Emily Murphy - The Eugenics Movement

The Eugenics Movement

During the early twentieth century, scientific knowledge emerged in the forefront of social importance. Advances in science and technology were thought to hold answers to current and future social problems. Murphy was among those who thought that the problems that were plaguing their society, such as alcoholism, drug abuse and crime were caused because of mental deficiencies. In a 1932 article titled “ Overpopulation and Birth Control”, she states: "... over-population basic problem of all…none of our troubles can even be allayed until this is remedied." As the politics behind the Second World War continued to develop, Murphy, who was a pacifist, theorized that the only reason for war was that nations needed to fight for land to accommodate their growing populations. Her argument was that: if there was population control, people would not need as much land. Without the constant need for more land, war would cease to exist. Her solution to these social issues was eugenics. Selective breeding was considered a progressive scientific and social approach and Murphy supported the compulsory sterilization of those individuals who were considered mentally deficient. She believed that the mentally and socially inferior reproduced more than the "human thoroughbreds" and appealed to the Alberta Legislative Assembly for eugenic sterilization. In a petition, she wrote that mentally defective children were, "a menace to society and an enormous cost to the state…science is proving that mental defectiveness is a transmittable hereditary condition." She wrote to Minister of Agriculture and Health, George Hoadley that two female "feeble-minded" mental patients already bred several offspring. She called it: "a neglect amounting to a crime to permit these two women to go on bearing children. They are both young women and likely to have numerous offspring before leaving the hospital". Due in part to her heavy advocacy of compulsory sterilization, thousands of Albertans, who were not considered to possess any intelligence, were sterilized without their knowledge or consent under the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta before its repeal in 1972.