Leilani Marietta Muir (born July 15, 1944, in Calgary

Calgary

Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

) was the first person to file a successful law suit against the province of Alberta, Canada for wrongful sterilization under the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta

Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta

In 1928, the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, Canada, enacted the Sexual Sterilization Act. The Act, drafted to protect the gene pool, allowed for sterilization of mentally disabled persons in order to prevent the transmission of undesirable traits to offspring.At that time, eugenicists argued that...

. Her case led to the initiation of several other class action suits against the province for wrongful sterilization.

Early life

As Muir grew up, her mother tried to find ways to remove her from the family. When she was eight, the mother placed her in the Midnapore Convent for a month. Then, in 1953, she sent an application for Muir to attend the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives (also known as the Michener Center) in Red Deer, Alberta

Red Deer, Alberta

Red Deer is a city in Central Alberta, Canada. It is located near the midpoint of the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor and is surrounded by Red Deer County. It is Alberta's third-most-populous city – after Calgary and Edmonton. The city is located in aspen parkland, a region of rolling hills...

. At that time Muir was rejected due to a high volume of patients.

Shortly before her 11th birthday on July 12, 1955, Muir was accepted into the school solely on the basis of information provided by her mother, without any diagnostic testing. Before she could be accepted into PTS, the program required a signature from a guardian permitting the legal enforcement of compulsory sterilization

Compulsory sterilization

Compulsory sterilization also known as forced sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization...

. The mother used her then boyfriend’s (future husband’s) name, Harley Scorah, to agree to the sterilization of her daughter. Over the years, Muir saw her mother only intermittently until her departure from the school at the age of 20.

Background

Muir’s sterilization is part of a progression towards forced sterilization and eugenics that began in the 19th century.

In 1883, Francis Galton

Francis Galton

Sir Francis Galton /ˈfrɑːnsɪs ˈgɔːltn̩/ FRS , cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician...

, a cousin to Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

, coined the term eugenics

Eugenics

Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...

, but the concept had been around since the time of Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

. In essence, eugenics is a combination of Mendel's laws of genetics and Darwin’s theory of evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

. It was believed that many mental and behavioral traits were passed down from adults to their children. People considered inferior or damaging to the human race included criminals, psychotics, lazy people, social degenerates, morons, inter-mixed races

Multiracial

The terms multiracial and mixed-race describe people whose ancestries come from multiple races. Unlike the term biracial, which often is only used to refer to having parents or grandparents of two different races, the term multiracial may encompass biracial people but can also include people with...

 (African-Caucasian

Caucasian race

The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia , Central Asia and South Asia...

, Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

-Irish

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

-Ukrainian

Ukrainians

Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...

 etc.), immigrants, Catholics, alcoholics, First Nations

First Nations

First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...

 people, epileptics, unwed mothers, many poor people and others. Such were believed unfit to breed as they "polluted" the human gene pool.

Eugenics has been attempted in many countries in many ways, including practising sterilization, castration

Castration

Castration is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which a male loses the functions of the testicles or a female loses the functions of the ovaries.-Humans:...

 and homicide

Homicide

Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...

 on "defectives." By 1907, the first eugenic sterilization law was enacted in the United States and in 1910 a Eugenics Committee of the American Breeders Association (ABA) and the Eugenics Records Office had been established. Both affiliations were largely influenced by Charles Davenport

Charles Davenport

Charles Benedict Davenport was a prominent American eugenicist and biologist. He was one of the leaders of the American eugenics movement, which was directly involved in the sterilization of around 60,000 "unfit" Americans and strongly influenced the Holocaust in Europe.- Biography :Davenport was...

 and Harry Laughlin, but both were headed by Davenport himself.

The idea of eugenics greatly influenced Hitler and after he became German chancellor in 1933, he gathered information from both Canada and the United States about the sterilization procedure. He then aggressively applied methods of eugenics to anyone whom he deemed to be a degenerate, especially Jews

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

. After Hitler's excesses were revealed after World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, support for eugenics and utilization of sterilization began to die down in the United States and Britain.

However, in Alberta, Canada, forced sterilizations continued. The western provinces of British Columbia

British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

, Alberta and Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....

 were all influenced by theories of eugenics, but it was only in Alberta that a sterilization act had been vigorously implemented. About 2,832 adults and children were sterilized in Alberta between the passing of the Sexual Sterilization Act in 1928 and its repeal in 1972. One of the main advocates for sterilization who helped pass the Sexual Sterilization Act was the first female magistrate of the British Empire

British Empire

The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...

, Emily Murphy

Emily Murphy

Emily Murphy was a Canadian women's rights activist, jurist, and author. In 1916, she became the first woman magistrate in Canada, and in the British Empire...

. Under her influence, many Albertans, especially farmers who saw first hand what selective breeding

Selective breeding

Selective breeding is the process of breeding plants and animals for particular genetic traits. Typically, strains that are selectively bred are domesticated, and the breeding is sometimes done by a professional breeder. Bred animals are known as breeds, while bred plants are known as varieties,...

 can do in livestock

Livestock

Livestock refers to one or more domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to produce commodities such as food, fiber and labor. The term "livestock" as used in this article does not include poultry or farmed fish; however the inclusion of these, especially poultry, within the meaning...

