Remember when the cultural conservatives had their way with mental health issues, they classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. In the South, they sterilized people they considered “mentally deficient.”

Welfare Sterilizations

Up until the 1980s, South Carolina kept its sterilization law in the books. This resulted in pressure for poorer women to get sterilized, and caused increased fear from black women of the family planning programs run by whites (Carpio, p. 77).