Published: Thursday, June 14, 2012 at 6:59 p.m. Last Modified: Thursday, June 14, 2012 at 6:59 p.m.

Potential compensation of the state's victims of involuntary sterilization is tangled in a web of politics and General Assembly rules, putting its passage in question during this year's legislative session.

As a result, the budget negotiations process between the state House and Senate may be the best if not only hope remaining for living victims of the state's former eugenics movement who hope to receive cash payments in the coming fiscal year.

"While this isn't the most desirable outcome, it might be the most politically feasible one that will allow for its implementation this year," said Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr., D-Durham, a primary proponent of victim compensation.

In an interview with reporters Thursday afternoon, Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said compensation for eugenics victims likely would be among the issues discussed as the House and Senate meet to iron out the differences between their versions of the budget during the next several days. Among the other issues will be Berger's controversial education reform package.

The Senate budget passed this week without compensation for survivors of the movement, which sterilized thousands of state residents last century. The House budget included money for one-time, tax-free payments of $50,000 per victim. Questions have arisen in both chambers about whether $50,000 is too much.

Berger said he personally would support compensation for living victims but said Senate Republicans have concerns about the timing and the proposed payment amount. Democrats, he said, had years to pay victims when they controlled the Legislature, in better times for the state economically.

"Never once did they pass a bill," he said. "Never once did they appropriate a dollar. Why now when we're in the deepest recession that we've seen in our lifetimes?"

It also became clear Thursday that there may not be enough votes in the Senate to pass a eugenics compensation bill outside of the budget process, meaning a special budget provision part of a deal between House and Senate Republicans may be the only option. Earlier this month, the House passed a standalone measure to place about $10 million in a fund to compensate victims but the Senate hasn't touched it.

Republican state Sens. Thom Goolsby and Bill Rabon both said Thursday that they don't support payments to victims in the coming budget year.

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Payments to eugenics victims looking doubtful

RALEIGH (WTVD) -- There's been a major blow to victims of the state's eugenics program, who had reason to expect compensation this summer. It now looks like that may not happen.

"I think it's a shameful, shameful day," said Rep. Alma Adams, (D) Guilford County. "We talk the talk. We don't walk the walk."

Adams, like so many others in the State House, thought the state was going to compensate living victims of North Carolina's Eugenics Program. Members of the House put up a bill that would give victims $50,000 each. It also put $11 million in their budget to pay for it.

However, that all came crashing down in the State Senate Wednesday.

"What happened is the Democrats tied eugenics to a tax increase," said President Pro-tem Sen. Phil Berger.

Berger said many Republicans in his chamber don't support the payout and the $11 million wasn't included in their budget. So Democrat Clark Jenkins, of Edgecombe County, tagged it on to an amendment, which failed.

"Once a measure is a defeated measure in the Senate, it's not eligible for consideration at a later date," said Berger.

"My understanding is it was not in the House budget," said Jenkins. "I was trying to bring some attention to it on the Senate side and so, I failed. The leadership did not want it in there."

Lawmakers said it may still be possible to get it done. But now, however, it's a much longer road.

"The maneuver the Ds attempted on the floor makes it much less likely it occurs," said Berger.

Continued here:

Major blow to eugenics compensation plan

To his credit, Republican state House Speaker Thom Tillis has become a strong supporter of North Carolina making payments to victims of the states long-running eugenics program, in which some of those judged to be mentally deficient in some way were sterilized involuntarily. Some 1,500 to 2,000 victims of this misguided attempt, which dated to the early 20th century, to improve the genetic makeup of populations are still alive.

And they are, as Tillis and other Republicans and Democrats in the legislature have said, entitled to compensation for what the state did to them. The board that oversaw the eugenics program didnt go out of business until 1977, and the laws that allowed the program werent repealed until 2003.

This was simply a disgrace, and it was good to see the state House moving ahead with a proposal to pay victims who can be documented $50,000. Now, unfortunately, the state Senate (also controlled by Republicans) has not provided money for the payments in its budget. Thats wrong, and its all the more troubling because it appears the money may become a bargaining chip for senators to use with House members when the chambers go to talks on budget compromise.

