Eugenics: Disability Report

Student Number: 11032300
Disability Report – Victims of state’s eugenics program win sympathy
Sterilization is ‘any procedure by which an individual is made incapable of reproduction’ (The free dictionary, 2013) Forced sterilization is what to happened ‘7600 people’ (Wang, 2011) in America from the 1920s to the 1970s. This tragic event was the presentation topic we were assigned to examine. The topic we were given focused on victims of the sterilization process within America and how the state-funded board of eugenics oversaw this sterilization process. However many of these victims including Dottie Virginia Bates and Nail Ramirez which was presented in the case study were failed at having be given compensation for the event. They were
We decided to look at China because we wanted to present an example whereby sterilization today is accepted and can be seen as a part of a eugenic thinking. We wanted to show how the ideas from the case study of how people were sterilized as they did not think they were educated and still being implanted today. The use of eugenics and the restriction of producing are based on Chinas one child policy and this is whereby parents are encouraged by officials to use sterilization as a form of contraception after they have exceeded their allowable number of children (Short et al 2000). However if a couple did proceed to have another children it would be aborted and china especially aborted girls as they were deemed to be useless and an economic burden to the family as female were not seen to be worthy of education. This again links back and corresponds to the case study as victims within the case study who were sterilized were seemed to be uneducated. So here we showed the link and how the idea of the uneducated is not seen as worthy to
Social model of disability suggests that it is not the individual who creates the disability but in actual fact it is society around the individual which creates the disability. Socially constructed barriers have resulted in disabling people with perceived impairment. This relates to the case study because the state-funded board of eugenics perceived people to have disability and the perception was based around people who are in a lower class, uneducated and those who seemed to be mentally unable. However it was not the individual with the disability but it was people and society around them creating the disability for them and creating a barrier and stopping them being able to reproduce through the sterilization process. However the social mode suggests we need to remove these barriers that create disabilities and this idea is now implemented within today’s society. Today society tries to encourage the independence of people and tires to abolish discrimination against disability. The disability discrimination act 2005 acts in implement the social