Bioethics Seminar | Eugenic sterilisation in New Zealand: The Mental Defectives Amendment Act of 1928
Presented by Professor Hamish Spencer, Department of Zoology
In spite of New Zealand's reputation for being a social laboratory, the country was apparently ambivalent about embracing eugenics, notably never enacting an explicitly eugenic sterilisation law.
Nevertheless, the 1928 Mental Defectives Amendment Bill originally contained a clause providing for sterilisation on eugenic grounds.
I outline the history of the drafting of this clause and its subsequent failure to gain parliamentary approval, before suggesting possible reasons for this course of events.
I note that this narrative must also explain how close the sterilisation clause came to being enacted.
This closeness illustrates a general point, that the passage or failure of sterilisation legislation is an oversimplifying dichotomous view of different countries' eugenic histories.
