Two-and-a-half years later, the case will be heard by the Supreme Court, which will rule in favor of Dr. John Bell, superintendent of the Virginia Colony. In the 8-1 decision, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes will conclude that “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
The colony will be permitted to sterilize Carrie.
The procedure, performed by Dr. Bell and assisted by nurse Roxie Berry, takes place the morning of October 19, 1927 at the Halsey-Jennings Building, a two-story, red-brick structure on colony grounds.
It lasts an hour. According to clinical notes, “One inch was removed from each Fallopian tube, the tubes ligated and the ends cauterized by cerbolic acid followed by alcohol.” Carrie’s recovery is “uneventful,” the notes say.
When paroled four months later, Carrie is in “good health.” In January of 1929, she will be fully discharged “as improved.”
When asked about the operation near the end of her life, Carrie will say that she didn’t want it and “kicked against it.”
The clinic will lose touch with Carrie Buck. Buck v. Bell will prove an important ruling, paving the way for 8,000 state-mandated sterilizations in Virginia and more than 60,000 across the United States. Decades later, the ruling and its aftermath will become a source of national shame. By that time, no one will remember the woman at the center of it, the woman sitting uncomfortably in front of Arthur Estabrook right now.