Wesley Smith e-mails:

To be precise, Holmes authored the pro-eugenics 8-1 decision of Buck v. Bell, a case that is equal in infamy to Dred Scott. In Buck v. Bell, an innocent woman named Carrie Buck was permitted by her own government to be involuntarily sterilized because she was the daughter of a prostitute who gave birth out of wedlock, probably after being raped by a foster relative. Holmes, the great “liberal” wrote, “Three generations of idiots is enough,” in the opinion that resulted in more than 60,000 sterilizations in this country. People forget that eugenics was a progressive cause. Not only did Margaret Sanger support it, but so did T.R., Clarence Darrow, and, hard as it is to believe, Helen Keller. (I guess she thought she was exempt since her disability resulted from an illness.) Holmes epitomized the thinking of the “betters” in society of that era.