ABSTRACT
If a target group is presented as posing a risk to society and depicted as a public health emergency, actions against group members will often be presented as a measure of sanitation or purification. Perhaps nothing describes this better than involuntary sterilization, since the term sterilization is used to describe the purification of medical instruments. Supporters of control policies often argued that the threat was so dire that there was not time to consider various options or study the situation, nor could the nation wait for a sound diagnostic program to be developed. Following the “one-drop” rule, anyone who could possibly be included in a particular target group was suspect, and often even those who associated with them. The group’s status as a public health threat was often reified, or made real, through their placement or “quarantine” in congregated settings (e.g., almshouses, mental institutions, ghettos) which would sooner or later become disease-ridden.
