Facing Eugenics: Reproduction, Sterilization, and the Politics of Choice

by Erika Dyck

Facing Eugenics is a social history of sexual sterilization operations in twentieth-century Canada. Looking at real-life experiences of men and women who, either coercively or voluntarily, participated in the largest legal eugenics program in Canada, it considers the impact of successive legal policies and medical practices on shaping our understanding of contemporary reproductive rights. The book also provides deep insights into the broader implications of medical experimentation, institutionalization, and health care in North America.

Erika Dyck uses a range of historical evidence, including medical files, court testimony, and personal records to place mental health and intelligence at the centre of discussions regarding reproductive fitness. Examining acts of resistance alongside heavy-handed decisions to sterilize people considered "unfit," Facing Eugenics illuminates how reproductive rights fit into a broader discussion of what constitutes civil liberties, modern feminism, and contemporary psychiatric survivor and disability activism.

Genres: History Of Medicine, History

329 pages, Unknown Binding

First published December 6, 2013

Reviews

[Dasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Facing Eugenics (2013), Dyck considers Alberta’s eugenics movement which was the longest-running and most extensive program of its kind in Canada, existing into the 1970s. She traces how this movement fits into the larger international movement. For example, after the Second World War more emphasis began to be placed on informed consent, however, Alberta’s policies maintained ambiguous consent policies instead of focusing on the right of the province to act on behalf of those with mental disabilities. Moreover, she shows the uniquely agricultural aspect of Alberta’s eugenics movement as represented by the United Farmers of Alberta and prairie feminism. In her second chapter, which focuses on an Aboriginal man, George Pierre, she argues that while Indigenous people certainly experienced forced sterilization, they were not explicitly targeted until after the Second World War. It is interesting to consider how “dying race” rhetoric may have insulated some Indigenous peoples from Alberta’s eugenics obsession and it was the rise of activism and visibility in the 1960s that led to more aggressive targeting. Dyck aptly demonstrates how Alberta sponsored a long-term effort in controlling and limiting the bodies of their citizens by justifying lack-of-consent laws and blurry reproductive rights.
She also demonstrates the changing role gender played in the eugenics movement, and I believe this to be a particular strength and contribution of work. Indeed, her ability to move beyond the often woman-focused narrative to demonstrate how changing conceptualizations of masculinity provided access to vasectomies and reproductive rights to men provides an important reminder that men’s bodies also underwent changing meanings under the medical gaze. I also liked the discussion around the impact of the Catholic Church’s presence in western Canada and how many Catholic women sought out sterilization as a form of birth control despite the church’s strong condemnation of the medical process. This conversation illustrates how the Church set itself up in opposition to increasingly secular ideas that influenced many Catholics. While there is no explicit analysis of this, for religious women seeking sterilization as a family-planning method it does not appear that they viewed these actions in opposition to their faith.