This existed in the US not so long ago. It was passed as part of a package of laws intended to preserve "racial integrity" by sterilizing undesirable people and prohibiting such evil ideas as interracial marriage.

Virginia didn't fully dismantle its eugenics program until 1979. The US Supreme Court's last decision on eugenics programs like Virginia's was actually pro-eugenics, and with Justice Holmes declaring that "three generations of imbeciles is enough" to justify the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck.

Doctors and nurses would lie to people who had hereditary problems that "disqualified" them, in the eyes of the government, from the right to reproduce. Medical professionals would tell the patients they were having appendectomies or other surgeries... instead of hysterectomies, vasectomies, and other procedures. One man didn't even know he had been sterilized until he joined the Marines.

Some of the conditions for which the Commonwealth of Virginia sterilized people:

• Homelessness

• Epilepsy (the statute explicitly called out epilepsy as one of the conditions requiring sterilization)

• Conditions that we would now recognize as ADD or ADHD

• "Rebelliousness" with parents

• Criminality

When Virginia was sued over the matter, the settlement actually required them to run a media campaign to track down the people who had been sterilized, because a large number of them were never told they had been sterilized, and several of the most enthusiastic hospitals didn't even bother to keep records of the sterilizations.

I wouldn't exactly call it a proud moment in our nation's history.