Should reproductive decisions be left entirely to the individual? How could the mother’s right to self-determination be balanced against the right of the child to be born healthy—as Ellen Key had put it, the “right of the child to choose its parents”?
As we have seen from an earlier chapter, the eugenics movement gained many adherents among left wing and progressive groups, including some feminists, in the prewar era. Its appeal increased in the 1920s. Progressive eugenicists opposed the open racism and class bias that were professed by the right wing of their movement. But they, too, took health and fitness as criteria of human value. Many agreed with the influential Marie Stopes that “the power of parenthood ought no longer to be exercised by all, however inferior, as an individual right. It is profoundly a duty and a privilege, and it is essentially the concern of the whole community to encourage in every way the parenthood of those whose circumstances and condition is such that they will give rise to healthy, well-endowed future citizens.”78 In accordance with Lamarckian theories of evolution, French physicians attributed all hereditary defects to the effects of parental vices—chiefly alcoholism and sexual promiscuity—on the developing fetus. The physician and educator Just Sicard de Plauzoles, a prominent disciple of Adolphe Pinard, warned that “all educated parents should be regarded as criminals if they knowingly become the cause of the birth of a degenerate, infirm, or idiot child.”79
In France, where the open advocacy of birth control was prohibited, a concern for the health of the next generation provided an important rationale for the enhancement of women’s understanding and control of their reproductive functions. In 1924, the French physician Germaine Montreuil — Straus and her colleagues founded a Committee on Women’s Education (Comite d’education feminine) within the previously all-male Society for Sanitary and Moral Reform. The Committee admonished mothers and prospective mothers that their first and “primordial” responsibility was to understand “the origins of life, the function of heredity. . . the consequences of immorality for the girl and the young man, the importance of health in founding a family, the responsibility of parents in regard to their children.”80 Young women were urged to choose their partners carefully—a subversive idea in a nation where many marriages were still arranged, chiefly according to the social status of the prospective partners. “Young girl, think of your future children and marry a healthy man!” read a poster that featured a picture of two plump babies.81 That the mother also had the right to protect her own health by refusing sexual relations with an infected husband was not openly stated but strongly implied, chiefly through very explicit information on the symptoms of venereal diseases in the male. “The venereal scourge hurts mothers and children,” warned another poster. “Women, learn to recognize it in order to combat it.”82
This campaign, which was carried by a group of energetic speakers to women throughout France, sought to overturn conventional beliefs that sexual ignorance enhanced a girl’s marital prospects and a wife’s fidelity. The warnings directed by local newspapers to respectable matrons against these highly immoral lectures served as an effective advertisement and often brought in large and curious crowds. A subsidy awarded to Montreuil — Straus by the Ministry of Public Hygiene showed a growing official acceptance of sex education as a means to child health, if not to female autonomy.83
Campaigns for sex education also spread to Spain, where in 1922 the socialist Margarita Nelken (who was born in Madrid to German Jewish parents and later played a prominent political role in the Spanish Republic) cited the authority of French and German physicians to claim that “nothing is so harmful and prejudicial to morals as an educational system that hides the truth about nature… It is terrible to think that the immense majority of our girls know nothing of what will be their highest duty, which hinges on an natural act that they have been taught to consider repugnant.”84 After the founding of the Second Republic in 1931, a “School for Conscious Motherhood” was set up by radical physicians in the House of Mothers (Casa de Maternidad) in Barcelona. Instruction in the laws of heredity, asserted the anarchist physician Dr. Felix Marti Ibanez, would free women from “egotistic male tyranny” and give them rights including “self determination and the right to decide on their own maternity.”85 But most Spanish feminists, even the anarchist founders of Mujeres Libres (Free Women), responded skeptically to an ideology that they feared would discredit their movement.86
