From the Winston-Salem Journal and the Asheville Citizen-Times:

A phone line has been set up for people who believe they or a member of their family may have been sterilized through the North Carolina Eugenics Program between 1929 and 1974.

More than 7,600 North Carolinians were sterilized, many of them involuntarily, during the 45 years the program was active. The program sought to sterilize people who were classified as “feeble-minded” or “mentally diseased,” as well as those who were poor or black. The law that allowed for involuntary sterilization was not repealed until 2003.

A committee of state legislators is developing a plan for making amends to those who are still living, and will make recommendations for action by the state legislature in the 2009 legislative session. During her campaign, North Carolina governor-elect Beverly Perdue pledged to recognize and assist people who were victims of the involuntary sterilization program.

Earlier posts here.

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 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.

From the Ottawa Citizen:

“Deadly Medicine,” a traveling exhibit organized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, is on display in Ottawa. The exhibit documents the German eugenics movement of the 1930s, in which doctors and scientists worked with the Nazi regime to systematically eliminate so-called “undesirables,” including people with disabilities, first by sterilization, then by murder.

We see how eugenics evolved from the forced sterilization of the “feeble-minded” to the euthanization of “undesirables” and, ultimately, to the slaughter of millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and handicapped.

The exhibition is well-crafted but chilling. It leaves one weak in the knees.

Related story from the CBC: “We want people to think about some issues that happen today, since there’s kind of a new biological idealism in the air,” says exhibit curator Susan Bachrach.

See earlier post.

From the Chicago Tribune:

In a precedent-setting case, the Illinois Appellate Court on Friday denied a bid to have a mentally disabled woman sterilized against her will, ruling the woman’s guardian didn’t prove the procedure would be in her best interests.

The woman, identified in the opinion only as K.E.J., is not capable of raising a child due to her disability, the court acknowledged in its 3-0 ruling.

“Nevertheless that need not justify tubal ligation” when there are “less intrusive and less psychologically harmful [birth-control] alternatives,” Judge Joseph Gordon wrote for the unanimous panel.

Democratic candidate Perdue pledges to seek financial compensation for victims of sterilization

From the Winston Salem Journal:

The two leading Democrats running for governor both say they support steps to help surviving victims of North Carolina’s now-defunct forcible-sterilization program. But Beverly Perdue went a step further than her opponent, Richard Moore.

More than 7,600 people were sterilized between 1929 and 1974 under a eugenics program operated by the state.
Perdue, who is currently the state’s lieutenant governor, released a campaign proposal this week to enact the recommendations of a 2003 task force, which suggested that the state form a special foundation with the goal of providing financial reparations to survivors.

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