The history of eugenics in the United States makes clear the longstanding entanglement between eugenics and state systems of family regulation. In light of this history, continued disparities faced by parents with intellectual disability (ID) in the child welfare system suggest an enduring impact of eugenic dynamics. This research leverages the history of eugenics in the U.S. to investigate manifestations of eugenic ideology in contemporary termination of parental rights (TPR) cases involving parents labeled with ID in New York from 2013 to 2023.
In 1912, the New York legislature amended their public health laws, permitting a state board of medical examiners to sterilize people deemed “feeble-minded” who were under state control (New York Public Health Law, 1912). The statute specified that the board shall sterilize “any such person [that] would produce children with an inherited tendency to crime, insanity, feeble-mindedness, idiocy or imbecility” (New York Public Health Law, 1912; Osborne v. Thomson, 1918).
Although later overturned, this law represented how the eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th century across the United States worked to restrict the reproduction of people labeled with intellectual disabilities. This movement, seeking white racial domination and “purification” of the white race, constructed an enduring ideology to justify such sterilization laws targeting people labeled with ID. This ideology, termed eugenic ideology, is the focus of this study.
While state sterilization boards were eventually dissolved as the 20th century progressed, state systems regulating the reproduction of those deemed “unfit” continued. One of these systems, the child welfare system, continues to have a disproportionate impact on parents labeled with ID, including high rates of adoption (Booth & Booth, 2004), out-of-home placement (Lima et al., 2022), and TPR (Powell et al., 2020). This study focused on TPR cases where the central issue involves the permanent elimination of a legal parent and child relationship.