(silence)
Simo: Questions?
Lelani Muir: Wouldn't that be just another
 way of sterilizing the person? Cause
 they could have... Like, how many times 
would that happen? They could have 
more than one abortion. Like, come on.
Simo: Sorry, I'm not...
Lelani: Like saying the woman was to
 have the abortion, the doctors are saying 
"have the abortion." Okay, she could
 go out and get pregnant again, the same 
thing, that's just a different way of
 saying "hey sterilize the child or 
sterilize you, just keep having your abortions."
Simo: Well, why it is seen differently...
Lelani: You're killing a baby, it's
 a child as soon as it's conceived, right?
Simo: Well, yeah. In this way of 
thinking and this legislation, fetuses don't
 have a legal or moral status, but who
 do have a legal status are women and what 
is seen as crucial is that they have the
 freedom to do whatever they want to do.
 And, Finnish philosophers have written
 about this, like Mate Hyry, they are 
extremely liberal, so like Hyry says, 
people should have the freedom to 
terminate their pregnancy on whatever 
grounds, so if you want to terminate the 
pregnancy because of the child's disability, 
 or the child's gender, or hair 
color, feel free, we don't care. Well, 
 that solves the issue of policy.
Lelani: They should be educated on 
that so they don't have to go through that.
Simo: Well, I don't know whether it's... 
 I don't think the abortion is the issue 
here, the issue is preventing disability
 I think that's the more pressing issue.
Rob Wilson: Simo, can I ask you a question
 about the 1929 commission? What was 
the immediate impetus for that? Why did
 it come about then? And why did it take 
six years for the first piece of legislation
 to take place? Was it informed by 
intellectuals, people in the university, 
 was it informed by scientists, who was 
kind of agitating around that 
and why right then, do you know?
Simo: Well mainly most of them were 
doctors and scientists, and then there were 
some petitions as well. But the law part 
is easy, I mean, people didn't stand 
against it, so in the parliament it was 
just accepted immediately. So I think it 
was just bureaucracy why it took so long, 
 actually. Yeah, it was easily 
accepted, that's a good question, I 
don't know why it took so long, actually...
Rob: Was it informed partly by Buck vs. 
 Bell,  the famous legal case and other North American developments or...?
Simo: Yes. They were referred to and the
 United States was like a model in 
Europe. Yeah and these studies of these
 families in the US they were looked at
 as well. And this idea of "a few generations
 of idiots is enough". So it was similar, yeah.
Audience member 1: I was wondering how 
moral insanity was defined precisely, 
because you referred to sexual appetites... 
 was that the sole criterion or were there other things...
Simo: Well, moral insanity, just very
 briefly was understood as an inborn 
incapability to know right from wrong. 
 But the main thing was sexuality. I mean 
that was... for some reason, throughout
 humankind, especially Christian history, 
sexuality has been the most touchy moral
 issue. It's ok to kill people, but it's not ok to have sex with people.
Audience member 1: So that was the 
key expression of moral insanity, was this 
having sexual appetites that
 were strange or excessive or...
Simo: Yeah, or immoral.
Audience member 2: From what I understand, 
 early 20th century eugenicists in the 
US thought that illegitimacy was because... 
 illegitimacy was a sign of sexual 
appetite and sort of moral insanity
 in some ways, such that it marked the
 children born as illegitimate as also
 most likely degenerate. And early
 eugenicists that I've looked at then 
were very much against adoption as a 
formal institution because they thought
 "why encourage these children to 
continue" and it was an argument against
 adoption that the children in some 
sense weren't reformable, malleable. 
And I wondered if there was a (?) of 
illegitimate children, where clearly 
they must have been connected in this sort 
of imaginary of genetic transference of
 sexual appetite and degeneracy and how 
then illegitimate children were considered, 
 and if there was a position on adoption.
Simo: Well, yeah, I don't know, but it 
makes sense. It doesn't make sense, but 
it makes sense. Illegitimate children were, 
 I think it's only been for the past 
20 years that they have not been called
 as bastards anymore, even in Finland. I 
remember in my childhood, that someone was
 known to be, well it was quite rare, 
but I knew a guy who was a bastard. 
 It made him a bit, you know...
Audience member 2: Bitter.
Simo: No, no, no, the way we looked at
 him... a bit you know, dodgy, I don't know.
Lelani: A dirty you-know-what. Raunchy person.
Simo: And it made explicit that 
something indecent had taken place.
Audience member 2: Right, but that's
 different from transferring the quality, so 
Papano thought that these kids MUST
 be morally degenerate, because the sex 
actually was both a sign and a mechanism
 for marking the mind, so one thing that 
interests me is how that rhetoric had to
 be loosened for the institution of 
adoption to be kind of acceptable to the
 upper class. So children could be born 
and that, as bad seeds in some sense, but
 maybe rehabilitated, reinvented through socialization.
Lelani: In Finland, did the religious
 sector get involved in this like
 they did here in Canada?
Simo: Yeah, the clergy supported... the
 ideas of eugenics were pretty much based 
on Christian morals, so yeah at first
 they supported it. It helped to create 
good Christians.
