The Eugenic Origins of Federal Family Planning Policies in the United States

The United States government has funded family planning programs for low-income women since the 1970s, but why do those programs cover contraception and not infertility treatments? In this lecture, Maxwell School public policy scholar Leonard Lopoo argues that the standard explanation—health equity—is only part of the story, and that the eugenic thinking that pervaded American political and intellectual life in the early 20th century played a larger role in shaping these policies than has been widely acknowledged. Lopoo begins by defining family planning and mapping the gap between how it is understood internationally and how it operates in the United States, where federally funded programs have always provided contraceptive services to low-income women but no infertility treatments. He traces the history of eugenics in America—from Sir Francis Galton's 19th-century framework through its adoption by universities, courts, and every U.S. president from Theodore Roosevelt to Herbert Hoover—and shows how eugenic thinking remained embedded in policy conversations well into the 1970s. Drawing on Nixon administration documents, the 1970 Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, the Nixon White House tapes, and a 2009 interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he makes the case that population control—and specifically the control of which populations would grow—was a driving motivation behind the design of federal family planning programs, alongside genuine health equity concerns. He closes with original polling data on what Americans think about both current contraceptive programs and the prospect of federally funded infertility treatments, revealing persistent and revealing divides in public opinion. Leonard Lopoo is the Paul Volcker Chair in Behavioral Economics and Associate Dean, Chair, and Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He is the director and co-founder of the Maxwell X Lab and a senior research associate in the Center for Policy Research. His research focuses on child and family policy, behavioral economics, and economic demography. This lecture draws from his book Wanting Children: Family Planning Policies and the Engineering of America's Population (University of Chicago Press, 2026). This lecture is part of USA@250, a free public lecture series from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, produced in recognition of the 250th anniversary of American independence.