By and large, most North Carolinians are against big-government intrusion into their private lives. They also believe in the sanctity of human life, and protecting our most vulnerable citizens from government abuse. That is one big reason why it's crucial that the legislature, when it convenes in May, quickly pass $50,000 in compensation for each living victim of this state's forced sterilization program.
And it's crucial that Gov. Bev Perdue give her input so that the legislature will produce a compensation bill she can ratify. Victims such as Bertha Dale Midgett Hymes, who was sterilized in 1967 in Dare County when she was 17, say they've waited long enough.
"They need to help us," Hymes said this week.
This state, which ran one of the most aggressive sterilization programs in the country, should become the first state to compensate sterilization victims.
It remains a mystery why supposedly progressive North Carolina ever bought into the nationwide sterilization movement, aimed at "bettering society," in the first place. But buy in it did, giving its social workers unique powers to target for sterilization groups including the blind, the epileptic and the "feeble-minded" — a catch-all designation often based on flawed IQ testing. It zeroed in on black women and girls in the 1960s, when most other states had backed off their sterilization programs.
But make no mistake: The victims also included large numbers of whites, as well as some American Indians. Almost all of the nearly 8,000 victims rendered barren from 1929 through 1974 shared one common denominator: They were poor and powerless to fight back against a program supported by prominent families and doctors in Winston-Salem and across the state.
The program, called the North Carolina Eugenics Board, came under the state Department of Public Welfare. The sterilization program should have answered to our governors and our legislators. But they failed to monitor it, and the program became a dangerous power unto itself. It hid in plain sight, even claiming to be a positive force because, it said, it stopped "morons" and other "undesirables" from reproducing.
The program's brutal inner workings were not revealed until the Journal published the investigative series "Against Their Will" in late 2002. Ever since, politicians have promised help. Victims, quite understandably, are skeptical now that help will ever come.
The delay is shameful. Some victims have died waiting for help. Others continue to suffer mental and physical ills left by the operations. After telling their stories to us, they've told them to reporters from across the nation and overseas.
They've rightly borne witness to a horrible chapter in our state history. We can't close that chapter until we compensate the victims, showing the world that we North Carolinians own up to our mistakes and learn from them.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement