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The term voluntary sterilization, referring to the choice to receive permanent birth control, arose as a contrast to the involuntary, or forced, sterilization that stems from the eugenics movement.
John Hendren Bell was born in Augusta County, the second of three sons and second of four children of Samuel Henry Lockridge Bell and Sarah Ellen Cosby Bell. His elder brother, Wilbur Cosby Bell, was on the faculty of Virginia Theological Seminary for many years. John Hendren Bell attended Washington and Lee University from 1901 to 1903 and the University of Virginia from 1904 to 1907. Like his father, a graduate of the University of Chicago, he studied medicine and in 1909 graduated from the medical school of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He married Elizabeth Spotts Harl...