That is a familiar tactic that goes something like: You get the money for your Program A if we get our money for Program B. Then the budget is so adjusted.

But the issue of making things right, or as close to right as they can be at this point, with eugenics victims is far too important, and overdue, to treat it like some political chip to be tossed on the negotiation table. These people have been wronged, and in too many cases, their lives have almost been ruined by what was done to them. They deserve the dignity of a timely settlement, minus the politics.

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The wrong ‘chip’

The current Yale Alumni Magazine includes a portrait of Irving Fisher, an economics professor in the 1920s and '30s and a giant of his field.

The author, Richard Conniff, takes note of Fisher's prodigious accomplishments and his private decency in order to foreground the real subject of his article: the economist's role as one of his era's highest-wattage proponents of eugenics.

The American elite's pre-World War II commitment to breeding out the "unfit" - defined as racial minorities, low-IQ whites, the mentally and physically handicapped, and the criminally inclined - is a story that defies easy stereotypes about progress and enlightenment.

On the one hand, these U.S. eugenicists tended to be WASP grandees like Fisher - ivory-tower dwellers and privileged have-mores with an obvious incentive to invent spurious theories to justify their own position.

But these same eugenicists were often political and social liberals - advocates of social reform, partisans of science. "They weren't sinister characters out of some darkly lighted noir film about Nazi sympathizers," Conniff writes, "but environmentalists, peace activists, fitness buffs, healthy-living enthusiasts, inventors and family men."

From Teddy Roosevelt to the Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, fears about "race suicide" and "human weeds" were common among progressives, who saw the quest for a better gene pool as of a piece with their dream of human advancement.

This fascination with eugenics largely ended with the horrors wrought by National Socialism.

But the practice urged by Fisher and others - the elimination or pre-emption, through reproductive planning, of the weaker members of the human species - has become a more realistic possibility than it ever was in the 1920s and '30s.

The eugenicists had general ideas about genetics and heredity, crude ideas about intelligence, and poisonous ideas about racial hierarchies. They did not have, as we do, access to the genetic blueprints of individuals - including, most important, human beings still developing in utero, whose development can be legally interrupted by the intervention of an abortionist.

That access, until recently, has required invasive procedures like amniocentesis. But last week brought a remarkable breakthrough: A team of scientists mapped nearly an entire fetal genome using blood from the mother and saliva from the father.

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Eugenics meets technology

A bill to compensate the more than 130 victims of the states early and mid-20th Century sterilization program 19 of whom resided in Lenoir County is winding its way through the legislature.

The bill passed the N.C. House this month 86-31 with strong bipartisan support Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis of Mecklenburg County was among the 35 GOP members who voted with House Democrats on House Bill 947, the Eugenics Compensation Program.

Local Reps. William Wainwright, D-Craven, and Pat McElraft, R-Carteret, voted for the bill. Rep. Stephen LaRoque, R-Lenoir, voted against it.

None of the three could be reached for comment before press time Monday.

The bill is now before the Senates Judiciary Committee; if it passes the General Assembly and is signed by Gov. Bev Perdue, each sterilization victim would receive lump sum compensation of $50,000.

Perdue has included $10.3 million in her version of this years budget for a compensation fund.

We cannot change the terrible things that happened to so many of our most vulnerable citizens, but we can take responsibility for our states mistakes and show that we do not tolerate violations of basic human rights, the governor stated.

Between 1933 and 1977, about 7,600 North Carolinians, male and female and black and white, were forcibly sterilized officials at the time felt the procedures were for the patients own good.

The website for the N.C. History Project states: The Eugenics Board believed sterilizations improved the lives of those sterilized. According to the Board, the procedures were not punishments.

Sterilizations took place in all 100 counties, and officials with the N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation have identified 132 victims living in 51 counties.