Education was not enough, for it could not protect women against the coercive pressures of the patriarchal family. Activists called on the state to support them in their aspirations to protect the health of the next generation. As we have seen, prewar feminists had been among the earliest proponents of health certificates as a prerequisite for legal marriage. Scandinavian countries were the first to write this requirement into their new codes of family law, which forbade the marriage of persons afflicted with a range of ailments considered hereditary, including mental retardation and insanity (or “lunacy”). Swedish and Finnish laws also prohibited marriage to those with venereal diseases, while Danish and Norwegian codes required only that each party present a health certificate to the other.87
In countries where women had won the right to vote and to hold office, laws requiring some kind of health certificate for marriage were often introduced by female representatives to national parliaments. The Dutch feminist Betsy Bakker-Nort, who was also prominent as a defender of married women’s right to employment, was a representative of the liberal Free Democratic Party and also belonged to the Committee for a Medical Certificate for Marriage (Comite ter Bevordering van het Geneeskundig Onderzoek voor het huwelijk).88 This committee’s most prestigious ally was the physician Maria Anna van Herwerden. Although not active in feminist organizations, Herwerden was a prominent advocate for female physicians and medical students and a critic of pseudo-scientific justifications for gender discrimination. She rejected any tendency to pure genetic determinism and insisted that policy-makers should always recognize “the interaction of genotypical traits with life circumstances in the broadest sense.”89 The legislation sponsored by Bakker-Nort was very cautious, and required only that applicants for a marriage license should be provided with a brochure advising them on the dangers of hereditary disease (a law that had already been passed in Germany). But even this limited involvement of the state in marital choice was thought excessive by a Parliament composed largely of representatives of religiously oriented parties (both Catholic and Protestant), who rejected the proposal because it violated religious precepts.90
In France, the most prominent advocate of the pre-marital health certificate was Dr. Pinard. Starting in 1926, he introduced several proposals into the Chamber of Deputies that would have required the health certificate only of men, for he feared that the prospect of examining virginal brides would outrage public opinion.91 The feminist press supported this proposal— indeed, the young lawyer Laure Biardeau argued in the name of gender equality for the extension of the requirement to women.92 Pinard’s initiative was temporarily halted by public aversion to this unprecedented limitation on personal liberty and medical confidentiality.
But in the 1930s the debate was dramatically revived by the novelist Louise Hervieu, who was also a painter until her blindness and other infirmities made painting impossible. Hervieu, who attributed her illness and those of her children to a venereal disease acquired from her husband, addressed the problem of hereditary disease in 1936 in a sensational novel entitled Sangs(Blood-Lines) and in 1937 in an impassioned tract, Le Crime(The Crime).
Both of these books were directed primarily toward female readers, and both denounced careless reproduction as a crime against the next generation. “Do not accept your own contamination and the ruin of your children!” Hervieu exhorted her female readers. “It is a great crime against them, it is infanticide!”93
Along with many other reformers, Hervieu advocated the compulsory issuance to citizens of both sexes of a “Health Booklet” (Carnet de Sante), which would record medical data from birth to death and would be inspected on important occasions such as school entry, military conscription, and marriage. Hervieu created a public image of herself as emancipated woman as well as mater dolorosa. A Louise Hervieu Association, which was founded to advocate the Carnet, was lauded in the feminist press and by prominent feminist leaders.94 Hervieu dismissed all reservations about possible infringement of personal privacy: “the child, the future human being also has rights, which we violate because he is too weak to defend them.”95 The majority of French legislators still had reservations: in 1939 the Chamber of Deputies voted to adopt the Carnet but on a voluntary and confidential basis. Under the fascist Vichy regime, the prenuptial examination was made obligatory.96
