Railey says political 'odd couple' could lead way in helping sterilization victims

Rep. Thom Tillis, the conservative Republican Speaker of the state House, and Rep. Larry Womble, a liberal Democratic member of the House, share little in common. But they're taking tentative steps at working together to achieve a noble goal that Womble's party blew for all the years it controlled the legislature: Helping the living victims of the state's forced sterilization program, which rendered barren more than 7,600 victims from 1929 through 1974.

Many of them are dying off. Others are living with mental and physical pain left by the operations. The state's foot-dragging on helping them is about as bad as driving by a car wreck and ignoring victims crying out for aid.

"I'm very upset with the waiting," Ernestine Moore Christie told me last week. "They need to do something about it."

She was sterilized in Pitt County in 1965. She was a young teenager from a large black family of modest means, just as so many of the other victims were in the 1960s.

Tillis, who hails from Mecklenburg County, told our editorial board the other day that he wants to "fast-track" legislation to help the sterilization victims and would work with Womble to do so. Womble, a Winston-Salem resident who has long fought for the victims, welcomed the extended hand. "This is the very first time that any speaker, Democrat or Republican, has gone as far as he has gone, and I thank him on behalf of all sterilization victims," Womble told the Journal's Wesley Young. "This is the first time that the leadership, the power brokers, have come out in support."

But here's the challenge: Tillis must not only work with Womble on quickly providing compensation. He must also work with Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue.

Ever since a Journal team of which I was part revealed the inner workings of the state program in the 2002 investigative series "Against Their Will," the legislative leaders in Womble's own party have given him little more than lip service at helping the victims. The victims were men, women and children. They were blacks, whites and a few American Indians. They included epileptics, the blind and those deemed "feeble-minded" often on the basis of flawed intelligence testing. The one thing that most shared was that they were powerless to fight back against one of the most aggressive sterilization programs in the country.

The living victims should get at least $20,000 each in compensation, a figure that has been mentioned by Republicans and Democrats. And they should also get free help with their physical and mental ills through the state university hospital system, help that could be given relatively easily and inexpensively.

In 2003, Democratic Gov. Mike Easley approved a committee's recommendations to help the victims, then let the matter fizzle. Five years later, Perdue promised to help them as she ran for office, then took her time in doing so. A committee she appointed to study compensation is set to release its final report in February of next year — the last year of her four-year term. And that committee is the third Democratic committee to study compensation, even though it's a no-brainer that these people need help and that the heavy-handed state that often bullied them into sterilizations should provide it.

So it's heartening that the leaders of the legislature's new Republican majority have recently come out for support. Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger told me recently that he supports compensation as well.

Some of his fellow Republicans have told me that the state GOP shouldn't be rushed into a job that the Democrats blew. They'd have a point, if people weren't suffering while they made it. For once, just once, politics should be put aside to accomplish something more important: helping the victims.

Tillis wants a legislative committee appointed to map out a path to legislation for compensation, said his spokesman, Jordan Shaw, and he wants to incorporate the findings of the governor's task force. Tillis is willing to work with Perdue on compensation, Shaw said.

To his credit, Tillis attended a recent meeting of the governor's task force and spoke in favor of compensation. Tillis' No. 2 man, Speaker Pro Tem Dale Folwell of Winston-Salem, shares his support for compensation and could supply the practical knowledge to make a compensation plan work.

Perdue should be open to the Republican ideas. For the victims.