SALT LAKE CITY — A new study released from the University of Utah examines the state's forced sterilization program, which used eugenics as the basis for its existence.
Eugenics is the theory that certain inheritable traits should be eliminated from reproduction.
“For the first time, we have a sense of the human scale of the eugenic assault here in Utah, as well as the lasting legacy of that assault in the form of survivors still living in 2023,” said Professor James Tabery of the University of Utah's Philosophy Department and lead author of the paper reporting the results.
Utah had the program in place beginning in 1925, when the forced sterilization law was passed, until it was abandoned in 1974.
According to the research, 830 people were forced to be sterilized in Utah.
Utah had a particularly aggressive sterilization program, with eugenics leaders hailing Utah for sterilizing a far greater proportion of its residents than any other state in 1947, which they considered an “important achievement in public health,” according to the paper.
Approximately 30 states had forced sterilization programs to eliminate "undesirable" traits being passed to the next generation.
Utah’s sterilization law authorized the sterilization of people institutionalized at the Utah State Hospital, Utah State Prison and Utah State Industrial School and deemed to be “habitually sexually criminal, insane, idiotic, imbecile, feeble-minded or epileptic, and by the laws of heredity is the probable parent of socially inadequate off-spring likewise afflicted.”
The report details how some of those sterilized were rape victims or teenagers.
After WW II, when the Nazis used eugenics to justify its "cleansing" of various ethnic groups deemed to be unfit, the theory was condemned and most states abandoned their programs.
"What makes Utah rather interesting is of those states that continued, it's one of the few states that actually updates its law in 1961 to generate a new justification for why we're going to sterilize people in Utah prior to 1961," said Tabery.
He explained that in 1961, Utah loosened the law when it was clear the state couldn't use genetics as a scientific justification anymore.
Of the 1961 change, he said that Utah decided, "We're going to sterilize people if we have this sense that they just couldn't be good parents . . . and that makes it prone to subjective judgements."
He said that in Utah, various institutions such as prisons and hospitals made these decisions, unlike other states, where a central eugenics council decided who would be sterilized.
It's estimated that around 54 survivors remain from this program, with an average age of 78, and he expressed concern that time is running out to offer apologies or direct compensation.
"People must remember that these were people with dreams, wishes, and ideas, who may have wanted to have children. They're not just numbers, said Tabery.
"The shame belongs to the state, not the victims."
