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Buck v Bell | 143 Va. 310, 130 S.E. 516 (1925), 247 U.S. 200, 47 S.Ct. 584 (1927)

Today, we might take it for granted that everyone has the right to have children and that women have the right to become pregnant without state interference. But this wasn’t always so, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in one of his more callous opinions, explained in the 1927 case of Buck versus Bell.

Eighteen-year-old Carrie Buck had been involuntarily committed by her adoptive parents to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded, because she supposedly suffered from mental illness or incapacity that resulted in immoral behavior, including becoming pregnant while an unwed teenager. In the language of the day, she was, quote, “feebleminded,” unquote. Buck’s birth mother, also a resident of the colony, had been similarly diagnosed, as had Buck’s young daughter.

A Virginia statute authorized the surgical sterilization of persons deemed mentally defective, supposedly for their own good and the welfare of society. The idea was that some of these patients might be capable of taking caring of themselves if discharged from such institutions, but that if they were capable of procreating, they could find themselves facing challenges that they weren’t equipped to handle, which might therefore become a burden on society. Moreover, it was widely accepted that heredity played a part in the transmission of insanity and mental illness. The statute sought to prevent such parents from giving birth to mentally ill children.

If an institution’s superintendent believed that the best interests of society and the patient warranted that patient’s sterilization, the statute required the superintendent to petition the institution’s board of directors. Notice was to be served on the patient, the patient’s guardian, and if the patient was a minor, the patient’s parents. After a hearing at which the patient, the patient’s guardian, and a minor patient’s parents could attend, the board either ordered or denied the operation. Either party could appeal to the county circuit court, and then to the state supreme court.

Doctor John Bell’s predecessor as the colony’s superintendent petitioned the colony’s board of directors for an order to sterilize Buck. The board ordered the sterilization, and both the circuit court and state supreme court affirmed. Buck’s guardian then appealed to the United States Supreme Court.

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