Now, the truth about one of America's most shameful moments is revealed in The Sterilization of Carrie Buck.
On October 27, 1927, 21-year-old Carrie Buck was sterilized without her understanding or consent - and with the blessings of the United States Supreme Court.
Through 1972, this act led to the sterilization of over 50,000 American citizens without their consent, and was the forerunner of the Hereditary Health Law which initiated the slaughter of millions of Jews, Catholics, homosexuals, Gypsies and others opposing the goals of Nazi Germany. At the Nuremberg War Trials, the Carrie Buck case was cited as the precedent for the Nazi race hygiene programs.
Here is the shattering chronicle of Carrie Buck's life: her lonely childhood, her harassment at school, the birth of her child, her commitment to the same institution as her mother, the trial at which she was robbed of her ability to have children, and the final decision by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes that "three generations of imbeciles are enough.", essentially because she was young, poor and powerless.
The warning of Carrie Buck's tragedy remains with us even today.
