CHAPTER XII.

SUGGESTIONS AS TO APPLICATION.


_The State's humanitarian zeal protects the lives and fosters the
fertility of the degenerate._--_A confirmed or hereditary criminal
defined._--_Law on the subject of sterilization could at first be
permissive._--_It should apply, to begin with, to criminals and
the insane._--_Marriage certificates of health should be
required._--_Women's readiness to submit to surgical treatment for minor
as well as major pelvic diseases._--_Surgically induced sterility of
healthy women a greater crime than abortion._--_This danger not remote._


The fertility of the unfit goes on unrestrained by any other check, save
vice and misery. The great moral checks have not, and cannot have any
place with them. But the State is, by its humanitarian zeal, limiting
the scope and diminishing the force of these natural checks amongst all
classes of the community, but especially amongst the unfit, so that its
policy now fosters the fertility of this class, while it fails to arrest
the declining nativity of our best citizens. The greater the fertility
of the unfit, the greater the burden the fit have to bear, and the less
their fertility.

The State's present policy therefore, fosters the fertility of the
unfit, and discourages the fertility of the fit. This disastrous policy
must be changed without delay. The State can arrest the gradual
degradation of its people, by sterilizing all defective women and the
wives of defective men falling into the hands of the law. Mr. Henry M.