366 THE MISMEASURE OF MAN
Carrie Buck, then in her seventies, was still living near Char-
lottesville. Several journalists and scientists visited Carrie Buck and
her sister, Doris, during the last years of their lives. Both women,
though lacking much formal education, were clearly able and intelli-
gent. Nonetheless, Doris Buck had been sterilized under the same
law in 1928. She later married Matthew Figgins, a plumber. But
Doris Buck was never informed. "They told me," she recalled, "that
the operation was for an appendix and rupture." So she and Mat-
thew Figgins tried to conceive a child. They consulted physicians at
three hospitals throughout her child-bearing years; no one recog-
nized that her Fallopian tubes had been severed. Last year, Doris
Buck Figgins finally discovered the cause of her lifelong sadness.
One might invoke an unfeeling calculus and say that Doris
Buck's disappointment ranks as nothing compared with millions
dead in wars to support the designs of madmen or the conceits of
rulers. But can one measure the pain of a single dream unfulfilled,
the hope of a defenseless woman snatched by public power in the
name of an ideology advanced to purify a race. May Doris Buck's
simple and eloquent testimony stand for millions of deaths and dis-
appointments and help us to remember that the Sabbath was made
for man, not man for the Sabbath: "I broke down and cried. My
husband and me wanted children desperately. We were crazy about
them. I never knew what they'd done to me."