A new podcast released this week documents the story of one of the more than 250 people who were sterilized in Vermont under a state law aimed at preventing certain people from having children.
Ivor Devino was a musician who played the guitar and sang in Rutland and had a weekly radio show. He was also blind, and suffered from seizures. The documentary raises the possibility that he had syphilis, contracted from his mother.
In 1938, Devino traveled from Brandon to a Burlington hospital for a relatively new surgery at the time: a vasectomy. That’s after he, his uncle, and several doctors signed a document saying “the public welfare will be improved if such person is sterilized." The procedure followed a 1931 state law allowing for “voluntary sterilization.”
The story grapples with the murkiness of how the law was used: It allowed for access to a form of birth control when contraception was not widely available. It also enabled medical professionals to coerce patients into getting surgeries they might not have wanted, during a time when the debunked theory of eugenics was still mainstream — the belief that "degeneracy" could be inherited.
“When all of these sterilizations are supposedly voluntary, it’s really complicated,” said Jules Lees, an educator from South Burlington and one of the creators of the documentary, along with Richard Witting, a researcher in Burlington.
They aired the podcast to a small crowd in Brandon’s town hall this weekend. The town was home to a school that served people with developmental disabilities, run by the state until the 1990s. Several people institutionalized there were sterilized under the 1931 law.
Relatives of Devino said they knew his story, but for others, it added a more personal understanding to the impact of the eugenics movement in the state.
“It was this well-intended, supposedly progressive movement that was supposed to do something positive for society, but was used very negatively to hurt a lot of people,” said Steven Thomas, of Brandon, who saw a sign for the event while walking his dog.
“Seeing the actual people that were harmed and their lives, and how that affected them, I was really interested in that.”
That’s what Witting, who researched sterilization records at the University of Vermont, was interested in too.
“How do you really know who it targeted, who it harmed, unless you actually get down to the individual level to see who they were?” he said.
Lees, who has taught the history of the eugenics movement in Vermont as a middle school teacher, wanted to make the stories of people like Devino more accessible.
“By focusing on those individuals, it really changed what I understood. And I felt like that was important to be out there for the public, for educators, for anyone who wants to learn about eugenics in Vermont,” she said.
They learned Devino’s life had a tragic end — a few years after the surgery and getting married, he died by suicide at the age of 24.
Lees and Witting are now working on a second episode, about women institutionalized in Rutland.
You can listen to the podcast here.
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