Laws
No sterilization law has ever been passed in Maryland. In the 1960s, proposals for punitive sterilization, otherwise known as the Sanford Bill, existed, and a joint compulsory and voluntary sterilization law was proposed in 1963, but neither was passed (Paul, p. 581).
The E. Case
Even in the absence of a compulsory sterilization law, states could (and typically did) have laws authorizing sterilization when it was ostensibly dictated by medical necessity. In the case of Maryland, medical necessity was defined as situations in which sterilization was best for the patient’s health (i.e., therapeutic), but not, unlike in other states, to prevent people from producing offspring (i.e., eugenic; Paul, p. 580). One such case was of 25-year-old G. E., a mother of five children diagnosed with schizophrenia and housed at Maryland's Springfield State Hospital. Having married and having had children at a young age, she suffered mental breakdowns after birth, and after estrangement from her husband had three more children of whom her husband was not the father (the issues of her possible lack to capacity to consent to sexual activity due to mental illness and the possible presence of sexual assault were apparently not considered). Circuit Judge Herman Moser ordered her sterilized, with the approval of both her siblings and (estranged) husband (see Paul, p. 579; Time Magazine).
Opponents
In this case, vigorous opposition to
the ordered
sterilization came from Roman Catholics, including leaders of the
church. One
of them termed the order "totalitarian, un-American and irreligious"
(Time Magazine).
Bibliography
Paul,
Julius. 1965. "'Three Generations of Imbeciles Are Enough': State
Eugenic Sterilization Laws in American Thought and Practice."
Washington, D.C.: Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
Time Magazine. 1954. “Furor over Sterilization” (Nov. 22). Available at <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,806954,00.html>