19. Document Projects for Exploring American Histories, Document Project 19: Progressivism and Social Control

**Quiz for Document 19.3: Indiana Sterilization Law (1907)**

Quiz for Document 19.3: Indiana Sterilization Law (1907)

Select the best answer for each question. Click the “submit” button for each question to turn in your work.

1. Who could be lawfully sterilized in Indiana in 1907?

A criminal inmate with a history of violent crime

A serial rapist who had shown an improved criminal disposition

A mentally retarded inmate whose mental faculties were progressively worsening

A man who had killed his wife in an instance of blind rage

2. Under this law, who had the authority to decide whether an individual should be subject to sterilization?

The person in question

The person’s parents

A committee of physicians and managers

The state legislature

3. The creators of this law made the assumption that a person who engaged in criminal activity did so for what reasons?

His or her parents had passed on criminal genes.

His or her parents had raised them poorly and without morals.

He or she had been poorly educated in underfunded public schools.

The criminal had been shaped by social and economic structures beyond the criminal’s control.

Thinking through Sources forExploring American Histories, Volume 2Printed Page 149