Sweden's Social Democrats Sterilize the Inferior

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

>
>From: David Boaz <dboaz@cato.org>
>Subject: Social Democrats Sterilize the Inferior
>
>Surprisingly, the revelations about 40 years of forced sterilizations by the
>Social Democratic governments in Sweden generated only small stories in the
>New York Times and the Washington Post.  I'm sure they would have been
>equally uninterested in revelations about forced sterilization in, say,
>Thatcher's Britain.  Be sure to read to the last line of the story where at
>last the AP pins it directly on the Social Democrats' ideas.
>
>
>
>By JIM HEINTZ
>.c The Associated Press
>
>STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Aug. 25) - They were found to be ''inferior,'' flawed by
>bad eyesight, mental retardation or ''undesirable'' racial characteristics.
>To prevent this genetic heritage from being passed on, they were sterilized -
>sometimes involuntarily.
>
>Sweden had as many as 60,000 of its own citizens sterilized between 1935 and
>1976. Adults and children were singled out by doctors, school authorities or
>other officials and were pressured to consent to the procedures.
>
>This sterilization program bore chilling similarities to Nazi ideas of racial
>superiority - and media reports on it now are provoking sober
>self-examination.
>
>The program stemmed from the pursuit of eugenics, a once-popular movement to
>improve humanity by controlling genetic factors in reproduction.
>
>Though Sweden's sterilization program was a matter of record, it received
>little public attention, ignored in schoolbooks and hardly mentioned in
>reference works. A recent series by the prestigious newspaper Dagens Nyheter,
>however, has stirred national debate.
>
>Especially shocking to many Swedes is the fact that the law allowing the
>sterilizations wasn't overturned until 1976, three decades after the Nazis'
>human engineering policies collapsed in the rubble of the Third Reich.
>
>The sterilizations targeted a wide range of people: those of mixed race;
>unmarried mothers with several children; people judged to be habitual
>criminals; even a boy considered ''sexually precocious.''
>
>''Grounds for recommending sterilization: unmistakable Gypsy features,
>psychopathy, vagabond life,'' reads one document cited by Dagens Nyheter.
>
>Maria Nordin, 72, told the newspaper she had been sterilized in 1943 because
>she was regarded as mentally inferior.
>
>''One day, the (school) superintendent said I should come into his room to
>sign some papers. I understood what this was about so I ran into a toilet and
>sat there and cried for a long time for myself,'' she said.
>
>Sweden, with its well-developed welfare state and long-standing progressive
>stances on social issues, is not accustomed to being on the defensive on
>ethical issues.
>
>''This is a frightening picture that now is being shown to the Swedish
>people,'' Alf Svensson, chairman of the opposition Christian Democratic
>Party, said in a letter to Prime Minister Goeran Persson.
>
>Social Minister Margot Wallstroem says she is considering whether to
>compensate people who were forcibly sterilized. That would require
>overturning current law that says the victims can't get compensation because
>the sterilizations were lawful when performed.
>
>Nordin applied for compensation last year but her request was turned down by
>Wallstroem, who now says she feels ashamed over the matter.
>
>''I will take up the matter for discussion with the government. It is the
>least I can do,'' the Cabinet minister said.
>
>The Dagens Nyheter report has hit Swedes at a time when they were already
>examining some painful history from World War II. The government, under
>increasing international pressure, is looking into whether property looted by
>the Nazis from Jews in other countries ended up in Sweden.
>
>The issue of forced sterilization stands to be even more troublesome, because
>it was conducted under the ostensibly benign gaze of the Social Democrats -
>that party that built Sweden's welfare state and proclaimed it a paragon of
>enlightened government.
>
>''The Social Democrats are implicated in a collective guilt,'' said Social
>Minister Wallstroem, herself a member of the party.
>
>The sterilization programs can be traced to turn-of-the-century enthusiasm
>for eugenics.
>
>The movement had adherents in many countries, but ''Sweden was the first in
>the world to grant this pseudoscience official recognition,'' Dagens Nyheter
>wrote in describing how Sweden established an Institute of Racial Biology in
>1921.
>
>Not only did eugenics foresee an improved human race, it also was appealing
>to Social Democrats, who were beginning to see that Sweden's welfare state
>would be costly and wanted to limit the number of people who would have to be
>supported, the newspaper said.
>
> AP-NY-08-25-97 1903EDT
>
>
>