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Category Archives: Eugenics

Hundreds file claims for eugenics compensation

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By Matthew Burns

Raleigh, N.C. With seven weeks left for victims of North Carolina's erstwhile forced sterilization program to apply for compensation, 442 claims have already been submitted to the state Office of Justice for Sterilization Victims.

The office has forwarded 281 of those claims to the North Carolina Industrial Commission, whichhandles all tort claims against the state and will be responsible for determining whether a claimant is eligible for compensation. The remaining 161 are lacking some necessary information before they can be considered, said Chris Mears, spokesman for the state Department of Administration.

Lawmakers last year set aside $10 million in the state budget to provide compensation to victims of the eugenics program, which ran between 1929 and 1974. The exact payment per victim will depend on how many apply.

As many as 1,800 victims may still be alive, but as of last year, the state's efforts to find them had yielded only 176 people. Families of victims who have already died aren't eligible for compensation.

The Office of Justice for Sterilization Victims is trying to notify as many victims of the sterilization program as possible about the June 30 deadline to apply for compensation. The state sent about 1,000 direct-mail pieces to identified victims, made hundreds of telephone calls and partnered with other state agencies on outreach efforts.

For more information, including claim forms, people can check the Office of Justice for Sterilization Victims website or call 919-807-4270.

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Hundreds file claims for eugenics compensation

Mass Incarceration: The New Eugenics?

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May 8, 2014|11:30 am

The United States currently has over 2.3 million prisoners incarcerated in federal, state, and local jails around the country. According to an April reportby the Sentencing Project, that number presents a 500 percent increase in incarcerations over the past 40 years. This increase produces "prison overcrowding and fiscal burdens on states to accommodate a rapidly expanding penal system" despite the evidence that incarceration is not working. How did this happen? The culprit is usually identified as the failed policies associated with the War on Drugs. Because blacks are disproportionately swept up in the campaign against drugs, some scholars refer to the results of mass incarceration as the new "The New Jim Crow." While the original intentions may have been well-meaning the long-term consequences may be worse: The War on Drugs may actually be class-based eugenics by another name.

In her groundbreaking book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander hypothesized that given the similarity between the "law and order" appeals between the creation of Jim Crow Laws and similar appeals in the War on Drugs, and the resultant economic marginalization of felons after release from prison, today's mass incarceration is "The New Jim Crow." The drug war is simply a new way to control the futures of African Americans. As hip hop artist Sho Baraka says, "The war on drugs is the war on us." Does the racialized narrative work?

Based on the most recent government data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, it is true that drug offenses comprise 51 percent of prison inmate presence and that black males comprise a higher percentage, per capita, of drug prosecutions than any other group. What is even more important, however, is that overall 37 percent of the federal prison population is black, 32 percent is Hispanic, and 28 percent is white. If mass incarceration was simply the New Jim Crow we would expect a greater racial disparity between whites and blacks in prison overall. Moreover, in 1964, at the height of the Jim Crow era, only 34 percent of US prisoners were black while 65 percent were white. Alexander's race narrative is misguided and misses the fact that mass incarceration might be just another historic example of elites using government power to control the country's "degenerates" -- namely, the lower classes -- and to create and control social outcomes that benefit the interests of those in power.

In 1877, a prison reformer by the name of Richard Dugdale noticed that prisons were increasingly populated by a particular group of people -- poor whites and that the offspring of the same group were likely to be criminals as well. After the Civil War, social progressives, relying on scientific inquiry into human nature, raised a class of social science intellectuals who concluded that America needed to deal with her degenerate populations. Matt Wray, in Not Quite White, explains that Dugdale's research and findings launched the eugenics movement in America. The backward citizens who were impeding America's progress were "lazy, lustful, and cunning" and were particularly sexually immoral. The reference was to lower class whites exclusively. Progressive eugenicists, taking action to control "white trash" and the like, launched a campaign to use government coercion to forcibly sterilize lower class whites (and later blacks). Eugenics was considered good for America's social welfare and economic progress. According to Wray, progressives sought "legislative reform campaigns aimed at restricting foreign immigration, mandating state institutionalization of the biologically unfit, and legalizing eugenical involuntary sterilzation." Eugenics was a way protect society from social traits like "pauperism, laziness, promiscuity and licentiousness, inbreeding, nomadism[idleness], and delinquency." Does this sound familiar?