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Eugenics compensation winds through legislature

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The DNA of a Fetus, and the Moral Questions

RALEIGH, NC (AP) - The North Carolina Senate's largest committee has moved along the Republicans' budget proposal for next year without making changes sought by advocates for the public schools and the prevention of teen smoking and adolescent pregnancy. The Senate Appropriations Committee agreed Tuesday on a voice vote to recommend the $20.1 billion spending plan, which spends $127 million less than a House budget proposal approved two weeks ago. Committee chairmen gave the public the chance to speak on the bill before several amendments were taken up. Kristy Andrews urged senators to set aside money from the national tobacco settlement agreement for youth smoking prevention and cessation programs. Andrews' husband began smoking early and died from cancer at age 30. The bill is expected to be voted on Wednesday by the full Senate. Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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No eugenics funding in NC Senate budget plan

Researchers have mapped the entire genome of a fetus using only a blood sample from the mother and a saliva sample from the father. In the New York Times , Ross Douthat argues this sort of research raises new questions about reproductive ethics, for expectant parents and society as a whole.

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Op-Ed: Eugenics Specter Hangs Over DNA Sequencing

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Eugenics, Past and Future

Published 11:09am Friday, June 8, 2012

RALEIGH A bill to compensate victims of the states former Eugenics Board program was passed Tuesday (June 5) by House members and now advances to the Senate.

The House version of the proposed legislation includes Gov. Bev Perdues call to pay $50,000 lump sum compensation to living victims, as well as fund continuation of the N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation, which provides services to victims.

Both local House representatives from the Roanoke-Chowan area Annie Mobley of District 5 and Michael Wray of District 27 voted in favor of the bill.

I thank the House for passing this measure with bipartisan support, Gov. Perdue said. It is time for the State of North Carolina to show leadership and take responsibility for what was done to our own people. I urge the Senate to take this bill up soon.

Gov. Perdue established the Sterilization Victims Foundation in March 2010, as well as the Eugenics Compensation Task Force, whose report formed the core of her budget recommendations.

Legislators spoke emotionally about the subject, expressing both concern for victims and for allocating a $10 million fund for compensation during a difficult budget year. An amendment to reduce the payment from $50,000 to $20,000 was opposed by House Leader Paul Stam and failed.

It is impossible to overstate the historical significance of the action taken today in the North Carolina House of Representatives, said House Speaker Thom Tillis (R-Mecklenburg). With the bipartisan vote of 86 House members, our state took a bold step toward providing a small amount of justice for the victims of a horrific program. North Carolina is poised to become the first state in the nation to compensate victims of a state-operated eugenics program, and that is a distinction to be proud of. Todays vote has been long overdue, and I congratulate everyone who had a role in this process. Todays vote puts North Carolina on the doorstep of history.

This is a huge step in the right direction, said Foundation Executive Director Charmaine Fuller Cooper. The horrors of history can never be changed. But, todays bipartisan vote showed that we can learn from history and ensure that past horrors are not repeated.

Currently, 132 individuals, one of which resides in Bertie County, have been verified by the N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation, of which 118 (about 90 percent) are living. More verification requests are being researched with assistance from State Archivists as it is believed that as many as 2,000 sterilization victims are still alive.

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NC House approves Eugenics compensation

Its certainly not a celebratory moment, but heres a cheer, nonetheless, for the state House and its important vote this week to set aside up to $10 million to compensate victims of North Carolinas former sterilization program. Involuntarily sterilized people mostly women but some men as well are eligible for $50,000 payments once their cases are verified; so far, there are 118 verified living victims.

The bill now goes to the Senate, which should approve it promptly so that at long last the sterilization victims can have a measure, if not a full measure, of recompense.

Theres a lot of history behind that 86-31 House vote on Tuesday. Starting in the 1930s, the N.C. Eugenics Board ran a program to sterilize people in mental hospitals and schools for troubled youths. Later the program focused on people on welfare. Some of the sterilizations were indeed voluntary (this was before the days of reliable birth control) but many others were not. And while other states had similar programs, ours was unusually extensive (third in the U.S. in total number of people sterilized) and long-lasting (into the 1970s).

