- Author: Yeom, Woon Ok
- Title: The British Eugenics Movement and Birth Control - The Campaign for Voluntary Sterilization
- Language: Korean
- Journal: The Korean Journal of British Studies 12: 235-271
- Publication Year: 2004
- Publisher: The Korean Society of British History
■ Abstract In 1883 Francis Galton invented the term 'Eugenics' which means racial improvement through selective breeding. As the background of the decline of British Empire, the argument of national efficiency, race-degeneration and eugenics were flourished in the early twentieth century. With the foundation of the Eugenics Laboratory and the Eugenics Education Society in 1904 and 1907, the British eugenics movement began to develop and interfered in several reforms, such as divorce law reform, family endowment and birth control and population policy.
In the early 1930s the Eugenics Society developed the campaign for the voluntary sterilization. Voluntary sterilization was the principal issue in the eugenics movement and its implementation in legislation was seen as the key to the success of the movement generally. Thus the Eugenics Society and its general secretary C. P. Blacker in particular, expended a considerable amount of time and effort trying to convert public opinion and persuade the Ministry of Health and Board of Control to support legislation.
The campaign was unsuccessful, however. An hereditarian analysis of mental defect never attained a firm enough consensus in the scientific community and they were divided on whether sterilization or institutional segregation was the better approach. And also there were legal problems, such as the validity of consent to the sterilization operation given by the mentally defective patient. The Person Act in 1861 stipulates voluntary sterilization by the consent of the patient as 'malicious injury' or 'intentional injury.' Most of all, strong opposition came from the Labour Party. The principal reason for the failure of eugenics in the inter-war period in Britain was the opposition to it from the labour movement.
However, it is striking exception that labour women appear to have been more in favor of the voluntary sterilization. The National Conference of Labour Women at Swansea in May 1936 and the Women's Cooperative Guild in 1936 passed a motion in favor by 600 to 11. This seems to have been a part of wider tendency for women to be generally more interested in voluntary sterilization than men. Non-labor bodies like the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship and the National Council of Women also passed resolutions in favor. Why women expressed more favorable attitude for sterilization? This paper argued and interpreted this question in the broad context of birth control movement in the inter-war period and the involvement of the Eugenics Society in it.
At the early years of the Eugenics Society, the eugenists had seen birth control as a dysgenic effect and avoided being implicated such obscene issue as contraception. After the first world War, however, their attitude against birth control widely changed and the Society tried to cooperate with several bodies for birth control and voluntary birth control clinics such as Mother's Clinic by Marie Stopes and Walworth Women's Welfare Centre by Alice Drysdale Vickery which had founded for disseminating the knowledge of contraception. The eugenists admitted the effect of birth control to drop the fertility of 'undesirable class' and sponsored the development of new spermicide 'Volpar' in 1930s. The birth control appeared to open the way to realize the eugenic social engineering.
In 1920s and 1930s birth control and eugenics were closely interrelated at the level of both discourse and movement. The main point of the Society's campaign for voluntary sterilization was that salpingectomy, ovariotomy and vasectomy were the most reliable and effective contraception for labouring class. Interesting evidence of women's attitude about sterilization, sexuality and maternity survives in the reports by propagandist speakers of the Society such as Hilda Pocock and Cora Hodson. The reports represent the existence of popular eugenic idea among women which see disability negatively and wish not to give birth the defective. 'New' maternalist feminist Eva Hubback who succeeded the president of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship after Eleanor Rathbone in 1933 was also actively engaged in the campaign. Together with those women's activity and the systematic propaganda of the Eugenics Society, popular eugenic idea among public supported the eugenics and expressed the support for the voluntary sterilization of mental defective.
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