Leilani Muir
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2009) |
Leilani Marietta Muir (previously named Leilani Marie Scorah) (born July 15, 1944, in Calgary) 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. Her case led to the initiation of several other class action suits against the province for wrongful sterilization.
Contents |
[edit] 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. 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. 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.
[edit] Background
Muir’s sterilization is part of a progression towards forced sterilization and eugenics that began in the 19th century.
In 1883, Francis Galton, a cousin to Charles Darwin, coined the term eugenics, but the concept had been around since the time of Plato. In essence, eugenics is a combination of Mendel's laws of genetics and Darwin’s theory of evolution. 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 (African-Caucasian, Italian-Irish, Polish-Ukrainian etc.), immigrants, Catholics, alcoholics, First Nations 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 and homicide 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 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. After Hitler's excesses were revealed after World War II, 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, Alberta and Saskatchewan 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, Emily Murphy. Under her influence, many Albertans, especially farmers who saw first hand what selective breeding can do in livestock, 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 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 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.
[edit] 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.
On January 19, 1959, doctors performed a bilateral salpingectomy 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 would not find out until almost a decade later why she could not bear children.
[edit] 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 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, 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, loss of reputation, humiliation and disgrace, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of normal developmental experiences, loss of civil rights, 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 and shot in Montreal, Canada.
[edit] Muir Today
Leilani Muir currently resides in rural Alberta with her three cats and Shih Tzu. 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.
[edit] Resources
- Buchanan, E. “Playing God with People’s Lives”. 1997. Genesis of Eden Diversity Encyclopedia [1]
- 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
