Eugenics Move Aided by European Nations

1918

Commission in Scandinavian Countries Seek Common Laws Governing Marriages

[Associated Press Correspondence]

COPENHAGEN, Nov. 22. — Eugenics has been taken up as a study by a government commission composed of prominent jurists representing Denmark, Norway and Sweden with the object of introducing a mutual law regulating marriages and family rights. The Scandinavian countries are thus following the example of several American states in taking up the question of restricting the marriage of those who are physically or morally defective.

The commission, however, has not gone so far as was desired by the Danish, namely demanding that people intending to marry in all cases should give certificates to the effect that they were not suffering from any disease of such a kind that marriage ought not to be entered into.

Sweden would not go so far, its representatives asserting that this would be too great a personal and economical demand to make; and it was argued that it would lend to increase the already existing reluctance to enter into matrimony.

The commission thereupon agreed to demand that all insane and mentally defective persons, as well as those suffering from certain sexual diseases and epilepsy, may not marry unless the other party has been notified of the condition existing.

—The Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis, November 23, 1913, page 7.