The Foundling

At the end of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the eugenics movement became extremely popular. Sir Francis Galton coined the term in 1883, and it ostensibly refers to improving society by increasing desirable traits in the population while decreasing undesirable traits. In practice, eugenics involves encouraging certain people to produce more children while preventing others from reproducing, often through forced sterilization or other forms of violence. Eugenics has been discredited as a science and especially lost favor in legitimate scientific communities after the Nazis adopted a doctrine of eugenics to justify the extermination of Jewish people, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, Slavic people, and other marginalized groups. However, eugenics practices persisted in the United States into the 1970s through forced or coerced sterilizations of Puerto Rican, Black, and Indigenous women, as well as women with disabilities or mental health conditions. Notable supporters of the eugenics movement were Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, and Margaret Sanger.

Proponents of eugenics used health and empowerment rhetoric, asserting that preventing the births of babies with traits that they perceived as burdening society was good for mothers and society at large.