C. Elizabeth Koester. In the Public Good: Eugenics and Law in Ontario. McGill-Queen's/Associated Medical Services Studies in the History of Medicine, Health, and Society Series. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021. Illustrations. 320 pp. $39.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-228-00851-4.
Reviewed by Courtney Mrazek (Saint Mary's University)
Published on H-Sci-Med-Tech (January, 2023)
Commissioned by Penelope K. Hardy (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse)
When examining eugenics and law in Canada, perhaps the first information someone will come across is that Alberta and British Columbia were the only two provinces to pass laws that implemented eugenic sterilization programs. C. Elizabeth Koester’s PhD dissertation turned book, In the Public Good: Eugenics and Law in Ontario, offers a persuasive historical argument and analysis that demonstrates the importance of looking beyond provincially enacted laws for eugenic activity. While Ontario never passed eugenic marriage or sterilization laws, it was not because of a lack of support for eugenic solutions to social problems in the early twentieth century. In examining the connections between eugenics, law, and the public good, within the framework of answering why Ontario did not pass eugenic legislation, Koester significantly contributes to our understanding of eugenic ideas and actions.
Koester’s book begins with a powerful and nuanced introduction to eugenics. Going further than Francis Galton’s famous definition, the author conveys the fluid complexity of eugenics, which was different across the world at varying times. Leaning into this, she concludes that a simple definition limits our potential consideration of eugenics, whereas accepting its diversity and elasticity “as a characteristic rather than confounding feature” opens new avenues for robust historical studies (p. 11). This is one instance of many where Koester compellingly demonstrates the importance of understanding eugenics in its local context. Chapter 1 does just that and provides the reader with background knowledge on the social issues in early twentieth-century Ontario, which eugenicists believed could be ameliorated by eugenic solutions, including mass immigration, rapid urbanization, prostitution, venereal disease, and a perceived higher fertility rate among the feeble-minded.
One of the major strengths of Koester’s historical study is the rich detail and analysis of her three legal case studies that undoubtedly were influenced by her former career as a human rights lawyer. Chapter 2 examines Dr. Forbes Godfrey, a physician and politician, and the eight eugenic private member bills he unsuccessfully tried to pass through the Ontario legislature between 1910 and 1921. Of the eight, four bills proposed coercive sterilization, with the other half focused on restricting marriage. Characteristic of Koester’s academic approach, Godfrey’s influences and motivations for his proposed legal eugenic solutions are fully analyzed and fleshed out, providing an often-overlooked human element to this legal history. Moreover, she contextualizes the public’s reaction to the bills through newspaper accounts and political support for and opposition to the bills.
Chapter 3 discusses three Ontario Royal Commissions that proposed eugenic solutions to social problems: the 1917 Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Mentally Defective and Feeble-Minded (the Hodgins Commission), the 1929 Royal Commission on Public Welfare (the Ross Commission), and the 1938 Royal Commission on the Operation of the Mental Hospitals Act (the Magone Commission). All three commissions reveal the Ontario government’s concern with the delicate balance between maintaining the public good and protecting individual rights, or at least its concern with the political and legal consequences of infringing too much on individual rights and losing the public’s support. It is in this chapter that Koester’s exploration of what constitutes eugenics is expertly shown. For example, on first reading, the Ross and Magone Reports do not appear to be overtly “eugenic.” They do not rely on heredity arguments or other clear markers of eugenic thinking. However, Koester’s in-depth analysis clearly shows the eugenic intentions behind both commissions and exemplifies her earlier argument for a more complex understanding of eugenics.
Chapter 4 moves from legislation and commissions into the Eastview courtroom between 1936 and 1937, when Dorothy Palmer, a trained social worker, was on trial for distributing advice pamphlets on birth control under section 207 of the Criminal Code. This case study deals with the sensational history of A. R. Kaufman and his organization, the Parents’ Information Bureau (PIB), under which Palmer was employed to visit women in their homes and promote birth control. Kaufman, a founding member of the Eugenics Society of Canada (ESC), financed Palmer’s defense and seems to have used the trial to argue that it was not illegal to distribute information on birth control as it was in the interest of the public good. Palmer was ultimately acquitted of the charges laid against her in the initial trial and again when it was appealed. While other academics have examined Kaufman’s eugenic programs for employees at his rubber plant in Kitchener, Koester’s examination of the PIB and the Eastview trial presents new arguments and ways of looking at eugenic ideas circulating at the time in Ontario. Although Kaufman was involved in the ESC, his personal ideas on how eugenic solutions should be implemented differed from the traditional solutions that were proposed and failed to be legislated by Godfrey and that were recommended in the three commissions but not enacted. Rather than advocate for sterilization decided on by physicians largely in institutions, Kaufman preferred voluntary sterilizations, consented to by both wife and husband and performed in a hospital setting. Moreover, vasectomies were preferable to female sterilization, and as Koester argues, Kaufman’s records indicate a priority for women’s agency over their own bodies at an unusual time.
In the Public Good is an engaging historical study into why Ontario ultimately did not pass eugenic legislation despite active and publicized support for eugenic solutions. Koester concludes that the Ontario provincial government was warier of public perceptions of eugenic legislations infringing on individual rights than Alberta, lacked Alberta’s panache for social experiments, and did not have a political movement pushing the eugenic cause in the same way that was present in Alberta and British Columbia. Koester’s study achieves everything it sets out to accomplish, a sometimes rare feat in academia, and sets a new standard for exploring the connections between eugenics and law.
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Citation:
Courtney Mrazek. Review of Koester, C. Elizabeth, In the Public Good: Eugenics and Law in Ontario.
H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews.
January, 2023.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=57998
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