October 19, 1927. Kerry Buck is lying on a cold still table. Her future about to be stolen. But this story isn't told from Kerry's point of view. No. To understand how far this madness had gone, we need to step into the mind of the man with the scalpel, the doctor who believed he was doing society a favor. In a small room down the hall, Dr. Albert Priddy takes a sip of coffee, staring blankly ahead. For years, he had waited for this moment. He had listened to the speeches, read the papers, attended the lectures, they promised a better world, one cleansed of the unfit. But until now, he couldn't act, not legally. He had been a student of Henry Laughlin's model sterilization laws. He had devoured the theories published by Charles Davenport and Madison Grant. In his mind, this wasn't madness. It was science. It was progress. And now, with the Supreme Court's decision in Buck v. Bell, he had everything he needed. Justice Holmes had spoken, and in Dr. Priddy's mind, it was like receiving a license to save the human race. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. With those words by Justice Holmes, Dr. Priddy knew that Kerry Buck would be the first of many. There would be 8,000 more in Virginia alone and countless others across the nation. He saw it as his duty to stop them from polluting society. Kerry didn't know what was about to happen, but Dr. Priddy knew. He knew he was about to fix the problem. He wasn't just cutting into her body. He was cutting her out of the future, sterilizing her so that she could never pass her defects on to another generation. In his mind, this was no different from curing a disease. Kerry was the patient, but in his eyes, society was the one he was saving. And as Dr. Priddy began the procedure, across the ocean, Adolf Hitler was watching, learning, planning. He saw what America was doing, how the state was cleansing its own people one life at a time. He had already begun to build his own movement, a movement that would take this philosophy even further. For Dr. Priddy, this was the beginning. For Hitler, it was a blueprint. And while Kerry Buck lay on that table, unaware of the roles she was playing in history, the seeds of a far greater horror were already being planted. Before Kerry Buck lay on the table, before Buck V. Bell was decided, there was an idea. It was not a new idea, but one that found fertile ground in the halls of American universities and in the minds of intellectuals. Eugenics, the word itself was coined in the late 19th century by Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. It promised a world free from disease, crime, poverty. A world where only the fit would thrive, but the reality was far darker. In America, eugenics didn't spread from the bottom up. It was born in the highest institutions, Harvard, Yale, Princeton. Professors and scientists at these universities preached the gospel of human improvement through selective breathing and sterilization. In 1910, the eugenics record office was established at Cold Spring Harbor, New York by Charles Davenport, one of the key architects of this movement. Funded by powerful organizations like the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation, the office became the epicenter for eugenics research in the United States. But it wasn't just research. They were laying the groundwork for policy, laws that would allow the state to sterilize those deemed unfit. It started with the model sterilization laws drafted by men like Harry Loughlin, these laws spread rapidly across the nation. And Virginia was one of the first to adopt them. The Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 gave the state the power to sterilize anyone they deemed a threat to the genetic future of the nation, the weak, the poor, the disabled, all were targets. Eugenics in America wasn't just about maintaining racial superiority. It was about perfecting it. Eugenicsists believed they could breed out weakness, criminality, poverty. It was a vision of a world without degenerates, a world where only the strong, healthy, and the pure survived, and the state would be the surgeon cutting away what they saw as humanity's defects. Across the United States, the movement found fertile ground. By the 1920s, more than 30 states had passed sterilization laws, giving the government the power to prevent those they deemed unfit from reproducing. In California, one of the most aggressive eugenics programs sterilized over 20,000 people. In North Carolina, the law targeted poor black women with over 7,600 sterilizations by the 1970s. Indiana, the first state to pass sterilization laws in 1907, led the way with sterilizations in mental institutions and prisons. But Virginia's law would become the foundation of the Buck v. Bell case. In 1924, the state passed the Virginia Sterilization Act, which gave the state the right to sterilize anyone deemed a threat to the genetic future of society. The Commonwealth of Virginia, hereby declares that the health of the state, its future and its race, depends upon the prevention of the procreation of socially inadequate persons, including feeble-minded, insane, epileptic, inebriate, criminalistic, and dependent classes. The goal was clear, cleanse society, not of criminals, but of those considered unworthy to continue their kind. And as these sterilizations programs expanded across the United States, the world was watching. It