by Joyce McClure, Bridge2Blue
In 1927, Virginia decided that a young woman should never become a mother.
Her name was Carrie Buck.
She had committed no crime. She had harmed no one. She wasn’t asking the government for anything.
Instead, the Commonwealth chose her to become the test case in its effort to prove that the state—not the individual—should decide who was fit to have children.
Buck had become pregnant after being raped. Declared “feebleminded,” she was committed to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, where state officials argued that she should be sterilized for the good of society.
The United States Supreme Court agreed. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote one of the most infamous sentences in American legal history: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
With those six words, Virginia became the birthplace of one of the darkest chapters in America’s history of reproductive control. Thousands of Virginians—and eventually tens of thousands of Americans—were sterilized because government officials believed they knew who should and should not become parents.
Virginia has long since acknowledged that injustice. It cannot erase it.
Nor should we forget how easily government convinced itself that it had the authority to make one of life’s most intimate decisions for someone else.
Nearly a century later, no one is proposing a return to eugenics. The issues before us today are different. The law is different. The motives are different.
But one question remains remarkably familiar: Who gets to decide?
I never expected that question to become part of my own life.
As a member of the Baby Boom generation, I knew from the time I was a teenager that I didn’t want children. It wasn’t because I disliked children or wanted to devote myself to a career. It was simply the life I envisioned for myself.
After graduating from college in 1969, I moved to New York City and kickstarted my career. Like many young women of my generation, I sought birth control. The pill had only recently become widely available, and questions about its long-term health effects remained.
Being unmarried, I wondered if my gynecologist would judge me. Instead, he answered my questions, explained the risks and handed me a prescription without hesitation. I assumed every medical decision afterward would be just as straightforward.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Several years later, after a brief marriage and divorce, I decided I wanted a tubal ligation—a permanent form of birth control. I had thought about the decision for years. I understood the consequences. I knew exactly what I wanted.
Apparently, that wasn’t enough.
My gynecologist told me to come back after I turned thirty.
I did.
Then he insisted I consult a psychotherapist to determine whether my decision was psychologically sound. The therapist admitted he’d never encountered a woman requesting voluntary sterilization. Fascinated, he asked whether I’d allow him to write an academic paper about my decision. A few weeks later, he called to say someone else had already written one. When I asked if I could read it, he replied that only physicians could.
Meanwhile, I was still trying to obtain permission to make my own medical decision.
My general practitioner referred me to another gynecologist who remarked that only one previous patient had requested the procedure. “She was a lesbian,” he added, as though that somehow explained everything.
It explained nothing.
Eventually my gynecologist relented and sent me to the head of family planning at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital who was willing to perform the operation.
Almost.
First came another waiting period of one month. Another opportunity to “think about it,” the surgeon informed me.
By then, I’d been thinking about it for years.
Finally, after what felt like an endless obstacle course of referrals, evaluations, and waiting periods, I had the surgery.
Looking back, I realize that none of those doctors believed they were harming me. All were thoughtful. All were kind. They worried I’d regret my decision years later and sue them even though they were clear that the procedure could not be reversed.
They genuinely believed they were protecting me from myself.
It was paternalism, not malice. But paternalism still places someone else’s judgment above your own.
This November, Virginians will vote on whether reproductive freedom should be protected in our Constitution.
Much of the public discussion has understandably focused on abortion. But reproductive freedom has always been about much more than abortion. It includes decisions about contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage care, sterilization, pregnancy, and whether—or when—to become a parent.
It includes the freedom not to become one.
Carrie Buck was denied the right to have children. Decades later, I found myself struggling to exercise the opposite choice. The circumstances could not have been more different.
No one forced me to undergo a medical procedure, and no one claimed I was unfit to become a mother. Yet in both cases, someone else believed they had the authority to stand between a competent woman and one of the most personal decisions she could make.
Virginia’s own history should make us cautious whenever government—or any institution—claims authority over intensely personal reproductive decisions.
History doesn’t repeat itself exactly. But it has a way of reminding us how easily power can become convinced that it knows what’s best for someone else’s life.
Reasonable people will continue to disagree about abortion. They’ll disagree about religion, morality, and public policy. In a democracy, those debates are both inevitable and healthy.
But beneath those disagreements lies a simpler question: Who should decide?
The individual whose body, health, family, and future are directly affected?
Or the government?
Nearly fifty years ago, I spent years convincing doctors, therapists, and hospital administrators that I knew my own mind. This November, Virginians will decide whether future generations should have to do the same.