Another way of protecting population “quality” was the legalization of voluntary or compulsory sterilization. In France, such a measure—though supported by a few prominent physicians and reformers—was not likely to gain widespread acceptance. Catholics opposed it because it violated the precepts laid down in the papal encyclical Casti Connubii, and natalists because it might have the effect of further reducing birthrates. But in predominantly Protestant Germany, Britain, and Scandinavia, sterilization figured prominently in debates on population policy. Though made infamous by the Nazis after their seizure of power in 1933, sterilization was not originally associated with the political right—indeed, like many other eugenic measures, it was originally proposed and supported chiefly by adherents of progressive or left-wing groups in all countries, including feminist groups. The laws proposed by these groups were intended to make voluntary sterilization available as a means to the exercise of reproductive responsibility. This definition of responsibility was held to justify a more coercive approach to those deemed irresponsible, chiefly the insane, retarded, or mentally “deficient.” Because these people’s afflictions were assumed to be hereditary and their reproductive patterns prolific, they were targeted as a threat to population “quality.” Another stereotype—that of the “mentally deficient” male as a rapist or sex criminal—played to the fears and prejudices of women, including many feminists. Of course, as groups such as welfare recipients, prisoners, and the patients of public medical facilities were most often affected, the proposed laws had a strong class bias—a serious ethical problem, which was often unrecognized or ignored even by socialist reformers.97
But by no means all feminists approved of sterilization—an issue on which their views differed according to their political and religious beliefs and national contexts.98 In the polarized political atmosphere of Weimar
Germany, sterilization was debated by the leaders of the socialist and communist women’s groups and the members of the BDF. Although most German socialist and communist women did not identify themselves as feminists, they played the major role in defining their parties’ positions on issues concerning women and the family, and a few of them—such as Adele Schreiber and Henriette Furth—were well-known advocates of women’s rights in many areas. The broader theme of this controversy was social policy, chiefly in regard to those classified as feeble-minded or insane. At first, both the socialist and the moderate feminist groups recommended the custodial care of these individuals (along the lines of the British Mental Deficiency Act, which had been passed in 1913) for indefinite periods in sex-segregated institutions. But they disagreed about the financing and control of these institutions. The members of the League of German Women’s Associations wished to entrust the custodial services to charitable institutions, many of which were directed and staffed by women. The socialist activists, on the contrary, insisted on the abolition of private charities and the transfer of custodial services to public institutions under the authority of local governments, many of which were controlled by socialists.99
After a proposed National Custodial Law, which would have mandated life-long confinement for the mentally “deficient,” was defeated in 1925, socialist politicians (who had not succeeded in supplanting the private charities) shifted their support to sterilization, which they argued was preferable to long-term custody on both humanitarian and financial grounds. Laws designed to legalize sterilization were sponsored by socialist party members on both the national and state level. All of these were based on the voluntary principle, but as they also provided that the mentally deficient, retarded, or ill could be sterilized with the consent of their families or guardians, their voluntary nature was questionable.100
By contrast, the BDF continued to support the custodial laws—a position that appealed both to the material interests and the moral values of the member groups, who prided themselves on their “motherly” concern for vulnerable members of society. Some BDF members objected to eugenic legislation not only on religious but on scientific grounds: “science cannot yet predict heredity, and especially in the case of mental illness, this is not yet possible,” remarked one delegate to the BDF’s 1925 meeting.101 Gertrud Baumer, who chaired the Reichstag’s Committee on Population, complained that the emphasis on biological fitness ignored the spiritual aspects of parenthood. “The discussion over-emphasizes eugenics and population policy— that the production of children also involves the spiritual and intellectual process of child-rearing is often forgotten.”102
After 1930, when the National Socialist Party won its first major electoral victories, the political atmosphere was rapidly polarized between right and left extremes. In response to the great campaign for legalized abortion that was launched by the left-wing parties, the BDF—which had been aloof from these efforts—was urged by the minority of sex reformers among its membership to define its position on this and other reproductive issues.
A group headed by Anne-Marie Durand-Wever, the head of the organization’s Committee on Marriage Counseling, cooperated with the Committee on Population Policy, headed by the Protestant conservative Luise Scheffen — Doering, to draft a position paper entitled “Guidelines on Family Policy,” which was scheduled to be voted on by the organization’s annual conference in 1933.