wasn't just within America's borders that the nation sought to purify itself. In the same year Virginia passed the sterilization law, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which restricted entry to the United States for those deemed undesirable. This act specifically targeted immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, Jews, Italians, Poles, many of whom were fleeing persecution. By closing its doors, America sent a clear message. Only the fit were welcome. For those turned away, the consequences were dire. Many of the undesirables denied entry to the US in the 1920s were later be caught in the horrors of the Holocaust. The very people America refused to protect would become victims of Hitler's final solution. In Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler was watching closely. By the 1930s, as he rose to power, he found validation in what was happening in America. The model for racial purity had already been set. Just as Virginia sterilized the unfit, the third Reich would do the same, but on a far more terrifying scale. In 1933, as Hitler solidified his control over Germany, his regime began to identify its own undesirables. Jews, Roma, people with disabilities, and anyone seen as a threat to the racial purity of the Aryan nation. The Nazi sterilized 400,000 people, echoing the very programs that America had pioneered. America led Hitler followed. The foundation for genocide, the belief that some lives are not worth living, was already written into American law. While America sterilized, Nazi Germany would take this philosophy to its final, deadly conclusion. But before Hitler's plan took shape, it was men like Dr. Albert Priddy in America who believed they were saving the future. And for Priddy, it all started in the lecture halls, where the so-called science of eugenics was laid out in careful detail. The room was filled with the sound of voices, eugenicists, scholars, and scientists, all preaching the same message. We must act. We must clean society of the unfit before it's too late. Harry Laughlin's voice echoed through the hall, laying out the plan, the science, the justification for sterilizing those deemed unworthy. To me in that room, that wasn't cruelty. It was science. They believed they were protecting the future. And Dr. Priddy was among them, listening, waiting. As the lecture went on, the urgency became clear to him. This wasn't just theory anymore. This was a call to action. Priddy had heard this message before, but today something shifted. As he listened, he thought of the patience under his care. The families he knew were defective. The Buck family came to mind. Emma Buck was already institutionalized, and now her daughter, Carrie, was under his control. Priddy knew what needed to be done. Carrie had already given birth to a daughter, Vivian, and to Priddy, that was proof enough. Three generations of unfit women. He saw it as his duty to stop the Buck line from continuing. And so, as the lecture ended and the crowd dispersed, Priddy made his decision. Carrie Buck would be sterilized. She, like her mother, would never pass her defects onto another generation. In Priddy's mind, this wasn't cruelty. It was salvation. And as he walked out of the hall, Priddy had no idea that his decision would soon become the test case for the entire eugenics movement. Dr. Priddy stands by the window of the hospital looking over the yard. Below him, three generations of the Buck family are together. Carrie, her infant daughter, Vivian, and Carrie's mother, Emma. Carrie struggles to care for the child while Emma, old and frail, watches from a bench. This is the scene Dr. Priddy sees as he begins to speak. George, this isn't just a theoretical discussion. Look down there. You see Carrie trying to tend to that baby Vivian, the third in the line. And over there, her mother, Emma, just sitting, barely aware of what's going on. This is what we're dealing with. This is what we're trying to prevent. Look at Carrie. She can't even soothe that child. She's completely overwhelmed. Her IQ is 56. She's incapable of understanding even basic parental responsibilities. And now she has an infant, a child who will almost certainly follow in her footsteps. It's a cycle, George. A cycle that we have the power to stop. And there's Emma. She's been here for years, the ward of the state. We've measured her IQ at 50. Her mental deficiencies are well documented. She's never been able to contribute to society in any meaningful way. And now she's sitting there, completely disengaged, watching her daughter make the same mistake she did. What we're seeing, George, is exactly why the state must intervene. Three generations, Emma, Carrie, Vivian. It's not just theory. It's right in front of us. Emma's defects were passed down to Carrie. And now Carrie's child, Vivian, is showing the same signs. If we allow this to continue, we're condemning yet another generation to the same fate. This isn't about cruelty or punishment. This is about protecting society, yeah. We can't let Carrie have more children, George. Look at her. She's not capable of raising this one, let alone another. And the child she's struggling to care for down there? She's just beginning the next chapter in this family's legacy of dependency and cognitive failure. The state hasn't trusted us with the responsibility to act. What we're doing isn't about taking away