Indiana and the Legacy of State and Local Eugenics

In 1907, Indiana implemented the world's first eugenic sterilization law. The upcoming centenary of this act provides an opportune time to evaluate the far-reaching significance of this event. The Indiana law, along with similar state legislation and activities at the local level, has left an extensive record resulting from public policy based on specific ideas about heredity. The name given to these activities, eugenics, is generally known, but research about it at the state and local level has only recently begun. The overall goal of this project is to take advantage of this centenary to explore the largely untold history of state and local eugenics in the United States by conducting research that both deepens our understanding and helps draw lessons for academic scholars in bioethics and the humanities, scientists, health administrators, policy specialists, and the public. With this overall goal in mind, our specific aims are: To explore the largely untold history of sterilization and eugenics in Indiana in the twentieth century; To conduct original research on the history of eugenics by both junior and senior scholars from the fields of history, bioethics, and health policy, using a comparative and collaborative methodology; To produce an edited volume that seeks, for the first time, to compare and tell the detailed and varied history of eugenics in America at the local and state level, with particular attention to the relevance of this history to contemporary issues in human genomics, public health genetics, and reproductive health; To disseminate this research in public forums including a major public symposium in Indiana and at meetings held by organizations of health practitioners and policy makers; To help set the future agenda for research on the history of eugenics, the most widely cited yet least understood historical use of genetics in a non-healthcare setting.