N.C. Republicans Refuse to Compensate Victims of Forced Sterilization; Cite Fear of State Liability for Slavery Reparations

Conservative Senate argued that compensating eugenics victims could open the door for post-slavery reparations in the United States.

From [HERE] and [HERE] The first serious proposal to compensate victims of forced sterilization failed Wednesday when North Carolina legislators said they were not approving any money for them. 

The effort to give each victim $50,000 passed the House, but the Senate never gave the measure consideration. Republican lawmakers in that chamber said the state didn't have the money in such a tight budget year to make up for misguided, decades-old procedures. Legislators also feared paying the victims would lead other groups, such as descendants of slaves, to seek reparations.

"If you could lay the issue to rest, it might be one thing. But I'm not so sure it would lay the issue at rest because if you start compensating people who have been 'victimized' by past history, I don't know where that would end," Republican Sen. Austin Allran said.

Most states had eugenics programs but abandoned those efforts after World War II when such practices became closely associated with Nazi Germany's attempts to achieve racial purity. Scientists also debunked the assumption that "defective" humans could be weeded out of the population. North Carolina stood out because it actually ramped up its program after the war. Between 1929 and 1974, North Carolina forcibly sterilized about 7,600 people whom the state deemed "feeble-minded" or otherwise undesirable. Many were poor black women. [MORE] 

A group set up to help North Carolina victims estimated up to 1,800 were still living, though it had only verified 146 people.

Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue set aside $10 million in her proposed budget for the victims. She had the backing of Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis, but couldn't muster support from key Republican senators.

The compensation was considered a failure when legislators agreed to a state budget plan that didn't include any money for the victims. The budget plan still needs approval from both chambers. Any compensation would need to be in that package.

Tillis said he considered the rejection a personal failure on his part. He and other legislators said they would keep fighting for compensation.

One of the most outspoken victims, Elaine Riddick of Atlanta, has said she was raped and then sterilized after giving birth to a son when she was 14.

Riddick said she planned legal action, but she has already been to court once. In 1983, a jury rejected victims' claims that they had been wrongfully deprived of their right to bear children. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear the case.

"I have given North Carolina a chance to justify what they had wronged," she said Wednesday. "These people here don't care about these victims. ... I will die before I let them get away with this."

North Carolina’s troubling history highlights the global phenomenon of eugenics, prejudice and control of other people’s autonomy.

Germany’s oppression and murder of Jewish people and other “undesired” groups during the Holocaustproved that the desire to manipulate and control populations recurs.

Between 1926 and 1939 Australian leaders produced three bills aimed at purging the population of homosexual people, prostitutes, slum-dwellers and those with low IQs.

Although the third bill boasted unanimous support, its enactment was difficult largely due to residual taboos from the Holocaust.

Some eugenics supporters argue that pursuing “superior” trait longevity benefits nature. Citing Darwinism, they believe that suppressing or obliteratingthe “unfit” creates a better existing natural pool.

While people of various backgrounds experience the harsh realities of hatred in their lives, the ramifications of prejudice against the more heavily pigmented remain.

Alabama’s history is also troublesome, as the Public Health Service and Tuskegee Institute studied the effects of syphilis by observing black men with the illness without treating them for it.

Much like sterilization victims and their families wereled to believe that signing over their reproductive rightswould be beneficial, men in the Tuskegee experiment were told that they had “bad blood” and were givenfree medical exams, free meals, and burial insurancefor participating in the study and not improving their condition.

Nearly 400 men with syphilis were left without medicine, even after penicillin became a treatment option for the illness.

In 1973, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of the study participants and their loved ones. The following year a $10 million out-of-court settlement was reached.

Parallels prevail, as that is the same amount North Carolina’s senate recently blocked for sterilization victims.