From the Winston-Salem Journal and the Associated Press/WRAL:

A North Carolina legislator says he will continue to fight for reparations for people who were sterilized by the state, even though his proposal has almost no chance of getting funded.

A legislative committee has approved a measure that would pay $20,000 to each living victim of the state’s eugenics program, which lasted from 1929 to 1974 and sterilized more than 7,600 people who were considered mentally unfit. But the NC House budget chairman said there’s no money for reparations in a state budget that is facing a $4 billion shortfall.

Bill sponsor Rep. Larry Womble said he realizes funding is scarce, but “that doesn’t mean we should stop and wait for the economy to turn around to do something about this … these people are dying.”

Earlier posts start here.

Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik cites the historic Buck vs. Bell case to endorse Sonia Sotomayor’s claim that a judge’s ethnic and socioeconomic background could enhance their interpretation of the law and ability to empathize. The 1927 case upheld a Virginia law allowing the forced sterilization of people deemed “defectives” and “manifestly unfit.”

Hiltzik says Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Harvard-educated son of an eminent Boston physician, was reflecting his elite upbringing and the culture of the establishment when he led the court in endorsing the pseudo-science of eugenics in the Buck decision. In doing so, Hiltzik says, Holmes produced one of the most infamous sentences in the annals of the court: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

An excerpt:

Might the outcome of Buck vs. Bell have been different were the court not monolithic? [Historian William E. Leuchtenburg] thinks so.

“It’s hard to believe that one or two women justices might not have made a difference,” he told me from his home near the University of North Carolina, where he is a professor emeritus. “They might have made the other justices confront what was at issue.”

… But to deny that the character and experience of judges helps to make law is foolish. Virginia sterilized more than 7,500 men and women before ceasing the practice in 1979 — second only to California, where 20,000 operations were performed. Nationwide, the toll was 60,000. How many would have been saved, one wonders, had the court showed a little “empathy”?

See previous posts on eugenic sterilization, including:

• Book examines high court support for sterilization of ‘unfit’
• Exhibit explores war on ‘genetically unfit’

See also: State issues apology for policy of sterilization — Los Angeles Times

From the New York Times:

Before they began the mass murder of Jews, the Nazis sterilized or killed hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities, who were considered mentally or physically defective. The intensive war against the “genetically unfit” is explored in “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” a traveling exhibit from the U.S. Holocaust Museum that is on display at Stony Brook University in New York through June 12.

One film shows people in asylums, while a voiceover says that the money spent on them could be better used elsewhere. A wall of photographs focuses on 8 of the 5,000 children killed by injection or starvation.

“The goal of human enhancement and ‘perfectibility’ is still alive,” said Stephen G. Post, director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics at Stony Brook …

“We have to be very careful how far we want to go … I can imagine enhanced human beings who think quicker and run quicker, but if they’re self-centered, nasty, brutal and vicious, what have we achieved?”

Earlier posts here and here.

(Photo from New York Times)

From the AP/Boston Globe:

The Supreme Court declined on Monday to weigh in on a dispute over the planned closure of the Fernald Developmental Center in Waltham, MA.

The state has been working for years to shut down the costly institution, amid arguments by worker’s unions and family members that its 160 long-time residents should be allowed to stay on the 196-acre parcel. Gov. Patrick has said the facility needed between $14 million and $20 million in capital improvements.

See also: Editorial: Time to close Fernald — Boston Herald

An excerpt:

Yes, some residents have spent most of their lives at Fernald. Yes, change is difficult — more so for those with limited abilities to understand those changes. But in these difficult times state officials must be mindful of providing for the greater good. It’s time Fernald families understood that too.

Earlier posts here.

From the AP/Seattle Times, Winston-Salem Journal:

North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue has proposed spending $250,000 from her budget to set up a foundation aimed at providing justice and compensation for the victims of the state’s eugenic sterilization program.

The proposal falls short of proposing to pay actual reparations to the 2,800 surviving victims of North Carolina’s 45-year sterilization program. Legislators who have been pushing the funding for years say Perdue’s proposal is a start.

North Carolina was one of more than two dozen states that ran programs of forced eugenic sterilization. The programs targeted women who were considered  — sometimes inaccurately — to be mentally deficient or genetically inferior. From 1929 until 1974, more than 7,600 people were forcibly sterilized under North Carolina’s program.

See also:

Bill would open state hospital death records – Charlotte Observer

See earlier posts here.

(Photo from Winston-Salem Journal)

From the Winston-Salem [NC] Journal:

Proposed legislation that would give reparations to people who were sterilized under a state-sponsored eugenics program in North Carolina seemed in jeopardy as the state legislature prepared to begin its annual session.

With priorities focused on budget woes in a troubled economy, legislators said they were reluctant to commit $18 million of the state budget this year toward giving $20,000 to each of the 2,800 victims of the forced sterilization program.

House speaker Joe Hackney said “I thought the recommendations were reasonable, thoughtful. And I hope we can do it … I don’t know whether we can do the entire financial part in a year like this or not.”

See also:

Help for the victims -Winston-Salem Journal editorial. An excerpt:

At the very least, the legislature should finally follow through on recommendations that [former Gov. Mike] Easley approved five years ago. That means giving the victims treatment for the mental and physical ills left by their sterilizations, putting the story of this program in public-school textbooks and setting up a monument to the victims — so that the terrible mistakes of this program will never be repeated.

… This issue has been studied ad nauseam. Victims have told their stories over and over to legislators, reliving the pain each time. The General Assembly should finally help these victims when it convenes next month.

Se earlier posts here, here, here, and here.

From the Winston-Salem [NC] Journal:

RALEIGH – A legislative committee recommended yesterday that the state pay out financial reparations and give other benefits to victims who were sterilized under a state-sponsored eugenics program that lasted from 1929 to 1974.

The committee called for each living victim to be given $20,000.

“The state needs to take responsibility,” said state Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth.

“When the government starts sterilizing children, that’s about the worst thing I can think of,” Womble said. “I put it right up there with the Holocaust.”

The state of North Carolina performed forcible sterilizations on an estimated 7,600 people over 45 years, with the vast majority of the sterilizations occurring after 1945. Many of those people had intellectual disabilities or were mentally ill. It is estimated that some 2,800 of them are still alive.

Earlier posts start here .