Victims of North Carolinas former eugenics program will have to wait for compensation from the state.

Legislators recently approved a $20 billion budget that excluded funding for eugenics programs. The new budget goes into effect July 1, setting those who have pushed for state compensation back another budget year.

Gov. Beverly Perdue included $10 million in her budget proposal to go towards $50,000 lump sum payments for verified living victims and continued operations of the N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation to provide outreach and clearinghouse services. A bipartisan group of legislators in the House approved Perdues proposal to compensate living victims, but the package did not make the Senate budget.

I think when it got down to it on the Senate side there were two things that happened: First, belief that the budget was so tight this year that some of Republican majority didnt feel as if this was a year to begin that process, said Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham. Then, there is a group that feels an apology itself would be sufficient. They believe it was a terrible thing, but theyre afraid to go down the path of compensating victims.

The Governors Eugenics Compensation Task Force found that 7,600 North Carolinians many of whom were poor, sick or disabled were sterilized by force or coercion under the authorization of the states Eugenics Board from 1929-74.

Survivors told gut-wrenching stories of being robbed by the state of the opportunity to bear children at public meetings held by the Task Force in the past year.

Elaine Riddick, a Winfall, N.C., native, has been one of the most vocal victims. Riddick said she was sterilized after giving birth to a son as the result of being raped at age 13. She had health complications, but didnt find out about the sterilization until a doctor told her she had been butchered, when she was trying to conceive when she married at age 19.

Females made up 85 percent of sterilization victims in North Carolina. Blacks and Native Americans made up 40 percent, according to the task forces report. Task force researchers found some victims or their families were threatened with losing welfare benefits.

Don Akin, a statistician for State Center for Health Statistics, estimated that there were between 1,500 and 2,000 living victims at a task force meeting last summer.

The N.C. Justice for Sterilization Foundation verified 161 victims in 57 counties, including 146 living victims.

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