[PEN-L:12009] Re: Swedish sterilizations & SDs

[Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 07:33 AM 8/28/97 -0700, Jim Devive wrote:
>Yesterday, National Public Radio reported that the Swedish government had
>been sterilizing the mentally retarded -- and the racially impure -- since
>the 1930s. (For some reason, it wasn't in today's L.A. TIMES.) The Nazis had
>more impact than I thought. I wonder why the Social Democrats never exposed
>or ended this crime. It sheds a bad light on SD technocracy (though perhaps
>it was a SD-oriented newspaper that exposed it).
>
>Also accused of similar crimes were Norway and Austria.

Since NPR has become a mouthpiece of neo-liberal corporate propaganda (much
more so than your average Local, Live & Lame TV News) -- I would take
anything they say about anything that is in any way connected to social
democracy with extreme suspicion.  As always, the devil is in details, and
NPR is notorious for leaving out those details that are inconvenient for
their corporate sponsors and neo-liberal pundits.

Specifically:

1. Was the alleged sterilisation program compulsory or voluntary?

2. If complusory, who was to authorise the operation and on what grounds?

3. What was the total number of operations peformed, and how are these
numbers distributed through different time periods and geographically?

BTW, Sweden, Norway & Austria were not the only countries where
sterilisation was legal.  In the US, the procedure was legal in southern
states until 1972, and its legality was upheld by the well known liberal
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

cheers,
wojtek sokolowski
institute for policy studies
johns hopkins university
baltimore, md 21218
sokol@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
voice: (410) 516-4056
fax:   (410) 516-8233

POLITICS IS THE SHADOW CAST ON SOCIETY BY BIG BUSINESS. AND AS LONG AS THIS
IS SO, THE ATTENUATI0N OF THE SHADOW WILL NOT CHANGE THE SUBSTANCE.
- John Dewey