STERILIZATION. — This is a surgical procedure on the reproductive system, whether male or female, intended to prevent the formation or the natural utilization of the sexual elements. Sterilization does not aim at the total destruction of the sexual glands, and is therefore distinguished from castration, which, by also affecting the portions possessing the value of endocrine glands, leads not only to the loss of the power of procreation, but also to that of the secondary sexual characteristics and to serious general alterations of the entire organism.
Sterilization, particularly when brought about by surgical means, may in general be regarded as reversible, albeit with difficulty and with uncertain results; it therefore cannot be considered, in an absolute sense, a definitive impediment to procreation.
The procedure may be of two kinds: 1) selective action on the germinal epithelia, so as to destroy the spermatogenic and ovogenetic activity of the respective sexual glands; 2) destruction of the patency of the ducts conveying the reproductive elements, in order to prevent their meeting. The first kind includes carefully measured irradiation of the specific sexual glands with X-rays; in women another method consists (tested particularly in America on animals and in Russia also on women) in obtaining a sort of immunizing vaccination against male semen through repeated intramuscular injections of it; thus, up to 8–10 months of sterility are obtained after each treatment. The second kind includes vasectomy or deferentectomy in men and ocofo-rectomy (fallectomy, tubectomy, salpingectomy) in women, which consists in cutting and removing a section of the ducts along which the sexual elements are conveyed. In men these are relatively minor operations, although complications of considerable gravity are not entirely excluded. In women, for whom a laparotomic operation is necessary, the extent and seriousness are greater.
Sterilization is imposed by law in various countries, as a eugenic measure or as a judicial punishment. In particular, in America it had existed as a legal measure since 1907 in the State of Indiana; approximately twenty States of the Union subsequently adopted legal and eugenic sterilization. The conditions vary; thus, for example, in California (where sterilization has been imposed since 1912), anyone who has committed the crime of rape or seduction of a person at least twice, or other classes of crimes three times, may be subjected to legal sterilization, as may a person sentenced to life imprisonment if sexually and morally depraved, or anyone who has raped a child under ten years of age; to these categories must be added idiots and certain other mentally ill persons, upon the proposal of the director of the institution in which they are interned. Besides California, the States at the forefront in applying the law are Kansas and Oregon. Laughlin, of the Eugenics Record Office, would like no fewer than 100,000 mentally deficient persons to be sterilized each year, until a total of 15 million individuals had been reached; only in this way, in his view, could one hope for a satisfactory purification of the American people. In the 28 North American States in which sterilization is permitted by law, more than 1,500 procedures were performed in 1950 alone, while since the enactment of the law more than 21,000 men and approximately 31,000 women (a total of 52,233 individuals) had undergone it (data from the «Human Betterment Foundation of California»).
Legal sterilization was imposed in Germany by the law of 14 July 1933 on all individuals affected by a hereditary disorder (congenital intellectual debility, schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, hereditary epilepsy, hereditary chorea, hereditary blindness, hereditary deafness, serious hereditary physical malformations) or by severe alcoholism, upon request by the person concerned, coercively, or following a report by the official physician or by the director of the hospital, sanatorium, shelter, or penitentiary. By 1935, 16,000 sterilizations had already been performed. The events of the war effectively brought the aforementioned law to an end. Switzerland had for many years practiced compulsory sterilization by law in certain Cantons, such as those of Zurich and Vaud (law of 3 September 1928). In Finland, where a law authorizing state-funded sterilization of the mentally abnormal had already existed since June 1929, a set of three laws was recently promulgated, legalizing abortion, sterilization, and castration respectively, even imposing the latter two procedures in certain circumstances (carriers of physical and mental defects, sexual abnormals). In Denmark, a law has existed since 1929 permitting voluntary sterilization for those who might produce defective offspring; for the mentally ill, the decision is made by the legal guardian. Sterilization has also been legalized in Japan (approximately 11,500 procedures were performed there in 1950) and is in the process of being legalized in other countries.