The various states sterilization programs, which Americans today view with something akin to horror, did not seem that way to most people at the time. These were days particularly during the pre-Nazi Holocaust days when educated Americans talked openly of the dangers of enfeeblement and about selectively improving the human race.

In North Carolina the Human Betterment League, created by corporate leaders, proudly proclaimed that North Carolina offers its citizens protection in the form of selective sterilization. Its efforts, commencing after World War II, resulted in an upturn in state-conducted sterilizations. Over the decades, more than 7,000 North Carolinians were sterilized. Most were white, although African-Americans were sterilized in disproportionately large numbers.

The effort to bring the involuntary sterilizations to light, and then to obtain compensation, began several years ago. Many people and organizations deserve credit; a special nod goes to the Winston-Salem Journal for its reporting and advocacy. In contrast, those in the House who this week ducked responsibility for even the relatively few still-living victims of a grievously harmful state action are due no credit at all.

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Eugenics in the House

RALEIGH, NC (AP) -- North Carolina moved closer to becoming the first U.S. state to compensate victims of a forced sterilization program when the state House approved legislation Tuesday to compensate living survivors $50,000 each.

North Carolina laws enforced from 1929 to 1974 allowed more than 7,600 people to undergo surgeries that left them unable to reproduce. Some chose to be sterilized as a form of birth control. Others were ordered to undergo surgeries by a state panel that found them mentally feeble, promiscuous, too poor to raise children, or otherwise inferior for parenthood. Up to 2,000 may be alive. The state has verified 132 victims, of whom 118 are still living.

House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, took the unusual step of giving up control of the legislative debate to argue in favor of the legislation. He said as a conservative he feels it's necessary to compensate people who were harmed by the power of the state.

"We had elected officials and leaders who had the audacity to know what the great race was," Tillis said. "There are people living today, all around this community, who have had this done to them and we have a chance to put it at rest."

The bill approved by the House 86-31 would set aside $11 million to pay $50,000 to victims of forced sterilization who were alive when the current legislative session opened last month.

"We owe it to them. Not in a legal sense, but a moral sense," said House Majority Leader Paul Stam, R-Wake. "This was a sad program that lasted for several decades and has as its genesis a philosophy that is very alien to the American spirit."

The legislation was resisted by a handful of lawmakers who said compensation now meant taking from today's taxpayers to try to rectify the deeds of their ancestors.

"We're punishing people who had nothing to do with this," said Rep. G.L. Pridgen, R-Robeson.

Rep. John Blust, R-Guilford, tried and failed to reduce the compensation from $50,000 to $20,000, citing another tight state budget this year more than four years after the recession began.

"You know what kind of situation our budget is in," Blust said. "This still is enough money that the state says you were wronged."

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Eugenics compensation bill passed by house

Published:Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Updated:Wednesday, June 6, 2012 12:06

According to a news release by the North Carolina Department of Administration, the Eugenics compensation bill was passed in the North Carolina House of Representatives yesterday evening.

The bill includes Gov. Bev Perdues call to pay a $50,000 lump sum compensation to living victims, as well as funding the continuation of the N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation, which provides services to victims.

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Eugenics bill passed by House

Leaders in the N.C. General Assembly say that it is too early to evaluate the prospects of proposed legislation that would give reparations to people who were sterilized under a state-sponsored eugenics program.

North Carolina is one step closer to compensating victims of its forced-sterilization program.

The state House approved legislation Tuesday to compensate living survivors $50,000 each. The bill now goes to the Senate.

Between 1933 and 1974, thousands of people were forced to have surgeries that left them unable to have children.

House Speaker Thom Tillis argued in favor of the legislation, saying he felt it was necessary to compensate people who were harmed by the power of the state.

It is impossible to overstate the historical significance of the action taken today in the North Carolina House of Representatives, said Tillis. North Carolina is poised to become the first state in the nation to compensate victims of a state-operated eugenics program, and that is a distinction to be proud of. Todays vote has been long overdue, and I congratulate everyone who had a role in this process. Todays vote puts North Carolina on the doorstep of history.

