For 16 years Alberta has been the only one of Canada's nine provinces to sanction sterilization of mental defectives. Last week neighboring Saskatchewan was debating whether it should follow suit. The controversy was touched off by a report on mental ills by Dr. C. M. Hincks, general director of the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene.
Among the report's recommendations: "There is a special indication for sterilization in connection with physically attractive moron girls prior to discharge from residential school [for mental defectives]."
Then came the reaction. In all Roman Catholic churches in Regina the Casti Connubü encyclical of Pope Pius XI...