That conference never took place, for in response to the Nazi seizure of power the BDF disbanded itself on May 14, 1933, in order to avoid cooperating with Nazi guidelines, which demanded the removal of all Jewish members. But the organization’s journal, Die Frau, continued in print under an editorial board headed by Gertrud Baumer. In June of 1933, Die Frau published the position paper on “Family Policy,” which the BDF had had no opportunity to pass. An introductory statement by Scheffen-Doering vowed loyalty to Adolf Hitler and endorsed “voluntary sterilization for life unworthy to be lived.” But the original text of the position paper, which was printed in its entirety, advocated the strengthening of the family through positive, state-sponsored benefits such as improvements in maternity insurance and education, and it made no mention of sterilization, voluntary or compulsory. The first clause stipulated that “the moral responsibility of parenthood is derived from a personal decision, of which no one can be deprived of any government.” In a commentary on this document, Scheffen-Doering cautiously admonished the new rulers to respect the religious conscience. “All new eugenic measures, all public marriage counseling, must respect this basic principle of sexual morality. . . . No ethically valid marriage can, as has been suggested, be contracted according to criteria of biological value, and children cannot be produced for any nation by compulsion.”103 The Nazi law that mandated compulsory sterilization for many categories of people came into effect six months later (January 1, 1934).104 Custodial laws for the “mentally deficient,” though not enacted on the national level, were adopted by many local governments after 1933.
In Britain, by contrast, the attitude of feminists toward sterilization was more positive and less conflicted than that of their German counterparts, in part because the political environment permitted them a more prominent role in defining the issues. In Britain, fascist and communist parties of the sort that did so much to radicalize the debate in Germany played a much lesser role, and political parties showed little interest in population policy.105 Thus civic organizations, such as NUSEC and the Eugenics Society, were able to initiate legislation on population issues (including birth control, which both of these organizations supported) and to dominate national debates on these issues.
Britain already had a law permitting the long-term confinement of those judged mentally deficient. In 1929, when state mental health authorities warned that the numbers of this group were nonetheless increasing, the Eugenics Society introduced the first of several sterilization bills into Parliament. Like most comparable measures in other countries, the British bill made sterilization voluntary, but excepted the insane or retarded, for whom consent could be given by a relative or physician—thus its voluntary nature was highly questionable.106
During the period from 1929 until 1937, the Eugenics Society enlisted allies among civic organizations, and among these feminist groups of all shades of opinion were prominent. One reason for the difference in German and British responses was that the British already had the custodial law for which the German mainstream feminists were still campaigning. Another was that in Britain the propaganda for sterilization was developed, not as in Germany by male-dominated parties, but by and for women. Placing a high priority on winning of women’s support, the Eugenics Society provided speakers for hundreds of local organizations, from the socialist Women’s Cooperative Guild to the conservative Mothers’ Institutes. As Lesley A. Hall has remarked, the arguments for sterilization were quite similar to those for access to birth control: both were presented chiefly as measures for the protection of the health and well-being of mothers and children. The Sterilization Bill was endorsed by the largest feminist groups: the NUSEC (led by Eva Hubback, who was also a member of the Eugenics Society); the National Council of Women; and the socialist Women’s Co-Operative Guild, which even recommended that sterilization be made compulsory in some cases.107 The influential Marie Stopes also supported compulsory sterilization as a means to what she called “racial progress.”108
The male leadership of the Labour Party opposed the Bill and denounced it as an instrument of class oppression, predicting that only poor people would be sterilized.109 But the Party’s Women’s Section broke with the leadership (as they had on the issue of birth control) and placed gender loyalty (as they saw it) ahead of class loyalty by endorsing the Bill “by a large majority” at their national conference of 1936.110 Some women’s organizations refused their support out of respect for the religious scruples of their members. The only group that opposed the Bill on feminist principle was the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, the successor to the Abolitionist Federation, which had successfully opposed the Contagious Diseases Acts in the midnineteenth century. The Association looked back to the theoretically voluntary, but actually compulsory health examination to which suspected prostitutes had been subjected, and expressed the fear that a sterilization bill would lead to similar abuses.111 Despite the strong support of these women’s organizations, the British sterilization bill was repeatedly rejected by Parliament.
