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== Context ==

Birth control and race suicide were already topics of public concern when, in the 1890s, Dr. Harry Sharp performed the first vasectomy in the United States at the Indiana State Reformatory (the salpingectomy had already been in practice in Europe for about a decade). Between 1899 and 1907, Sharp carried out some 200-800 male inmates at various institutions in Indiana.<Paul Julius,“‘Three Generations of Imbeciles Are Enough’: State Eugenic Sterilization Laws in American Thought and Practice,” Unpublished manuscript, Washington, D.C.: Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, 1965.</ref> While Sharpe believed the vasectomy could help cure degeneracy—especially excessive masturbation—proponents of the early eugenics movement recognized that his medical advancement opened the door for practical compulsory sterilization.