It’s been suggested that “cruel and unusual” is actually an old-fashioned rhetorical usage of the form “X and Y” to mean “Y in its X-ness”:
…consider “cruel and unusual.” These are often understood as two separate requirements: punishments are prohibited only if they are cruel and unusual. Yet this phrase can easily be read as a hendiadys in which the second term in effect modifies the first: “cruel and unusual” would mean “unusually cruel.” When this reading is combined with the work of Professor John Stinneford, which shows that “unusual” was used at the Founding as a term of art for “contrary to long usage,” it suggests that the Clause prohibits punishments that are innovatively cruel. In other words, the Clause is not a prohibition on punishments that merely happen to be both cruel and innovative. It is a prohibition on punishments that are innovative in their cruelty.
About 65,000 people in 33 states were subjected to surgery without their consent or sometimes even informing them.
My oldest surviving sister was in the pipeline to be sterilized as an infant due to suffering a febrile seizure (very common in premies, which she also was, and also something that kids usually outgrow). My parents managed to prevent that (I never asked for details). It might have been because she only suffered one seizure. If she had suffered multiple ones it wouldn’t have mattered what my parents did or didn’t want, she would have been operated on as an infant.
This took place in Missouri where forced sterilization explicitly started with criminals then proceeded to include other groups labeled “undesirable”. Which is why I said people used to be sterilized for the “crime” of being disabled or epileptic.
My late husband was, in fact, sterilized as a child - when exactly is unknown because neither he nor his parents were informed or asked for permission. He found out in his 20’s during a medical exam when the doctor asked him why it had been done in such a young man which, needless to say, was a pretty upsetting way to find out you’ll never have any children ever. That took place in Illinois (probably - there is a very small chance it occurred in Virginia where he was born, but his grandfather intervened to have him go to Chicago where there was much better medical care. Meanwhile, back in his home town at least one person volunteered to drown the “cripple baby” to save the parents the pain of doing it themselves.)
As noted - the justification for all of this was that the person was either disabled or epileptic. These laws almost always started by targeting criminals then expanding to the disabled/epileptic to prevent crime and/or more defective people (whether or not the problem was hereditary). These operations could and were done over the objections of parents/guardians, sometimes without informing parents/guardians/patients of the operation (which was done along with other operations - during one of the many operations that were actually necessary to treat my husband’s medical conditions the surgeon made a detour), and in adult patients newly diagnosed it was also done against their will. The “justification” was to prevent defective genes being passed on but it was frequently ignored and performed in cases with absolutely no genetic basis.
It had nothing to do with “treating” anything.
You don’t get 65,000 sterilized people without substantial buy in by quite a few doctors.
This continued in the US through the 1960’s (hence, my personal knowledge of people affected by these laws).
In fact, the Nazis were inspired by eugenics in the US in the early part of the 20th Century - we know this because they explicitly wrote about taking inspiration from these programs.
So I don’t doubt we can find a bunch of doctors willing to castrate sex offenders if we care to look.
No, the reason it’s nearly impossible to find a doctor to participate in executions is that in all states they’ll lose their medical license and be barred from ever practicing medicine ever again.
Well, you snipped my post to clip out the part I was asking for a cite for. Obviously, I wasn’t doubting that doctors mistreated patients because of their poor understanding of medicine and mental illness, nor that they didn’t give much of a crap about educating themselves.
Here’s what you snipped from my post, which of course you did not cite:
Right! Which is what I said:
A doctor who performed an execution wouldn’t have his medical license suddenly crumple to ash in his hands or turn back into a pumpkin. He would be stripped of his medical license by a board of other doctors. Which is exactly what I would expect those same doctors to do to a doctor who performed physical castrations as punishment.
OK, if you were using a creative turn of phrase to describe eugenics, then yes, I agree, eugenics is terrible and disgusting, and the doctors who participated in it were evil.
I’d think a doctor practicing eugenics today would lose his license, just like a doctor who participates in an execution or a forced castration.
And YOU conveniently clipped my post where I pointed out that first-half 20th Century laws had NOTHING to do with “treatment”, where never promoted as “treatment”, never described as “treatment”.
I do not agree that a doctor who participated in a court-ordered forced castration would automatically lose his license. That would be a matter for the courts. That is different than the question of participating in executions, which is so far as I can tell a settled matter.
Like I said, if you meant eugenics, I agree. I just didn’t get “eugenics” from your phrasing there.
…what are you talking about?
It obviously is not a legal issue decided by the courts. The state isn’t going to say “we want execution to be medical, but we want to forbid doctors from participating in executions”.
The reason that doctors don’t participate in executions has nothing to do with courts or the law.
Rather, the American Board of Medical Specialties - a collection of dcotors - agreed that they want their profession to have nothing to do with executions.
This is the body that revokes the license of doctors who violate medical standards, including participating in executions.
I would imagine it should mean “or” because otherwise it would be a tautology; anytime a cruel punishment becomes standard it would no longer be “unusual.”
If all 50 states adopted a punishment," Anyone who commits theft should have his hands and arms slowly sliced off in small pieces by a saw", then the prosecution could argue that it’s not “unusual” since it’s nationwide. It would still be cruel, though.
It was my understanding decades ago when this began being practiced that it was a choice given to the convicted felon: stay incarcerated for a much longer period or become castrated. If the convict is given the choice not sure it can be considered unconstitutional.
I’m unsure if the situations have changed and that castration has become the sentence with no choice by the convict. So I’m not going to weigh in on that.
Incarcerated people can be freed, unjustly fined people can be restituted, but to my knowledge, medical science has discovered no method of reversing a physical castration.