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The Untold Story of American Eugenics
We are quick to condemn Hitler, but we forget it was our own country that inspired him.
Content Warning: This article includes topics that may be triggering to some readers.
“Of course, the passing of these people should be painless and without warning. They should go to sleep at night without any intimation of what was coming, and never awake.”
-Dr. John R. Haynes (University of Pennsylvania) 1918
Seventy-year-old Virginia resident Janet Ingram was an ordinary teenager in the 1950s, until one day she unknowingly became part of a little-known government project for the poor. Teenage Janet awoke one day after a routine medicine procedure. “I woke up and my stomach was hurting,” she said in a public interview. “I said, ‘Oh no, my stomach. I looked down, and I had stitches in my stomach, and the nurse came back in and I said, ‘What happened?’ She said, ‘You just been sterilized.’”
When she was only a baby, Janet Ingram was taken from her home and committed to an institution along with her female family members, including her three sisters, her pregnant mother, and her pregnant aunt.
“Medical records show that she was admitted when she was 22 months old,” a 2014 press release states, “because ‘she…
