Marriage Laws and Statutory Experiments in Eugenics in the United States e-bog

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. For this reason consanguinity, as a bar to inter-marriage between those of the same blood, appears to have had more im portance in public opinion, and consequent legislation, than aflinity. Thus it happens that at the present time, where affinity is a legal impediment, such impediment continues only with the marriage which created it, and terminates, except in five of the states, upon the death of one of the parties, leaving the survivor free to marry the relative of the deceased. Thus, and for this reason, the marriage of a deceased wife's sister is now, and always has been, permissible in all the American states. In.: Blodgett v. Brinsmead (g Vermont, 27) the Supreme Court of Vermont said, by way of dictum The relationship by con sanguinity is, in its nature, incapable of dissolution, but the relationship by affinity ceases with the dissolution of the marriage which produced it. Therefore, though a man is, by affinity, brother to his wife's sister, yet upon the death of his wife he may lawfully marry her sister. Such is the law of this state, what ever may be the statute of Henry VIII. This reasoning has been followed in all the discussions upon the subject in America, and underlying them all is the idea that the inter-marriage of affinities is more likely to result in purer blood and greater virility than where those inter-marry who have any blood in common.