 In the next fifty years, laws resembling Indiana's sterilization statute were passed in 30 different states.These policies legalized forced sterilization for certain groups, based on race and class lines, many of which were already marginalized.As early scientific genetic theories were emerging, eugenics (and thus sterilization) became an accepted way of protecting society from the offspring of those individuals deemed lesser than or dangerous to society – the poor, the disabled, the mentally ill, and particularly, people of color.