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Phone line set up for eugenics victims
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Published: December 8, 2008
Raleigh - A telephone help line has been established by the state to help with identifying people who may have been sterilized through the N.C. Eugenics Program between 1929 and 1974.
The number for the N.C. CARE-LINE is 800-662-7030. Every person who is found to be a survivor of that program will be notified about how to get a copy of those records.
More than 7,600 North Carolinians were sterilized, many of them involuntarily. Some were blind or mentally retarded, while others were just poor and black.
The law that allowed for involuntary sterilization was repealed by the General Assembly in 2003.
Many of those people have died.
But a committee of state legislators is trying to figure out how to make amends to those who are still living. They are considering several options, including health care, money for education or cash payments, said state Rep. Larry Womble, a Democrat from Winston-Salem.
Womble is a co-chairman of the House Select Committee on Compensation for Victims of the Eugenics Sterilization Program, which was formed after the sterilization program was exposed by the Winston-Salem Journal in 2002.
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