The Attempts to Introduce Eugenic Legislation in the Second Polish Republic as Viewed from the Perspective of the Solutions Adopted in the United States of America

In the first decades of the 20th century, broad recognition of Francis Galton’s eugenics resulted in the implementation of its demands in the form of eugenic legislation. Particularly drastic form of the latter were sterilization laws, first introduced in the US State of Indiana in 1907, and later in most of the other states, and during the interwar period, several European countries. Between 1934 and 1936 under the influence of the Western “achievements”, especially the German law of 1933, the failed attempts to introduce compulsory sterilization were also undertaken in the Second Polish Republic. When analyzing the regulations proposed by Leo Wernic, the president of the Polish Eugenic Society, it would be advisable to bring in the sterilization laws adopted and applied on a large scale in the United States of America. In the “homeland” of eugenics legislation, the model sterilization law had been already prepared in 1914, and the Supreme Court of the United States upheld its constitutionality in the notorious Buck v. Bell case in 1927