The British scientist Francis Galton coined the word in 1883. In the US, the Eugenics Record Office opened at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, in 1910 to collect family records and promote the cause. Indiana passed the first state sterilization law in 1907. In Buck v. Bell in 1927, the Supreme Court upheld Virginia's sterilization law by a vote of 8 to 1. More than 60,000 people were sterilized under state laws in the 20th century.
Eugenics also shaped immigration. The Immigration Act of 1924 set national quotas meant to limit people from Southern and Eastern Europe and barred most Asian immigrants. Nazi Germany studied US sterilization laws when it wrote its own in 1933.
Eugenics fell out of favor after World War II, but sterilization abuse continued for decades. Buck v. Bell has never been formally overturned. Disability rights advocates warn that eugenic thinking survives in policies that devalue disabled lives.