In this petition, presented to a Charlottesville court on January 23, 1924, John and Alice Dobbs petition to have their foster daughter, Carrie Buck, committed to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded in Madison Heights, near Lynchburg. Buck was pregnant with a child who was, according to Buck, the product of a rape committed by Alice Dobbs’s nephew. After Buck’s commitment, the colony ordered her sterilized, and that order was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell (1927).
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