On March 21st, 1928 the United Farmers of Alberta government passed the Sexual Sterilization Act. The eugenic legislation remained in effect until 1972 and resulted in the sterilization of more individuals considered “mentally defective” than any other jurisdiction in Canada. Until recently, scholarship on the legislation has largely focused on identifying the “targets” of the eugenic program through statistical analysis of the provincial Eugenics Board case files. These sociological and legal studies have demonstrated that certain segments of the population, including women, were disproportionately sterilized in Alberta. Women, as “mothers of the race,” were central to eugenic thought, however, depicting them as simply “targets” of sterilization neglects the gendered occupations that served on the program’s frontline. Progressive politics and the medicalization of “social problems” the turn of the twentieth century engaged new levels of professionals, including nurses and social workers, in a more comprehensive matrix of surveillance over those people and families determined “mentally defective,” or “unfit.” Drawing on the records of Alberta Department of Public Health, professional journals, and other archival material, this paper will complicate the narrative of male medical professionals, and a few women in positions of political influence, exercising control over the reproductive rights of predominately female patients that has largely dominated the history of eugenics in Alberta. It will argue that leaders within nursing and social work framed their respective occupations within the socially and scientifically significant eugenics movement as a way to maintain and extend their occupational authority.