't with you. It was, with the state. It was with people who abused that sort of state power and made a decision for you that you should have made for yourself," said Tabery.
"It's an offering of taking that shame away," he said.