Originally Posted by wikipedia

The Sterilization Act provided for compulsory sterilization of persons deemed to be "feebleminded," including the "insane, idiotic, imbecile, feebleminded or epileptic"[2]. These two laws were Virginia's implementation of Harry Laughlin's "Model Eugenical Sterilization Law"[3], published two years earlier in 1922. The Sterilization Act was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Buck v. Bell 274 U.S. 200 (1927), which appealed the order to involuntarily sterilize Carrie Buck and her family, who were inmates in the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.. In support of his argument that the interest of the states in a "pure" gene pool outweighed the interest of individuals in their bodily integrity, he wrote:

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.

Holmes concluded his argument with the infamous phrase: Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Carrie Buck was paroled from the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded shortly after her sterilization was performed. Her mother and three-year old daughter were also sterilized under the same statute. The daughter, Vivian Buck, died in 1932 of "enteric colitis", possibly as a delayed complication of her sterilization surgery.

Carrie Buck eventually wed William Eagle and they remained married for twenty-five years before he died. As scholars and reporters visited Carrie it became abundantly clear to everyone that Carrie Buck was a woman of normal intelligence.