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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.<ref>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Generations of Imbeciles Are Enough’: State Eugenic Sterilization Laws in American Thought and Practice,” Unpublished manuscript, Washington, D.C.: Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, 1965.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.

=== First Sterilization Laws ===

In 1907, the State of Indiana passed what is recognized as the first eugenic sterilization law in the world. It articulated that heredity played an important role in the transmission of “crime, idiocy, and imbecility,” and allowed for the compulsory sterilization of those in state institutions who were considered “criminals,” “idiots,” “rapists,” and “imbeciles.” Several states followed suit and implemented their own sterilization laws. Sterilizations did occur under these early laws, but their numbers would pale in comparison to later years—in fact, Indiana temporarily halted sterilizations in 1909 after a change in leadership and funding concerns. Nevertheless, eugenicists tried to generate widespread support for compulsory sterilization in the 1910s by publishing degenerate family histories. Additionally, other sterilization proponents drafted Model Sterilization Laws that they hoped would survive the test of constitutionality. According to Paul Lombardo, by 1914, a total of “twelve states had enacted sterilization laws.”<ref>http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay8text.html.</ref>