Published: Thursday, September 4, 2014 at 09:46 PM.

Its hard to blame Elnora Mills for not feeling terribly grateful. Decades after being forcibly sterilized under the state eugenics program, she and other victims of that cruel social experiment are finally seeing some compensation. Mills has been notified that she soon will receive the first half of a payout that is expected to total about $50,000.

Mills had a nervous breakdown as a teenager, spent some time in a psychiatric hospital and, as a result, was deemed unfit to bear children. Her reproductive organs were removed during an appendectomy, unbeknownst to her. She didnt find out that she couldnt have children until after she married.

Mills was one of an estimated 7,600 North Carolinians who were sterilized against their will between 1929 and 1974, when the forced eugenics program at last was brought to an end.

The legislature capped total payments at $10 million, to be split among victims who are alive and who can prove they were part of the sterilization program that continued in North Carolina for years after other states had abandoned the practice.

Advocates for the victims estimated last year that 2,000 of them may still be alive, but far fewer have been confirmed in the narrow window the General Assembly left for them to apply for compensation approved last year. As of mid-August, only 180 people had been approved to receive payments; Mills was among them.

Seven hundred eighty claims were received, and 500 have been reviewed by the N.C. Industrial Commission, which is overseeing the compensation program; the others are still being researched. Those whose applications were denied may appeal or provide additional information to support their claims.

The state Senate last year finally conceded to the measure that the House already had passed. Much of the credit for pushing this legislation through the General Assembly goes to Rep. Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, who announced during his first term as House speaker that compensation for sterilization program victims would be a priority.

The cap and the amount of compensation do not sit well with those who believe these victims deserved much more. After all, they had something taken from them that cant be stated in monetary terms. It is, however, far more than has ever been done to make amends.

Former Gov. Mike Easley issued an official apology to eugenics victims back in 2002, but a blanket statement is not the same thing as a personal acknowledgement.

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Editorial: Governor should apologize to eugenics victims