“We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence.”66 Fully sixteen states embraced eugenic sterilization during the 1920s and 1930s; over the coming decades, the states would sterilize sixty thousand people.