No money for sterilization victims in North Carolina budget

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

No money for sterilization victims in North Carolina budget

By Colleen Jenkins
WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina | Thu Jun 21, 2012 7:02pm EDT

(Reuters) - North Carolina's effort to become the first state to compensate people subjected to involuntary sterilizations failed when legislators passed a $20.2 billion budget on Thursday that does not include proposed $50,000 payments for each victim still alive.

The news came as a blow for the 146 verified living victims of a decades-long, state-sanctioned eugenics program that forced sterilizations and castrations on citizens deemed unfit to bear children.

"Many are angry, many of them are just distraught and devastated," said Charmaine Fuller Cooper, executive director of the state-funded N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation. "Everyone had gotten their hopes up."

From 1929 to 1974, nearly 7,600 people, mostly women, were sterilized in North Carolina, where the eugenics program endured longer than similar programs in more than 30 U.S. states.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/21/us-usa-northcarolina-eugenics-idUSBRE85K1UB20120621

[McCamy Taylor]

1. What about the "right to life" of the kids these folks might have wanted to have?

Hypocrisy, thy name is Right Wing.

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. NC is on quite an embarrassment streak of late. shameful.

[rubluetoo]

3. Ridiculous...

but expected by our repug controlled senate.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. My theories

There were individuals who never intended to vote to compensate these victims of the State. Said they would, but knew they wouldn't put the provision in the budget.

Also, the rationale for not voting for it was "If we vote to compensate victims of involuntary, state-sponsored sterilization, we'll have to make reparations for slavery, and there's no way in hell we're gonna do that."