Virginia Colony tagged posts

I have written several articles about people being fired or arrested while having seizures. As a result, I have received several emails from readers and close friends asking: “How can it be legal in the United States of America to fire someone for epilepsy?”

It isn’t. But up until very recently it was. Here’s how it came to happen.

In 1924 sterilizing epileptics was all the rage. Three thousand people were involuntarily sterilized in the United States — 2,500 in California alone (1) based on a system designed by one Harry Laughlin. In a continued effort to get rid of “defective persons,” Virginia sought to follow California’s lead and a seventeen-year-old girl named Carrie Buck was chosen to be the first citizen of that state to be sterilized under the program.

Witness...

Lewis Reynolds is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps. He served his country for thirty years, fighting in both the Korean and Vietnam wars. He has been married for 47 years and is 85 years old. He does not, however, have any children because he was forcibly and legally sterilized under Virginia’s Eugenical Sterilization Act (1).

Mr. Reynolds was not born epileptic. A rock hit him in the head when he was nine and he became a seizure patient. As a result, he was sterilized to stop “the propagation of their kind (2).” Sterilized, I might add, without his knowledge.

Virginia’s Eugenical Sterilization Act was passed in 1924, making it legal to forcibly sterilize any “mental defective” for the “the welfare of society (3).” The law was cemented in the famous “Buck v...