"I Have Autism. Why An Autocracy Scares Me": Daily Kos

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2. Carrie Buck, the Eugenics Crusade. 'Three generations

of imbeciles are enough,' Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1927.

In his opinion, Justice Holmes wrote:

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.... Three generations of imbeciles are enough.



(Wiki). Carrie Elizabeth Buck (July 3, 1906 – January 28, 1983) was the plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, after having been ordered to undergo compulsory sterilization for purportedly being "feeble-minded." The surgery, carried out while Buck was an inmate of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, took place under the authority of the Eugenical Sterilization Act of 1924, part of the Commonwealth of Virginia's eugenics program.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Buck