The state has verified 132 victims, of those, 118 are still alive. But the state believes there may be up to 2,000 living victims.

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NC House passes eugenics compensation legislation

lbonner@newsobserver.com

The state House approved in an 86-31 vote Tuesday a measure that will compensate people sterilized by a state authority over four decades.

Under the bill, people verified by a state Office of Justice for Sterilization Victims and determined eligible by the Industrial Commission would each receive $50,000. House members voted to change eligibility, so that people alive as of May 16, 2012 would be eligible, rather than those alive in March 2010. The House defeated an amendment to reduce the compensation to $20,000.

We cannot solve all the problems of the past, said House Majority Leader Paul Stam, an Apex Republican. This is one we can ameliorate and solve.

The bill sets aside $10 million in a reserve fund to pay victims. The bill now moves to the Senate for consideration.

The state passed a eugenics law in 1929 and from 1933 to 1974, a board created by the legislature ordered that mentally diseased, feeble-minded or epileptic people be sterilized. The board also ordered sterilized people who were poor or who were thought likely to have disabled children.

Many states ran eugenics programs, but North Carolinas was one of the most active, enlisting social workers to make sterilization recommendations.

According to the N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation, most states moved away from sterilization after World War II, while 70 percent of the Eugenics Board-approved sterilizations in North Carolina occurred after World War II. The board authorized the sterilization of about 7,600 people. About 1,500 to 2,000 are thought to still be alive. The state has verified 118 living victims.

House Speaker Thom Tillis described the eugenics program as an egregious example of government taking away rights, something conservatives oppose.

This is a chance to make history, Tillis said.

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N.C. House approves measure compensating victims of eugenics programs

By:News 14 Carolina Web Staff

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RALEIGH -- A bill aimed at making reparations to victims of North Carolina's former eugenics program was approved by the state House Tuesday. This proposal would give $50,000 to living victims of this involuntary sterilization program.

Opponents say it is bad business for the state to start making reparations for actions of past leaders and question the dollar amount of the payout, but supporters say the practice was simply wrong and this action is the right thing to do.

"There are people living today, there are people all around this community that have had this thing done to them and this is an opportunity to say we are going to put this to rest," said Rep. Thom Tillis. "We are going to make a decision, we are going to memorialize. Sometimes we have to look at what the predecessors in this institution did and say that was wrong and that's the opportunity we have today."

This bill will now go on to the Senate for consideration.

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House passes bill outlining eugenics reparations

6 June 2012

Bennett takes another insidious step on slippery slope to eugenics

Government moves towards judicial control of some womens reproductive rights are another insidious step on the slippery road to State eugenics says Auckland Action Against Poverty spokesperson Sue Bradford.

It is abhorrent that on top of encouraging long acting contraception for all women beneficiaries and worktesting them from the time their baby is one year old, Paula Bennett now intends to find a way to stop some mothers from having children at all.

While the protection of children should always be paramount, our group recognises that the courts and CYFS already have the right to step in and remove babies and children if they are in danger.

There is no need to embark on this incredibly dangerous path towards complete government control of some womens reproductive rights.

The courts will be expected to make judgements implying that a woman will never have a chance to reform or recover from whatever situation has lead her to harm her child or children.

If women see no future chance for rehabilitation, and no hope of a comparatively normal life ever again, they are more likely to continue a hopeless downward progression in their personal lives, rather than working towards recovery.

There is nothing surer than that the outcome of such a draconian penalty will be increased health, justice, welfare and other costs to the state.

And if Paula Bennett is not talking about forced sterilization what does she propose forced abortion?

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Bennett takes another step on slippery slope to eugenics

The Judicial Committee of the General Assembly met Tuesday afternoon to discuss compensation for victims of North Carolinas Eugenics Board.

In 1933 the state legislature officially authorized the practice of sterilization via the Eugenics Board of North Carolina. The board actively sanctioned the forced sterilization of an estimated 7,600 people until 1977, when the program was shut down. According to Department of Administration records, many of these victims were African American and female.