In Scandinavia, laws that mandated both voluntary and compulsory sterilization were supported by many feminist leaders and organizations. A very early example was the petition brought before the Danish Parliament in 1920 by Danish Women’s National Council, which represented the mainstream of middle-class feminist opinion, supporting the sterilization of the mentally retarded as a protective measure for women and girls against sex offenders. In 1929 and 1934, Denmark passed laws permitting voluntary sterilization that allowed relatives or guardians to give consent for the mentally retarded or insane.112 Influential throughout Scandinavia was the support of two eminent Swedish reformers, Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, for the prevention of
“socially undesirable parenthood,” by voluntary birth control if possible but by compulsion if necessary.113 Denmark and Finland passed laws that permitted voluntary sterilization and compulsory sterilization in some cases in 1934; Norway and Sweden in 1935. In Finland, too, women physicians, lawyers, and politicians played a prominent role in formulating and promoting this legislation, which mandated compulsory sterilization when “the offspring would inherit (the parent’s) defects or if it is likely that such offspring would by reason of such deficiency be uncared for.”114 Environmental as well as medical guidelines often worked unfairly to stigmatize poor parents.
But some feminists perceived the ethical problems that were inherent in such policies. The British journalist Stella Browne, always a rebel, was among those who objected to the class biases that were built into the rhetoric of eugenics. She regretted that a working-class friend had not had the opportunity to develop the “gifts which, had they received anything of the cultivation lavished on any blockhead born into the classes which arrogate to themselves the name ‘fit,’ would have made her famous.”115 While she approved in principle of the proposed British sterilization law, Dora Russell regretted that “wholesale compulsion” seemed more acceptable to public opinion than “making ordinary men and women free to exercise their choice according to ordinary brains and human affections.”116 In 1927, the Dutch National Council of Women concluded their policy statement on “Population Policy” with the declaration that too little was known about the laws of heredity to exclude anyone from reproduction.117 Catholic women’s groups upheld their Church’s teachings. For example, the journal La Femme Belge, published by the Christian Women’s Social Movement of Belgium, called sterilization a “mutilation that violates the rights of individuals—a measure that nothing can justify.”118
After 1933, the alarming spectacle of compulsory sterilization and other eugenic policies in Germany alerted many reformers to the danger of giving the state so much power over individual decisions. Elise Ottesen-Jensen, who had lobbied for a eugenic sterilization law in Sweden, retracted her support of this measure in 1933 and devoted her energies to informing the public about sterilization in Germany, where she said it was used as a “weapon for superstition and violence.” When the Swedish sterilization law came into effect in 1934, she urged health officials to protect the rights of individuals to give consent.119 Carlos Blacker, General Secretary of the British Eugenics Education Society, complained that the sterilization bill to which he had committed the energies of his organization failed because of its similarity (which Blacker claimed was only superficial) to the National Socialist law. The Dutch eugenicist Maria Anna van Herwerden (whose mother was Jewish) was appalled by a German colleague who “in the name of racial hygiene spouted anti-Semitic politics, and received applause from his mostly youthful audience.”120 The editors of the French sex-reform periodical Probleme Sexuel, who in 1933 had printed the text of the German sterilization law without comment, recognized by 1934 that it was part of a tyrannical agenda that suppressed all freedom of reproductive choice, especially among the poor.121 And even in Germany itself, women continued to protest cautiously against compulsory sterilization. “The sterilization of the inferior, for example, poses some problems for women that cannot be simply solved,” wrote Gertrud Baumer shortly after the Nazi seizure of power. “For in the end this is also an application of technical means to biology, and it brings very mixed spiritual and social effects.”122 Another article in the same issue, this one by a Nazi apologist, complained that in certain circles “the introduction of ‘compulsory sterilization’ has caused some discomfort.”123
Revulsion against National Socialism gradually discredited the eugenics movement. As so often happens, scientific theory reinforced political conviction. Starting in the 1920s, some biologists and psychologists had rejected the crude assumptions that lay behind the sterilization laws, pointing out that the characteristics of the parents (phenotype) did not indicate their genetic makeup (genotype) and thus did not provide an adequate basis upon which to predict the health of their offspring.124 In the middle decades of the twentieth century, this theoretical direction, which emphasized the importance of environment over heredity in the physical and psychological development of individuals, would become dominant in the social and natural sciences.125