Carrie's rights. It's about safeguarding the future of the population. Emma, Carrie, Vivian, they're part of a chain that must end here. We're not just thinking about today, thinking about generations to come. And this is the only way to ensure that society is not burdened by another generation of the buck family. But where does it stop, Doctor? Today is the feeble-minded. Tomorrow can be what? Be students? Anyone who doesn't mean a certain standard? But we're doing, but you're proposing it. It's a slippery slope, isn't it? The case of Buck v. Bell wasn't simply the work of Doctor Pretty and the Virginia state officials. There were those who saw the injustices and wanted to intervene. Carrie Buck didn't stand alone, even if it felt that way. Behind the scenes, there were efforts, albeit quiet ones, to challenge the state's power to forcefully stop her from having children. Carrie had been appointed a lawyer, Irving Whitehead. But what's often forgotten is how little he truly fought for her. Despite his role as her defense, Whitehead was a former colleague of Doctor Pretty and supported the sterilization laws. He was meant to protect Carrie's rights, but his defense was half-hearted at best, almost ensuring her loss. The system was stacked against her from the start, but not everyone involved in the case was in favor of sterilization. There were those who saw the dangers of eugenics and fought against its rise. Silent figures, doctors, journalists, and legal scholars who saw the consequences of this ideology. While their voices weren't loud enough to turn the tide, they laid the foundation for future resistance. Carrie's case attracted attention from those who feared the slippery slope of eugenics. These individuals wrote letters, filed briefs, and spread their concerns about the broader implications of the state's power to sterilize its citizens. They knew that if Carrie's rights could be sacrificed, others would follow. As the case moved from Virginia's courts to the U.S. Supreme Court, it became more than just Carrie's fight. It was a battle for the future of eugenics in America. And while Carrie's legal representation faltered, those who oppose the movement continued to challenge its moral and ethical foundations. But as the case reached the Supreme Court, the eugenics movement had already taken deep root in American society. The justices themselves were educated in institutions where eugenics was seen as legitimate science. The question before them wasn't just about Carrie. It was about whether the state could take control over who could and could not have children. And then, in a moment that would echo through history, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes delivered the majority opinion. His words were chilling. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. With that single sentence, Holmes justified the sterilization of Carrie Buck and cemented the state's power to control reproductive rights. The reaction to Holmes' statement was swift. While many in the legal and academic worlds praised the decision as a victory for science and progress, there were others who recoiled in horror. Critics from religious leaders to civil rights activists condemn the decision as a violation of human dignity. Newspapers published editorials questioning the moral implications of allowing the state to decide who could and could not bear children. It was not just a legal decision. It was a moral line that had been crossed. Some warned that this ruling would open the door to further abuses of power. If the state could decide who was unfit today, what would stop them from expanding that definition tomorrow? These voices of dissent saw in Holmes' words the potential for a dark future, one where personal freedoms could be sacrificed in the name of societal improvement. But no matter how strong the arguments, or how loud the voices of those who disagreed, the Supreme Court had spoken, and just like in the rising Third Reich, where Hitler's words became law, in America, the Supreme Court's decision was final. The law of the land had been set in stone. Three generations of imbeciles were in the eyes of the court enough, and from that point forward the power to decide who was worthy of life and who was not rested not in the hands of the people, but in the hands of the state. Dr. Preeti watches as the nurses prepare carry for the procedure. He stands in the corner sipping his coffee, supervising every detail with clinical detachment. For him, this is the culmination of years of effort. The Buck family line will end here. Carrie Buck, like her mother before her and her daughter after, is not seen as an individual. She is part of a defect to be eliminated for the betterment of society. There's a picture the instruments are in order. This is the final step for her. We're doing what needs to be done for the good of society. Outside the hospital, Emma Buck sits quietly on a bench, unaware that her daughter's future is being decided inside those walls. Nearby, Carrie's baby Vivian remains in the nursery and infant already marked as unfit. Preeti sees this as a victory for progress, a necessary step in controlling who should and should not reproduce. Meanwhile, across the ocean, Adolph Hitler stands in a very different kind of facility, a concentration camp. It's 1934, and he supervises the horrors taking place. The prisoners we can helpless are