THE MORAL PROBLEM. - From the moral standpoint, s. is gravely illicit mutilation (v.) that deprives
the individual of the natural right to procreation and renders him doubtfully capable of contracting a valid marriage. Nor may it be imposed by the State through legislation, since the State cannot possess over the person of the citizen powers superior to those which the citizen possesses over himself (cf. encyc. Casti connibii: AAS, 22 [1930], p. 565). Man, in fact, « may dispose of individual parts in order to destroy or mutilate them, whenever and to the extent required for the good of the being as a whole, to secure its existence, or to avoid, and naturally to repair, serious and lasting injuries which otherwise could neither be removed nor repaired »; moreover, « man in his personal being is not ultimately ordered to the utility of society, but, on the contrary, the community is made for man «: address of Pius XII to the participants in the First International Congress of Histopathology of the Nervous System, 14 Sept. 1952 (AAS, 44 [1952], p. 786); cf. also the address, L'apostolato delle ostetriche, of 29 Sept. 1951 (ibid., 43 [1951], pp. 843-44).
The fact that s. affects only a minimal material part of the organ is irrelevant; the criterion for judging the gravity of the mutilation is in fact the importance of the vital function impaired, which in this case is extremely serious. Likewise, the fact that someone has bound himself to perpetual chastity does not remove the malice of s., which derives from man’s usurpation of a property right over the members of his own or another’s body; a right belonging to God alone. For the same reason, s. performed for the purpose of preventing harmful effects upon offspring (eugenic purposes) is illicit. Even if the eugenic reasons recommending it were entirely well founded and scientifically certain, the intrinsic illicitness of the act would always remain, because it violates a natural right of man, the right to dispose of his own genetic capacity. The harmful effects of hereditary diseases must be reduced only by licit means. S. is licit only within the limits of the liceity of mutilation, that is, if it is necessary for the health of the body (for a part may indeed be sacrificed to the whole) and the patient consents. Pure criminality, however, cannot be placed on the same level as illness, treating it as a form of disease. Illness is a physical phenomenon by 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 ought to act; it is therefore an evil dependent upon a vicious orientation of the will and cannot be corrected by violence (coercive s.).
The question presents itself in another way if one asks whether it is licit to apply s. as a punishment. Here the answer may be affirmative if two conditions are met: a) that the punishment be applied to a man actually guilty of a serious crime. But physical or mental illness (dementia, idiocy, etc.) is not a crime and therefore is not subject to punishment, which in this case would be s.; b) that the punishment be good from the standpoint of criminal law, that is, that it serve to attain the purposes proposed by criminal law (restoration of public order, reformation of the delinquent). From this standpoint, however, s. does not appear to be an effective means toward the purposes indicated, insofar as it does not involve deprivation of a valued good; indeed, for many who are embarked upon vice, it may constitute liberation from possible burdens of offspring.
Two decrees of the Holy Office (21 March 1931 and 21 Feb. 1940: AAS, 23 [1931], pp. 118-121; 32 [1940], p. 73), in response to the question whether s., permanent or temporary, in man or woman, is licit, answer negatively, declaring it, even when motivated by eugenic considerations, prohibited by the natural law.
Regarding the question whether sterilized persons are to be considered affected by marriage (v.), the majority of theologians (among them also Cardinal P. Gasparri in Tract. can. de Matrimonio, I, Appendix, Città del Vaticano 1932, pp. 467-71) consider them so; since the question is disputed by others (v. VERMEERSCH, ARTHUR, Theologia moralis, t. IV, Roma 1933, p. 45), if it is possible that the damage suffered may be repaired by a subsequent operation (provided, however, that this does not expose the person to danger of death or serious harm to health), marriage may be permitted to sterilized persons. The Sacred Roman Rota, however, in one of its judgments (25 Oct. 1945)
declared the marriage of a sterilized person invalid. S. undergone after marriage does not prohibit its use.
Giuseppe de Ninno-Pietro Palazzini