Panel makes final its recommendation to give $50,000 to each victim of N.C. sterilization program
cross posted from LBN post by Judi Lynn.
The reason I am cross posting is because NC was not the only state to have eugenics laws, and I was wondering if YOUR state had them, and what you think.
Panel makes final its recommendation to give $50,000 to each victim of N.C. sterilization program
By: Associated Press | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: January 27, 2012 Updated: January 27, 2012 - 1:13 PM
" The North Carolina panel responsible for figuring out how to compensate the victims of the state's decades-long forced sterilization program says survivors should get $50,000 each without delay.
The task force said in its final report issued today that it decided compensation should be limited to those 1,500 to 2,000 still alive in order that state lawmakers will approve the money this year. The payout amounting to as much as $100 million needs legislative approval.
The report says the task force feared that trying to compensate the families of the nearly 7,600 men and women sterilized by state order would mean money for no one.
North Carolina would be the first of the dozens of states that forcibly sterilized the "feeble-minded" and others during the 20th century to compensate victims."
http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2012/jan/27/panel-makes-final-its-recommendation-to-give-50000-ar-1863417/
I just looked up Alabama law:
an eyeful....
"In 1919, Alabama joined 32 other states that, at one time or another, had enacted a eugenic sterilization statute. Unlike their allies in other states, however, Alabamian eugenicists (those who believed the doctrines of eugenics) never managed to garner widespread public support. Alabama legislators rejected proposals for more aggressive eugenics programs in 1935, 1939, and 1943. Although Alabama eugenicists' legislative efforts failed, ideas about racial improvement persisted. The eugenicists' political defeat masked the widespread application of eugenic sterilization by Alabama physicians in both public and private practice. These doctors sterilized poor women and women of color to "improve" society by reducing the state's welfare burden. The 1974 federal court case Relf v. Weinberger exposed sterilization abuse in Alabama and around the nation and led to reforms that protected poor women from abuse. "
http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1367