under the control of those who see them as less than human. Like Preeti, these men believe they are carrying out the will of the state, doing what's necessary for the purity of their nation. Two men, two nations, both convinced that they are improving society by eliminating those they deem unworthy. When man sterilizes, the other exterminates. And yet, how different are they? How different are the doctors who oversaw sterilization in the name of the state from those overseeing the deaths of millions in concentration camps? Even after the horrors of Nazi Germany were exposed, sterilization continued in the United States. In 1942, the Skinner versus Oklahoma case reached the Supreme Court, challenging the sterilization of prisoners convicted of crimes. The court ruled that certain types of sterilization violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. But even this landmark ruling could not stop the momentum of forced sterilization. Across the country, sterilization continued quietly, affecting the poor, the disabled, women of color, and indigenous communities. By the time these programs came to an end, over 100,000 Native American women had been forcibly sterilized by the federal government, many of them without their knowledge or consent. This was the final and most devastating iteration of eugenics in America. This is progress, George. We're cutting off the defective branch before we can grow. But what we're doing here is no different from what happens in nature. One of the strongest survive. But how far does the state's power reach? How different is Dr. Pritty sipping coffee in his sterile operating room from the men in the concentration camps who decide which lives are worth saving and which should be destroyed? The sterilization programs that began with Buck V. Bell didn't end with a sudden reversal. They faded out quietly as society began to reckon with the horrors of eugenics. But for decades, the damage continued. Entire generations of women were left childless, stripped of their future without their knowledge or consent. The shadow of the eugenics movement remained long after the laws themselves were repealed. The end of forced sterilization in America didn't come until well into the late 20th century. After Skinner versus Oklahoma, the pace slowed. But the practice persisted in different forms, hospitals, welfare programs, and even federal agencies took part in ensuring that certain women, poor women, women of color, native women, were sterilized under the banner of public health. The courts no longer openly sanctioned it, but the machinery of sterilization had taken on a life of its own. The statistics are staggering. In the decades following Buck V. Bell, over 60,000 people were sterilized across the country. And that's not including the over 100,000 Native American women that were sterilized. And while many of these cases were reported, there are countless others that remain hidden, undocumented, unacknowledged. For many victims, justice never came. The legacy of forced sterilization is one of unspoken trauma, passed down through families who were forever altered by a decision made in the highest court of the land. And society as a whole was complicit. From doctors who performed the procedures to social workers who recommended them, to the everyday citizen who turned a blind eye, the eugenics movement was not carried out in secret. It was a public policy endorsed by leaders, scientists, and intellectuals of the time. Even as it faded, the underlying belief that some lives were more valuable than others remained embedded in American consciousness. But now imagine what was lost. In those hundreds of thousands of lives that were never allowed to exist, what potential was erased? What genius, creativity, and innovation where cut off before it could ever take root? Could one of those individuals have discovered the cure for cancer? Could there have been minds among them that would have revolutionized science, medicine, or technology? Could they have been the next great artists, philosophers, or inventors? We'll never know. What we do know is that the decision to sterilize wasn't just about controlling populations. It was about controlling the future. At the heart of this tragedy is the role of a Supreme Court. In Buck V. Bell, unelected justices handed down a decision that sanctioned the erasure of potential futures. Their ruling allowed the state to decide whose lives were valuable, whose contributions to society would never come to pass. And in doing so, they wielded the law like a Sith, cutting away not just lives but possibilities. We can only wonder what was lost and what the future might have been if those voices had not been silenced before they had a chance to speak. Next, we dive into a case that may not be about life and death, but one that sparks a chilling debate. Is it a trick or a treat? Fruit or vegetable, when a seemingly innocent tomato finds itself at the heart of a courtroom showdown, it's clear nothing is as it seems. Prepare yourself for the haunted tale of Nick's versus Headon, because sometimes the scariest battles are fought over the strangest things. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your time and curiosity means the world to us. We couldn't do this without you, and we're so grateful to have you along for the journey. I'm Jeff, and I'll see you in the next episode. (upbeat music)