Today's prison population is largely comprised of "lazy, lustful, and cunning" lower class whites, blacks, and Hispanics, whom elites and progressives institutionalize in "correctional" facilities and then nearly permanently control them and their families in a closed ecosystem of government programs, including "reproductive services," while never addressing the core moral issues that sabotage freedom and success. Sentencing someone to prison for one year on a marijuana possession charge, or in the 2011 case of Patrick Carney in Louisiana, sentencing someone to 30 years for selling $25 worth of marijuana is wasting both financial and human capital. Represented by public defenders and often unaware of their legal rights, many of these offenders are manipulated into pleading guilty to charges that high-powered attorneys would get dismissed altogether. To make matters worse, the state of California is under federal investigation for deceptively sterilizing female inmates from 2006 to 2010.

The scandal of today's mass incarceration associated with the War on Drugs is the failed attempt to use the police, lawyers, judges, corrections officers, and social workers to address issues that are profoundly moral in nature. People should be sent to prison because they are dangerous to society not because we are mad at them and want to reform them. Prisons are not churches. Without this preventative moral formation, we set the lower classes up for a lifetime - sometimes, generations - of government control. This softer form of eugenics is worse than Jim Crow.

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This column was originally published in the Acton Institute.

Dr. Anthony Bradley, associate professor of theology at The King's College in New York City and a research fellow at the Acton Institute.

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Mass Incarceration: The New Eugenics?

Sterilizing women prisoners is denying a human a life, future and humanity

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Published on May 7, 2014 in Opinions By Himerria Wortham

Women prisoners are taking their babies for a walk. However for some, they have been denied the privilege of walking their own child. Courtesy of MCT

The CaliforniaSenate Health Committee was presented with a bill onApril 2that aims to close loopholes that allowed for the sterilization of women prisoners without state approval.

While this bill has not been passed yet, it is a step toward preventing the unjust treatment of women behind bars and raising further awareness of an issue reminiscent of old horrific California eugenics practices.

From 2006 to 2010, at least 148 women were sterilized in state prisons without California state approval, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR).

Women who experienced sterilization abuse by prison health caregivers worked together with the human rights organization, Justice Now, on the California Prison Sterilization Prohibition bill, in an effort to strengthen already existing laws.

The sterilization procedure, called tubal ligation, was conducted by doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations. Women who were housed in the California Institution for Women in Corona or Valley State Prison for Women were sterilized during the five-year period.

In many of the cases, the obstetricians would ask for consent while the heavily sedated women were giving birth or being operated on. Some of the former inmates felt as though they were being coerced into the procedure by medical staff who believed the women were likely to return to prison.

At Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, obstetrician James Heinrich performed sterilizations on inmates. He said he performed important procedures on the poor prisoners, giving them the empowerment that women on the outside have to protect themselves from health risks in future pregnancies due to past cesarean sections. In other words, he claimed he is doing them a favor.

Former inmate Christina Cordero was one of the women that Heinrich targeted. During her pregnancy, Heinrich suggested several times that she follow through with the procedure.

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Sterilizing women prisoners is denying a human a life, future and humanity

Fertility guru's IVF warning: Rich could pay to have brighter babies, says Lord Winston

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Fertility expert Robert Winston warns against breakthroughs in treatments New IVF technology could see 'gene manipulation' of foetuses in future Lord Winston says breakthroughs have created a 'toxic' climate

By Mario Ledwith and Fiona Macrae

Published: 17:35 EST, 4 May 2014 | Updated: 18:55 EST, 4 May 2014

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Breakthroughs in IVF could threaten our humanity by prompting parents to demand designer babies, Robert Winston has warned.

The fertility pioneer said that he feared a time when the rich could alter the appearance and ability of children by tinkering with their genes.

And he claimed a toxic climate had been created by the desperation of childless couples and the pace of scientific developments in the booming IVF industry.

Warning: British fertility expert Professor Lord Winston warns that recent breakthroughs in IVF treatment technology could encourage gene manipulation of foetuses

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Fertility guru's IVF warning: Rich could pay to have brighter babies, says Lord Winston

John B. Wells Sheila Zilinsky-Nazi Takeover or Evil Eugenics Plan? – Video

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John B. Wells Sheila Zilinsky-Nazi Takeover or Evil Eugenics Plan?
John B. Wells, former host of Coast to Coast AM, veteran radio host and voice actor with credits ranging from radio stations and TV shows, to movies and advertisements, on all seven continents...

