on 25 July 1933: Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring. The basic provisions of the 1933 law stated that: The law applied to anyone in the general population, making its scope significantly larger than the compulsory sterilisation laws in the
United States, which generally were only applicable on people in
psychiatric hospitals or prisons. The 1933 law created a large number of "
Genetic Health Courts" (, EGG), consisting of a judge, a medical officer, and medical practitioner, which "shall decide at its own discretion after considering the results of the whole proceedings and the evidence tendered". If the court decided that the person in question was to be sterilised, the decision could be appealed to the "
Higher Genetic Health Court" (, EGOG). If the appeal failed, the sterilization was to be carried out, with the law specifying that "the use of force is permissible". The law also required that people seeking voluntary sterilizations also go through the courts. There were three amendments by 1935, most making minor adjustments to how the statute operated or clarifying bureaucratic aspects (such as who paid for the operations). The most significant changes allowed the Higher Court to renounce a patient's right to appeal, and to fine physicians who did not report patients who they knew would qualify for sterilisation under the law. The law also enforced sterilization on the so-called "
Rhineland bastards," the mixed-race children of German civilians and
French African soldiers who helped occupy the Rhineland. At the time of its enaction, the German government pointed to the success of sterilisation laws elsewhere, especially the work in
California documented by the
American eugenicists E. S. Gosney and
Paul Popenoe, as evidence of the humaneness and efficacy of such laws. Eugenicists abroad admired the German law for its legal and ideological clarity. Popenoe himself wrote that "the German law is well drawn and, in form, may be considered better than the sterilization laws of most American states", and trusted in the German government's "conservative, sympathetic, and intelligent administration" of the law, praising the "scientific leadership" of the Nazis. The German mathematician
Otfrid Mittmann defended the law against "unfavorable judgements". In the first year of the law's operation, 1934, 84,600 cases were brought to
Genetic Health Courts, with 62,400 forced sterilisations. Nearly 4,000 people appealed against the decisions of sterilisation authorities; 3,559 of the appeals failed. Along with the law,
Adolf Hitler personally decriminalised abortion in case of fetuses having racial or hereditary defects for doctors, while the abortion of healthy "pure" German, "Aryan" unborn remained strictly forbidden. ==See also==