Why you should never blindly follow the law, which is passed by people who have their own biases, interests, and insane notions.
New Jersey passed a law in April 1911 that, like other laws, called for the creation of a medical board to determine who should be sterilized.
“... hereby created the “Board of Examiners of Feeble-minded (including idiots, imbeciles, and morons), Epileptics and other Defectives,” whose duty it shall be to examine into the mental and physical condition of the feeble-minded, epileptic, certain criminals and other defective inmates...”
[Harry Hamilton Laughlin, DSc, Eugenical Sterilization in the United States, December 1922, Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago, p. 24.]
[Feeble-Minded at Vineland Colony in New Jersey. “They have the bodies of adults but the minds of children. It is not to the interest of the state that they should be allowed to mingle with the normal population; and it is quite as little to their own interest, for they are not capable of competing with people who are normal mentally.” (1918)]