America's Long, Shameful History of Sterilizing Prisoners

Coerced sterilizations are a shade away from eugenics.

Last Thursday, Tennessee judge Sam Benningfield was suddenly inundated with accusations of being a eugenicist. Since May, he’s been offering misdemeanor defendants — most of whom, in opioid-plagued White County, are drug users — a 30-day sentence reduction if they get a vasectomy or birth control implant. No one said much about his offer until he told a local news reporter last week that he’d come up with the idea after seeing recovering addicts struggle to rebuild their lives. “I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, to not to be burdened with children,” he said.

National news outlets, though, saw it differently: Here was a man with power telling people who had none that they were unfit to reproduce. Pressured into releasing a statement the following day, Benningfield, who declined multiple requests from The Outline for comment, addressed his critics, saying that his idea was “in no way a eugenic program. Sterilization is never involved, as all procedures offered are...