By: Sheila Zilinsky

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John B. Wells Sheila Zilinsky-Nazi Takeover or Evil Eugenics Plan? - Video

Eugenics in disguise: PUP senator slams parental leave scheme

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Palmer United Party senator-elect Jacqui Lambie. Photo: Peter Mathew

Tasmanian senator-elect Jacqui Lambie has compared the Coalition's paid parental leave scheme to eugenics - the discredited social policy associated with Adolf Hitler's Nazi-era attempts to breed a race of ubermenschen, or super humans.

As Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced he would scale back his ambitious paid parental leave scheme from an upper limit of $150,000 to $100,000, blaming the budget emergency created by the former Labor government, Ms Lambie accused the government's generous scheme of attempting to discourage poor people from having children.

Eugenics emerged in the 19th century as a "scientific" theory designed to control which people became parents and thereby limit which genes were passed on. It was adopted by the Nazis and used to justify the forced sterilisation of an estimated 400,000 people, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial museum, and the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

"Its clear that the Liberals paid parental leave scheme is a not-so-subtle attempt at discouraging Australians with the undesirable trait of being poor (when compared with those who are rich) from reproducing. Why else would Mr Abbott and his supporters champion a government scheme which ensures rich Australians receive more than double, sometimes triple the amount of parental leave that poor working Australians receive?" she said in a statement.

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"The only fair way to administer any government-sanctioned paid parental leave scheme is as per the Palmer United policy - and ensure that all Australian parents and babies are treated equally. Otherwise those championing a government scheme which clearly tries to influence or control who becomes parents must be associated with eugenics- and all the historic, moral and political baggage attached to this reviled social theory."

"If the Liberals really want to improve Australian society then they should allow our children to access free university degrees and visits to their GPs, not introduce a sly social policy which divides us into rich and poor - and attempts to influence which group reproduces the most."

Ms Lambie, a former soldier, has courted controversy since being elected to the Senate last September.

She has been engaged in a public stoush with her Palmer United Party colleague, Queensland MP Alex Douglas, who suggested she came from "Boganland". Ms Lambie hit back at that criticism, telling her local paper she was from the "underdog world".

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Eugenics in disguise: PUP senator slams parental leave scheme

PUP's Jacqui Lambie compares parental leave scheme to eugenics

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April 30, 2014, 4:09 p.m.

Tasmanian senator-elect Jacqui Lambie has compared the Coalition's paid parental leave scheme to eugenics - the discredited social policy associated with Adolf Hitler's Nazi-era attempts to breed a race of ubermenschen, or super humans.

Tasmanian senator-elect Jacqui Lambie has compared the Coalition's paid parental leave scheme to eugenics - the discredited social policy associated with Adolf Hitler's Nazi-era attempts to breed a race of ubermenschen, or super humans.

As Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced he would scale back his ambitious paid parental leave scheme from an upper limit of $150,000 to $100,000, blaming the budget emergency created by the former Labor government, Ms Lambie accused the government's generous scheme of attempting to discourage poor people from having children.

Eugenics emerged in the 19th century as a "scientific" theory designed to control which people became parents and thereby limit which genes were passed on. It was adopted by the Nazis and used to justify the forced sterilisation of an estimated 400,000 people, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial museum, and the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

"Its clear that the Liberals paid parental leave scheme is a not-so-subtle attempt at discouraging Australians with the undesirable trait of being poor (when compared with those who are rich) from reproducing. Why else would Mr Abbott and his supporters champion a government scheme which ensures rich Australians receive more than double, sometimes triple the amount of parental leave that poor working Australians receive?" she said in a statement.

"The only fair way to administer any government-sanctioned paid parental leave scheme is as per the Palmer United policy - and ensure that all Australian parents and babies are treated equally. Otherwise those championing a government scheme which clearly tries to influence or control who becomes parents must be associated with eugenics- and all the historic, moral and political baggage attached to this reviled social theory."

"If the Liberals really want to improve Australian society then they should allow our children to access free university degrees and visits to their GPs, not introduce a sly social policy which divides us into rich and poor - and attempts to influence which group reproduces the most."

Ms Lambie, a former soldier, has courted controversy since being elected to the Senate last September.

She has been engaged in a public stoush with her Palmer United Party colleague, Queensland MP Alex Douglas, who suggested she came from "Boganland". Ms Lambie hit back at that criticism, telling her local paper she was from the "underdog world".

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PUP's Jacqui Lambie compares parental leave scheme to eugenics


  1. Eugenics