, began to agree that eugenics was a positive thing. One of the people influenced by Emily Murphy’s opinions was the Provincial Minister of Agriculture and Health, George Hoadley. Hoadley convened the first meeting of the Alberta Eugenics Board

Alberta Eugenics Board

In 1928, the Province of Alberta, Canada, passed legislation that enabled the government to perform involuntary sterilizations on individuals classified as mentally deficient. In order to implement the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta in 1928, a four-person Alberta Eugenics Board was created. ...

 a year after the Sexual Sterilization Act was passed. This board interviewed all people considered to be of inferior quality and either recommend sterilization or no sterilization, depending on the board's findings. The three members of this group elected John M. MacEachran

John M. MacEachran

John Malcolm MacEachran was a Canadian philosopher and psychologist, whose most notable credentials involved the development of the Psychology and Philosophy Department at the University of Alberta...

 as chairman, a position he had held from 1929 until his death in 1965. MacEachran was a huge figure in promoting the continued sterilization of people who were considered to be degenerates in Alberta. Although all of the members of the Eugenics Board were collectively responsible for implementing most of the authorizations of sterilizations, MacEachran was present for every signed authorization of sterilization performed in Alberta.

The sterilization of Leilani Muir

Muir had been at the Provincial Training Center for two years and four months when she underwent an intelligence quotient exam. Low IQ was a major qualification for sterilization. Since Muir had never had her IQ tested, she was brought to the Calgary Guidance Clinic to take an IQ test. She scored an overall mark of 64. The Eugenics Board found the IQ test more than sufficient grounds for sterilizing, as an IQ score lower than 70 is considered degraded intelligence. After her meeting with members of the Eugenics Board, Muir was given the formal label of "Mental Defective Moron." Although she was not told at the time, the board ordered that she be sterilized on the basis of her IQ score, her Irish-Polish background, her Catholic religion, her presumed inability to raise children properly and the fact that she had shown definite interest in the opposite sex

Opposite sex

Opposite sex may refer to:* A phrase used in the discussion of gender* The Opposite Sex, a 1956 musical film* The Opposite of Sex, a 1998 film** The Opposite of Sex , a 2004 musical based on the screenplay to the 1998 film...

.

On January 19, 1959, at the age of 14, doctors performed a bilateral salpingectomy

Salpingectomy

Salpingectomy refers to the surgical removal of a Fallopian tube.-Indications:The procedure was first performed by Lawson Tait in patients with a bleeding ectopic pregnancy; this procedure has since saved the lives of countless women...

 (the destruction of the fallopian tubes) on Muir. She had been told that she was undergoing surgery to have her appendix removed. Although the doctors did remove her appendix, Muir was not informed that her appendectomy was to be accompanied by sterilization. She did not find out until almost a decade

Decade

A decade is a period of 10 years. The word is derived from the Ancient Greek dekas which means ten. This etymology is sometime confused with the Latin decas and dies , which is not correct....

 later why she could not bear children.

The case

When Muir was 20, her mother showed up at the PTS asking to take her daughter to dinner. In fact, once outside the PTS, the mother set Muir an ultimatum: either leave with her that night and serve as her babysitter or be left to live out the rest of her life at The Provincial Training School. With little choice, Muir chose to go with her mother and departed the PTS without authorization.

Over the next ten years, Muir experienced greater independence, worked as a waitress, baby-sat and had two marriages. During her first marriage, she found out she could not have children. After years of trying to conceive and batteries of tests, a doctor informed Muir that she had been intentionally sterilized. Over the years, she had tried to adopt, but was denied because of the stigma of her being an ex-inmate at PTS.

During her second marriage, Muir became highly depressed

Clinical depression

Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...

 and sought professional help in 1989 while living in British Columbia. While trying to determine if she would be a good prospect for group therapy

Group therapy

Group psychotherapy or group therapy is a form of psychotherapy in which one or more therapists treat a small group of clients together as a group...

, Muir took another IQ test and scored 89. This mark surprised the doctor who administered the test, George Kurbatoff, who knew her background.

Not long after her recent IQ exam had proved that she was of normal intelligence and should never have been sterilized, Muir sought to sue the Alberta government for wrongful sterilization. Her case came to trial on June 12, 1995 with the Honorable Madame Joanne B. Viet presiding. After over six months of testimonials and hearing the life of Leilani Muir, Viet came to a decision. On January 25, 1996, Viet ruled in favor of Muir and awarded damages to her in the amount of $740,780 with an additional sum of $230,000 for legal costs. Viet proclaimed that "the province wrongfully surgically sterilized Ms. Muir" and the "particular type of confinement of which Ms. Muir was a victim, resulted in many travesties to her young person: loss of liberty

Liberty

Liberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...

, loss of reputation

Reputation

Reputation of a social entity is an opinion about that entity, typically a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria...

, humiliation and disgrace, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of normal developmental experiences, loss of civil rights

Civil rights

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

, loss of contact with family and friends [and] subjection to institutional discipline."

Since Muir’s case, about 700 other people who were sterilized under the Sexual Sterilization Act were awarded damages in a class action suit against the government of Alberta for wrongful sterilization.

In 1996, a film was released about Muir's life called The Sterilization of Leilani Muir. It was produced by the North West Center, National Film Board of Canada

National Film Board of Canada

The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...

 and shot in Montreal, Canada.

Muir Today

Leilani Muir currently resides in rural Alberta with her three cats and Shih Tzu

Shih Tzu

The Shih Tzu is a breed of dog weighing with long silky hair. The breed originated in China and is among the earliest breeds. Shih Tzu were officially recognized by the American Kennel Club in 1969...

. She works part-time in the food industry and enjoys spending her free time with family, friends, pets and wild animals. Muir is also in the process of writing an autobiography

Autobiography

An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

.

Resources

• Buchanan, E. “Playing God with People’s Lives”. 1997. Genesis of Eden Diversity Encyclopedia http://www.dhushara.com/book/genes/ster.htm
• Wahlsten, D. “Leilani Muir versus the Philosopher King: Eugenics on trial in Alberta”. 1997. Genetica 99:185-198. Kluwer Academic Publishers: Netherlands
• Veit, J. (1996) Muir v. The Queen in Right of Alberta. Dominion Law Reports, 132(4th series): 695-762.
• www.eugenicsarchive.org