Well, the article says exactly what Jim Douglas told the Bennington Banner, so yeah, reading the article would have given you the impression that this was no biggie, bruh. Have you read the full address though? https://sos.vermont.gov/media/y4wfu1lu/mead1912.pdf

"The heads of our criminal institutions tell us that among the inmates there is always a considerable class that are termed “degenerates” or “defectives,” by which is meant a class of individuals in whose mental or nervous construction there is something lacking. Alienists, criminalogists and physicians tell us that individuals of this unfortunate class tend to marry those cursed with similar defects, and that this class is increasing out of all proportion to the normal growth of the population, and that most of the insane, the epileptics, the imbeciles, the idiots, the sexual perverts, together with many of the confirmed inebriates, prostitutes, tramps and criminals that fill our penitentiaries, jails, asylums and poor farms are the results of these intermarriages or the natural offspring of defective parents. In the cases of these unfortunates there is little or no hope of permanent recovery, and the great question that is now being considered by the lawmakers in many of our states is how best to restrain this defective class and how best to restrict the propagation of defective children."

Mead decides that "segregation of defectives" would be too drastic a method because, in his exact words, it might "result in life-imprisonment of unfortunates" who "might, in some small way, be of some use in the world."

He proposes the more, um, humanitarian (?) options of forcible vasectomies for people with "hereditary taints and diseases" and also legislature restricting marriage licenses for people convicted of certain crimes as well as people with various physical and mental health conditions.