Eugenics in Canada

Emily Murphy (born Emily Gowan Ferguson; 1868 –1933) 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. She is best known for her contributions to Canadian feminism, specifically to the question of whether women were "persons" under Canadian law.
During the early twentieth century, scientific knowledge emerged in the forefront of social importance. Advances in science and technology were thought to hold answers to current and future social problems. Murphy was among those who thought that the problems that were plaguing their society, such as alcoholism, drug abuse and crime were caused because of mental deficiencies. In a 1932 article titled “ Overpopulation and Birth Control”, she states: "... over-population [is a] basic problem of all…none of our troubles can even be allayed until this is remedied."
Her argument was that: if there was population control, people would not need as much land. Without the constant need for more land, war would cease to exist. Her solution to these social issues was eugenics. Selective breeding was considered a progressive scientific and social approach and Murphy supported the compulsory sterilization of those individuals who were considered mentally deficient. She believed that the mentally and socially inferior reproduced more than the “human thoroughbreds” and appealed to the Alberta Legislative Assembly for eugenic sterilization. In a petition, she wrote that mentally defective children were, “a menace to society and an enormous cost to the state…science is proving that mental defectiveness is a transmittable hereditary condition.”
She wrote to Minister of Agriculture and Health, George Hoadley that two female “feeble-minded” mental patients already bred several offspring. She called it: “a neglect amounting to a crime to permit these two women to go on bearing children. They are both young women and likely to have numerous offspring before leaving the hospital”. Due in part to her heavy advocacy of compulsory sterilization, thousands of Albertans, who were not considered to possess any intelligence, were unknowingly sterilized under the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta before its repeal in 1972.