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Article ID: CBB001420273

Sterilization and Birth Control in the Shadow of Eugenics: Married, Middle-Class Women in Alberta, 1930--1960s (2014)

Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin Canadienne d'Histoire de la Medecine
Volume: 31, no. 1
Issue: 1
Pages: 165-187

Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Article in a special issue, “History of Eugenics Revisited”
Language: English

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Birth control; contraception; sterilization Science and gender Fertility Eugenics Women and health Reproduction 20th century Alberta, Canada

The history of eugenic sterilization connotes draconian images of coerced and involuntary procedures robbing men and women of their reproductive health. While eugenics programs often fit this characterization, there is another, smaller, and less obvious legacy of eugenics that arguably contributed to a more empowering image of reproductive health. Sexual sterilization surgeries as a form of contraception began to gather momentum alongside eugenics programs in the middle of the 20th century and experiences among prairie women serve as an illustrative example. Alberta maintained its eugenics program from 1929 to 1972 and engaged in thousands of eugenic sterilizations, but by the 1940s middle-class married women pressured their Albertan physicians to provide them with sterilization surgeries to control fertility, as a matter of choice. The multiple meanings and motivations behind this surgery introduced a moral quandary for physicians, which encourages medical historians to revisit the history of eugenics and its relationship to the contemporaneous birth control movement.

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Article Dyck, Erika (2014) Guest Editor 's Introduction: History of Eugenics Revisited. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin Canadienne d'Histoire de la Medecine (pp. 7-16). unapi

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