Mississippi Eugenics and Forced Sterilization

Mississippi enacted a eugenic sterilization law in 1928 authorising operations on people held in state hospitals and judged mentally ill or “deficient” under the discriminatory language of the period. Such laws treated poverty, disability, sexuality and social nonconformity as hereditary threats and gave institutions extensive control over patients’ reproductive lives.

Formal records document hundreds of sterilizations in Mississippi, although coercion and incomplete documentation make the full human impact difficult to measure. Women and other socially vulnerable people bore a growing share of compulsory sterilization across the United States.