Eugenics: the first law in the nation, and Fort Wayne at its center

1907 — repealed 1974

What Indiana did first, it did most of all at Fort Wayne: Indiana's eugenics program began around the Fort Wayne school even before there was a statute. The state had passed one of the nation's first restrictive marriage laws in 1905, barring the "mentally deficient," among others, from marrying. The sterilization law grew out of the work of Dr. Harry C. Sharp, physician at the Indiana Reformatory at Jeffersonville, who had been performing vasectomies on prisoners since 1899 — 456 men, by his own 1909 report. On 9 March 1907 Governor J. Frank Hanly signed "An Act to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists" — the era's words, quoted as written — making Indiana the first state in the nation, and the first government in the world, to enact a eugenic sterilization law. It made sterilization mandatory for people in state custody whom institutional boards judged unfit to reproduce. Governor Thomas R. Marshall halted its use in 1909, and in 1921 the Indiana Supreme Court struck the 1907 act down as a denial of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The legislature answered in 1927 with a new act, drafted with court appeals added, applying to inmates of the state institutions for the "feebleminded," the insane, and the epileptic. It was under the 1927 law that the great majority of Indiana's operations were performed — and the great majority of them were performed at Fort Wayne. The school's own annual reports list 308 sterilizations in the fiscal years 1927–28 through 1935–36 alone; in 1950 alone, eighty-four Fort Wayne residents were sterilized. A published scholarly account of the program opens with one of those years' cases at this school: a sterilization hearing held in February 1950 for a young man who had been committed at the age of nine, ordered "for the protection of the community" on the judgment that he was incurable — the superintendent petitioned, the institution's own board approved, and the surgery followed after the statutory thirty days. The totals the historians have built from the surviving records differ, and they are printed here as a range, exactly as they stand: Alexandra Minna Stern's count (2005) puts the Fort Wayne total at just over 1,500 operations, out of some 2,000 statewide; Julius Paul's count (1965) puts Fort Wayne at about 1,800, out of 2,424 statewide; the state's own historical marker gives approximately 2,500 sterilized in state custody in all. By either reckoning, roughly three of every four people sterilized under Indiana law were sterilized at the institution on East State Street — most of them people who had been sent there as children. Governor Otis R. Bowen approved the repeal of all of Indiana's sterilization laws in 1974; the related marriage restrictions were repealed by 1977.

Sources:

1. Indiana Historical Bureau, state historical marker "1907 Indiana Eugenics Law" (ID 49.2007.1), text and annotated text — Hanly's approval of the first state eugenics law, the 1909 halt, the 1921 unconstitutionality ruling, the 1927 reinstatement with court appeals, approximately 2,500 sterilized in state custody, the 1974 repeal under Governor Bowen, and the repeal of the marriage laws by 1977; the annotation carries Paul's total of 2,424 and Stern's estimate of about 2,000 statewide.
2. Alexandra Minna Stern, Eugenic Nation (2005) and "From Legislation to Lived Experience: Eugenic Sterilization in California and Indiana, 1907–79" — just over 1,500 sterilizations at the Fort Wayne institution, about seventy-five percent of the state total; Sharp's 456 vasectomies reported by 1909; the eighty-four Fort Wayne sterilizations of 1950; and the February 1950 hearing at the Fort Wayne State School.
3. Julius Paul (1965), as compiled in the University of Vermont eugenics archive — about 1,800 of 2,424 Indiana sterilizations performed at the Fort Wayne State School, the "feeder institution" that provided the vast majority of the state's patients.
4. Indiana Magazine of History, "Eugenics in the Hoosier Heartland" (March 2007) — the 1905 marriage law, the derived statewide figure of about 2,000 operations between 1927 and 1974 with about 1,800 at Fort Wayne, and the 308 operations listed in the Fort Wayne annual reports for fiscal 1927–28 through 1935–36, as compiled by Indiana State Archives archivist Vicki Casteel.