Eugenics In The Shadow Of Fairview . News – OPB News

When Ruth Morris was a teenager, her family was given a choice their daughter could either be sterilized by the state or stay in an institution. Her father signed a paper allowing the surgery, and forever taking away her ability to have achild.

I had to do it. They told me after it was done. I was unhappy but I couldnt do anything about it, Ruthsaid.

At the time, Ruth lived at Fairview Training Center, Oregons primary state-run institution for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD). For decades, just about anyone leaving the institution faced compulsory sterilization before returning to the community. It was a policy known aseugenics.

In the early twentieth century, more than 30 states passed eugenicslaws.

Simply put, eugenics policy advocated improving the human race through selective reproduction. People considered ideal citizens were encouraged to have children together, while those deemed unfit weresterilization.

In Oregon, Bethenia Owens-Adair, one of the regions earliest female physicians, helped write and promote state-mandated sterilization legislation. A supporter of womans suffrage, and prohibition, Owens-Adair advocated that eugenics would improvesociety.

We can and must protect our nation from insanity, epilepsy, and the varied train of abnormalities that follow in their wake.Dr. Bethenia Adair Owens said in1915.

Oregons 1923 law targeting people deemed feeble-minded, insane, epileptic, habitual criminals, moral degenerates, and sexualperverts.

The state set up a Board of Eugenics that had the final decision over who would be sterilized. The board ordered its last forced sterilization in 1981. In 1983, Oregons eugenics law was repealed. By that time, over 2,600 Oregonians had undergone compulsory sterilization by thestate.

In 2002, then-Governor John Kitzhaber officially apologized for the policy of forced sterilization. Ruth, and others who had also been forcibly sterilized, attended the event at the state capitol. Ruth says she was happy to take part in the ceremony, I felt good that heapologized.

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Eugenics In The Shadow Of Fairview . News - OPB News