Victims Testify: North Carolina Forcibly Sterilized Thousands Of Poor, Uneducated, And Mentally Unstable People
Forced sterilization is a human rights abuse we typically associate with another time and another place. But yesterday a North Carolina task force heard heart-wrenching testimony from some of the victims of the state’s 40-year-long forced sterilization program that targeted poor, undereducated, and mentally unstable residents.
North Carolina is considering compensating some of the nearly 7,600 victims of the program or their relatives. The program was overseen by the North Carolina Board of Eugenics and persisted well into the 1970s. Some of the victims were as young as 10 years old, and many were poor women the state deemed too “promiscuous” to be good mothers:
Think Progress has video and more:
Victims and family members packed into a room at a Department of Agriculture office building Wednesday to hear stories from survivors. One who testified was Elaine Riddick, who was sterilized without her knowledge at the age of 14 after she was raped and became pregnant. The state said Riddick “was promiscuous and didn’t get along well with others.” “They cut me open like I was a hog,” Riddick said.
NPR points out that just 40 years ago, “it wasn’t uncommon for a single mother on welfare, or a patient in a mental hospital in North Carolina, to be sterilized against her will.” More than half the states had eugenics laws, but unusually, North Carolina conducted most of its sterilizations after World War II and the atrocities of Nazi eugenics programs came to light.