STERILIZATION. — Sterilization is a surgical intervention on the reproductive system, whether male or female, aimed at preventing the formation or natural utilization of sexual elements. Sterilization does not seek the total destruction of the sexual glands, and thus differs from castration, which, by affecting portions of the glands with endocrine value, leads not only to the loss of the ability to procreate but also to the loss of secondary sexual characteristics and severe general alterations of the entire organism.
Sterilization, particularly when induced by surgical means, may generally be considered reparable, albeit with difficulty and uncertain outcome, and thus cannot be regarded in an absolute sense as a definitive impediment to procreation.
The intervention may be of two kinds: 1) selective action on the germinal epithelia, thereby destroying the spermatogenic and ovogenic activity of the respective sexual glands; 2) destruction of the viability of the ducts conveying the reproductive elements, so as to prevent their meeting. The first kind includes well-dosed irradiation of the specific sexual glands with X-rays; in women, another method (particularly experimented in America on animals and in Russia also on women) is to induce a kind of immunizing vaccination against male semen through repeated intramuscular injections of it; this yields up to 8–10 months of sterility after each treatment. The second kind includes vasectomy or deferentectomy in men and oviductectomy (salpingectomy) in women, which consists in cutting and removing a section of the ducts along which the sexual elements travel. In men, these are minor operations, though not without occasional complications of considerable gravity. In women, where a laparotomic intervention is necessary, the magnitude and gravity are greater.
Sterilization is imposed by law in various countries as an eugenic measure or as a judicial penalty. In particular, in America, it has existed as a legal measure since 1907 in the State of Indiana; about twenty States of the Union have subsequently adopted legal and eugenic sterilization. The conditions vary; for example, in California (where sterilization has been mandated since 1912), those subject to legal sterilization may include individuals convicted at least twice of crimes involving violation or seduction of a person, or three times of other classes of crimes, or those sentenced to life imprisonment if found to be sexual or moral degenerates, or violators of minors under ten years of age; to these categories must be added idiots and certain other mentally infirm persons, upon the proposal of the director of the institution in which they are confined. States at the forefront of the application of the law, in addition to California, include Kansas and Oregon. Laughlin of the "Eugenics Record Office" advocated the sterilization of no fewer than 100,000 handicapped individuals annually, aiming to reach 15 million, as the only means, in his view, to achieve a satisfactory purification of the American people. In the 28 North American States where sterilization is legally permitted, over 1,500 cases were performed in 1950 alone, while since the enactment of the law, more than 21,000 men and about 31,000 women (a total of 52,233 individuals) have undergone it (data from the "Human Betterment Foundation of California").
Legal sterilization was imposed in Germany by the law of July 14, 1933, for all individuals suffering from hereditary afflictions (congenital intellectual deficiency, schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, hereditary epilepsy, hereditary chorea, hereditary blindness, hereditary deafness, severe hereditary physical malformations) or severe alcoholism, upon the request of the interested party or coercively, or upon denunciation by an official physician or the director of a hospital, sanatorium, asylum, or penitentiary. By 1935, 16,000 sterilizations had already been performed. The war events effectively brought an end to the aforementioned law. Switzerland has practiced coercive sterilization by law in some cantons for many years, such as in Zurich and Vaud (law of September 3, 1928). In Finland, where a law authorizing the sterilization of the mentally abnormal at the State's expense existed since June 1929, a set of three laws has recently been promulgated legalizing abortion, sterilization, and castration, even imposing these last two interventions under certain circumstances (transmitters of physical and mental defects, sexual deviants). In Denmark, a law since 1929 permits voluntary sterilization for those who might produce defective offspring; for the mentally ill, the decision is made by the legal guardian. Sterilization is also legalized in Japan (about 11,500 cases were performed in 1950) and is in the process of being legalized in other countries.
THE MORAL PROBLEM. — Morally, sterilization is gravely illicit as a serious mutilation (q.v.) that deprives the individual of the natural right to procreation and renders him or her incapable of contracting a valid marriage. Nor can it be imposed by law by the State, since the State cannot possess over the person of the citizen powers greater than those the citizen possesses over himself (cf. encyclical *Casti connubii*: AAS, 22 [1930], p. 565). Man, in fact, cannot dispose of individual parts to destroy or mutilate them when and to the extent required for the good of the being as a whole, to ensure its existence, or to avoid, and naturally to repair, grave and lasting damages that otherwise could not be averted or repaired; moreover, man in his personal being is not ultimately ordered to the utility of society, but, on the contrary, the community exists for man. Address by Pius XII to participants in the International Congress of Histologists of the Nervous System, September 14, 1952 (AAS, 44 [1952], p. 786); cf. also the address, *The Apostolate of Midwives*, September 29, 1951 (ibid., 43 [1951], pp. 843–44).
The fact that sterilization affects only a minimal material part of the organ is irrelevant; the criterion for judging the gravity of the mutilation is indeed the importance of the vital function impaired, which in this case is extremely grave. Likewise, the fact that one has bound oneself to perpetual chastity does not remove the malice of sterilization, which arises from the usurpation by man of a right of ownership over the members of his or her own or another’s body; a right that belongs to God alone. For the same reason, sterilization performed to prevent harmful effects in offspring (eugenic purposes) is not licit. Even if the eugenic motives that recommend it were most well-founded and scientifically certain, the intrinsic illicit nature of the act would remain due to the violation of a natural right of man, namely the right to dispose of his own generative capacity. The harmful effects of hereditary diseases must be reduced only by licit means.
Sterilization is licit only within the limits of the liceity of mutilation, that is, if it is necessary for the health of the body (for the part may indeed be sacrificed for the whole) and with the consent of the patient. However, one cannot equate pure criminality with disease, considering it a form of illness. Disease is a physical phenomenon in which the organism is not as it should be; pure criminality is the action or series of actions of one who does not act as he should; it is therefore an evil dependent on a vicious orientation of the will and cannot be corrected by violence (coercive sterilization).
The question presents itself in a different light if one asks whether it is permissible to apply sterilization as a penalty. Here the answer may be affirmative, provided two conditions are met: a) that the penalty be applied to a man who is truly guilty of a grave crime. But physical or mental illness (dementia, idiocy, etc.) is not a crime and therefore is not liable to punishment, which in this case would be sterilization; b) that the penalty be just from the standpoint of penal law, i.e., that it serve to achieve the ends proposed by penal law (restoration of public order, amendment of the offender). From this standpoint, sterilization does not appear as an effective means to the indicated ends, since it does not involve the deprivation of a good held in esteem; indeed, for many inclined to vice, it may constitute a release from the burdens of progeny.
Two decrees of the Holy Office (21 March 1931 and 21 Feb. 1940: AAS, 23 [1931], pp. 118-19; 32 [1940], p. 73) to the question whether sterilization, whether perpetual or temporary, in man or in woman, is licit, reply in the negative, declaring it prohibited by natural law, even when motivated by eugenics.
With regard to the question whether those who have been sterilized are to be considered as affected by impotence and therefore excluded from marriage (v.), the majority of theologians (among them Cardinal P. Gasparri in *Tract. can. de Matrimonio*, I, Appendix, Vatican City 1932, pp. 467-71) consider them as such; though the question is disputed by others (v. VERMEERSCH, ARTHUR, *Theologia moralis*, vol. IV, Rome 1933, p. 45), in the possibility that the damage suffered may be repaired by a subsequent operation (provided, however, that this does not expose the person to danger of life or serious harm to health), marriage may be granted to the sterilized. The Sacred Roman Rota, however, in a sentence of 25 Oct. 1945, declared the marriage of a sterilized man invalid. Sterilization undergone after marriage does not prohibit its use.