John Railey, writing in the Winston-Salem Journal, says North Carolina governor-elect Bev Perdue should make good on her promise to recognize and assist people who were victims of the state’s involuntary sterilization program.

The state sterilized more than 7,600 people between 1929 and 1974 as part of a eugenics program that sought to “better” society by preventing “feeble-minded” people from reproducing.

As she ran for the Democratic nomination for governor, Perdue promised to financially compensate the victims through a foundation, and indicated that she wanted to make the health-care and education benefits a reality.

… As the state’s first woman governor, Bev Perdue should show the rest of the world that North Carolina really is a progressive place by delivering the help that this state has long owed these victims. North Carolina won’t ever leave this dark chapter behind until that happens.

From USA Today:

A new book by legal historian Paul Lombardo of Georgia State University says scientists, officials and even her own lawyer conspired against Carrie Buck in the landmark legal case that bears her name, in an effort to justify Virginia’s compulsory sterilization of “feeble-minded” people.

The book, “Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell” analyzes the facts and personalities behind the 1927 legal case that has never been overturned.

Writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes insisted that “three generations of imbeciles is enough,” and described Buck and her family as “manifestly unfit,” both physically and morally. Lombardo produces evidence, however, that Carrie Buck and her family were not imbeciles but were rather the targets of a eugenic agenda.

In the wake of the Buck v. Bell decision, Lombardo writes, about 30 states adopted involuntary sterilization laws, all based on the dishonest testimony and deceitful lawyering of Buck v. Bell.

It is estimated that 60,000 Americans were sterilized against their will in the first half of the 20th Century.

“Buck earns a place in the legal hall of shame not only because Holmes’ opinion was unnecessarily callous but also because it was based on deceit and betrayal,” writes Lombardo.

From the New York Times:

Neighbors of a group home in Eastchester, NY, are protesting a plan that would bring in young men with developmental disabilities when the current residents move to a residence better suited to elderly care.

The four men and three women who currently live in the home faced objections when they moved in fourteen years ago, but have been successfully integrated into the community. Those residents are now aging and require more assistance, so the Westchester Jewish Community Services wants to replace them with six men in their 20s and 30s. Plans call for the men to be supervised by a staff of about 18.

Neighbors say they worry that the younger men could wander and put children at risk for being molested, accosted, or bothered.

The agency has been through this kind of tumult with almost every one of its 12 group homes in Westchester, which accommodate a total of 85 men and women. And according to Dale Wang, the agency’s director of community relations, in 30 years the agency has not had a single serious case of harm to a neighbor.

“People are afraid of what they don’t know,” she said.

… Steven R. Yellen, the agency’s assistant executive director, said mentally retarded people, like everyone else, have a right to live where they choose.

See also earlier post: Disability history collection a reminder of shared trauma

Includes footage of a news report from 1982, in which correspondent Geraldo Rivera documents an arson attack on a planned group home for adults with intellectual disabilities in nearby Long Island. Neighbors had expressed worries about the safety of their children. An excerpt:

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From CNN:

Nineteen-year-old Zach Wincent of St. Charles, Illinois, has a satisfying life. He was prom king in high school, now attends community college and works at Target. Zach’s life demonstrates the improved circumstances of people with Down syndrome in the United States, thanks to advances in education and medical care.

An excerpt:

Life with Down syndrome has changed dramatically in the past century. In 1929, the average life expectancy for a person with the condition was 9 years, but today, it is 58 to 60, said Nicole Schupf, associate professor of clinical epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center.

(more…)

Washington Post op-ed columnist Michael Gerson says Trig Palin’s appearance on the national stage comes even as civil rights protections for people with Down syndrome have “rapidly eroded over the last few decades.”

Gerson says the widespread availability and use of prenatal testing has created situation in which “many parents report that genetic counselors and physicians emphasize the difficulties of raising a child with a disability and urge abortion.”

This is properly called eugenic abortion — the ending of “imperfect” lives to remove the social, economic and emotional costs of their existence. And this practice cannot be separated from the broader social treatment of people who have disabilities. By eliminating less perfect humans, deformity and disability become more pronounced and less acceptable. Those who escape the net of screening are often viewed as mistakes or burdens. A tragic choice becomes a presumption — “Didn’t you get an amnio?” — and then a prejudice. And this feeds a social Darwinism in which the stronger are regarded as better, the dependent are viewed as less valuable, and the weak must occasionally be culled.

… the pro-choice radicalism held by [Sen. Edward M.] Kennedy and many others — the absolute elevation of individual autonomy over the rights of the weak — has enabled the new eugenics. It has also created a moral conflict at the heart of the Democratic Party. If traditional Democratic ideology means anything, it is the assertion that America is a single moral community that includes everyone. How can this vision possibly be reconciled with the elimination of children with Down syndrome from American society? Are pro-choice Democrats really comfortable with this choice?

Gerson also recalls the life of French president Charles de Gaulle, who held great affection for his daughter Anne, born in 1928 with Down syndrome.

See my earlier post about Anne de Gaulle here.

See also: It’s a disability, not a death sentence — letter to the editor by Anne Fordemwalt

I am pro-choice, but when 90 percent of pregnancies involving Down syndrome are aborted, this seems more like selective breeding … Maybe instead of encouraging parents to abort simply because a fetus has Down syndrome, doctors should make it a practice to educate parents and inform them that it isn’t a death sentence.

Tom Service, [UK] Guardian music blogger, disputes Poland’s refusal to allow the heart of Frederic Chopin (left) to be tested for cystic fibrosis.

As the scientists say, ‘Is it not right to make an attempt to prove to many suffering people that many things count in life much more than a weak physical body, and they are not predestined to vanish without leaving something that will influence, inspire and enrich generations to come?’

…[Chopin's] music, instead of merely reflecting his sickliness or the way he succumbed to his physical frailty, is heroic: not just in the way he created a whole new approach to playing and composing for the piano, but also because his creativity transcended the hardships of his life. If it was cystic fibrosis rather than TB, then that just makes Chopin’s music the more astonishing. For sure, it won’t change the musical significance of his output, but I think we ought to know: let the scientists have their sample, I say.

Earlier post here.

(Image from Schick’s portrait, Hulton archive, in the [UK] Guardian)

From Deutsche Welle (Germany’s international broadcasting company):

Geneticists in Germany on Monday marked the 75th anniversary of the “Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases Act,” by condemning the euthanization of thousands of handicapped people during the Third Reich.

Deemed “undesirable,” an estimated 400,000 people physically and mentally disabled people were sterilized without their consent during the Nazi regime. Many of those sterilized died as a consequence of the operation, and historians estimate that 200,000 were euthanized as part of the Nazi eugenics program.

The forced sterilization and euthanasia program developed as a consequence of the “law to prevent hereditary diseased offspring,” which was enacted on July 14, 1933 and was based on the controversial theory that one could improve the human race through selective breeding.