Molly Ladd-Taylor, “Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2017)

Eugenic sterilization is usually associated with Nazi horrors before and during World War II. But, as Dr. Molly Ladd-Taylor reminds us, it was also practiced in the United States. In her new book Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), Ladd-Taylor examines a state-run sterilization program in Minnesota and reveals the everyday politics of eugenic sterilization in twentieth-century America. She demonstrates that eugenic sterilization in practice was dictated not only by long-standing attitudes toward poverty, disability, and gender, but also by financial and fiscal policies geared at managing the cost of public assistance and welfare.

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