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Articles on Eugenics

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U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat from Missouri, after participating in an abortion rights sit-in on July 19, 2022, in Washington. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

White men have controlled women’s reproductive rights throughout American history – the post-Dobbs era is no different

In the US, white men have long had the power to make decisions about women’s reproductive health care. Those decisions have often been especially harmful to Black women.
Conversations between patients and their doctors about permanent birth control procedures can at times be fraught and influenced by long-standing stigmas. Courtney Hale/E+ via Getty Images

What is voluntary sterilization? A health communication expert unpacks how a legacy of forced sterilization shapes doctor-patient conversations today

The term voluntary sterilization, referring to the choice to receive permanent birth control, arose as a contrast to the involuntary, or forced, sterilization that stems from the eugenics movement.
A man of genius – but his ideas were not to the benefit of all humankind. Mondadori Portfolio/Hulton Fine Art Collection via Getty Images

Francis Galton pioneered scientific advances in many fields – but also founded the racist pseudoscience of eugenics

Smart people can have really bad ideas – like selectively breeding human beings to improve the species. Put into practice, Galton’s concept proved discriminatory, damaging, even deadly.
W.E.B. Du Bois in his office at The Crisis in New York City, 1925. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

W.E.B. Du Bois embraced science to fight racism as editor of NAACP’s magazine The Crisis

As editor of the magazine for 24 years, Du Bois featured articles about biology, evolution, archaeology in Africa and more to refute the rampant scientific racism of the early 20th century.
At the turn of the 20th century, marriage was assumed to be an exercise in mutual misery. Getty Images

The white supremacist origins of modern marriage advice

Concerned about the state of marriage – and thus the ability of whites to procreate – eugenicists were behind some of the earliest modern marriage manuals.
The archives of academic institutions can tell previously untold stories of eugenics. Universities can begin to undo oppressive legacies by opening them to artists and communities. (Pakula Piotr/Shutterstock)

Universities must open their archives and share their oppressive pasts

To confront colonialism, universities must open their archives and let communities see their pasts, eugenics and all.
Jean Truchon, right, looks on as lawyer Jean-Pierre Menard gives their reaction to a Québec judge overturning parts of provincial and federal laws on medically assisted dying on September 12, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

The latest medical assistance in dying decision needs to be appealed: Here’s why

One judge must not be allowed to curtail parliament’s power to promote broader societal interests and protect people who are elderly, ill and disabled.

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