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In 1924, Virginia created a new sterilization law for their State in order to reduce the burden on taxpayers for the cost of institutionalization. Carrie Buck became the first person sterilized under Virginia’s new law. She was 17 and had a child out of wedlock. The child was the product of a rape, but nevertheless was seen as evidence of Carrie’s moral degeneracy. Furthermore, Carrie’s mother was already a patient at the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded—which also seemed to serve as evidence of bad lineage. Carrie’s defense challenged the validity of the law, and the case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court where Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes upheld the constitutionality of Virginia’s sterilization law and uttered the infamous lines: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
Carrie’s sterilization, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling set a precedent that allowed for thousands of Americans to be sterilized under individual states’ legislation. The number sterilizations began to wane after World War II because of the negative publicity generated by the Nazi Germany's eugenic policy. Nevertheless, by the 1960s, some 60,000 Americans were sterilized. Approximately one third of those sterilizations were performed in California alone.
=== After WWII ===
