Eugenic sterilization

H. Curtis Wood, president of Human Betterment Assn of America, devised new argument in terms of the defense of liberty and of medical autonomy. “They [doctors] enjoyed immense prestige and high, although declining, degree of patient deference, and their vocabulary and expertise enabled them to invoke arguments powerful enough to persuade even the most skeptical patients of sterilization’s merits. Doctors would do so in increasingly large numbers in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Hansen & Kind, 184-185).