In January, a task force of five members approved the recommendation to compensate affected families with a payment of $50,000. Gov. Bev Perdue allotted $10.3 million in her budget proposal to allow these payments. Tuesdays discussion of the Eugenics Compensation Program bill brought about mixed reactions to the payments, as well as more details on who qualifies to receive them.

Representative Larry Womble of Forsyth County, made a strong appeal when discussing the bill.

It is a bill that separates North Carolina from the rest of the world, Womble said. This is an auspicious time in North Carolina history.

In order to qualify for monetary compensation as stipulated by the bill, sterilizations must have been court-ordered. In addition, families of victims who were alive as of March 1, 2010 can receive compensation on the deceaseds behalf.

Charmaine Fuller Cooper, executive director of the North Carolina Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation and graduate of N.C. States masters program in public administration, isnt convinced that monetary compensation is enough for every victim.

Some may need mental health services. Everyone has been affected differently, for some the money would be helpful, but then it becomes a question of how much, Fuller Cooper said.

According to Elaine Riddick, an outspoken victim of the Boards actions, the $50,000 doesnt cut it.

This is a huge smack in my familys face, Riddick said.

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Eugenics victims to receive reparation

The theory of output as a whole, which is what The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state. John Maynard Keynes

In looking at and assessing the economic paradigm of John Maynard Keynes a man himself fixated on aggregates we must look at the aggregate of his thought, and the aggregate of his ideology.

Keynes was not just an economist. Between 1937 and 1944 he served as the head of the Eugenics Society and once called eugenicsthe most important, significant and, I would add, genuine branch of sociology which exists. And Keynes, we should add, understood that economics was a branch of sociology. So lets be clear: Keynes thought eugenics was more important, more significant, and more genuine than economics.

Eugenics or the control of reproduction is a very old idea.

In The Republic, Plato advocated that the state should covertly control human reproduction:

You have in your house hunting-dogs and a number of pedigree cocks. Do not some prove better than the rest?Do you then breed from all indiscriminately, or are you careful to breed from the best?And, again, do you breed from the youngest or the oldest, or, so far as may be, from those in their prime? And if they are not thus bred, you expect, do you not, that your birds and hounds will greatly degenerate? And what of horses and other animals? Is it otherwise with them? How imperative, then, is our need of the highest skill in our rulers, if the principle holds also for mankind? The best men must cohabit with the best women in as many cases as possible and the worst with the worst in the fewest,and that the offspring of the one must be reared and that of the other not, if the flock is to be as perfect as possible. And the way in which all this is brought to pass must be unknown to any but the rulers, if, again, the herd of guardians is to be as free as possible from dissension. Certain ingenious lots, then, I suppose, must be devised so that the inferior man at each conjugation may blame chance and not the rulers and on the young men, surely, who excel in war and other pursuits we must bestow honors and prizes, and, in particular, the opportunity of more frequent intercourse with the women, which will at the same time be a plausible pretext for having them beget as many of the children as possible. And the children thus born will be taken over by the officials appointed for this.

Additionally, Plato advocated disposing with the offspring of the inferior:

The offspring of the inferior, and any of those of the other sort who are born defective, they will properly dispose of in secret, so that no one will know what has become of them. That is the condition of preserving the purity of the guardians breed.

In modernity, the idea appears to have reappeared in the work first of Thomas Malthus, and later that of Francis Galton.

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Guest Post: Keynesianism & Eugenics

The Judicial Committee of the General Assembly met Tuesday afternoon to discuss compensation for victims of North Carolinas Eugenics Board.

In 1933 the state legislature officially authorized the practice of sterilization via the Eugenics Board of North Carolina. The board actively sanctioned the forced sterilization of an estimated 7,600 people until 1977, when the program was shut down. According to Department of Administration records, many of these victims were African American and female.

In January, a task force of five members approved the recommendation to compensate affected families with a payment of $50,000. Gov. Bev Perdue allotted $10.3 million in her budget proposal to allow these payments. Tuesdays discussion of the Eugenics Compensation Program bill brought about mixed reactions to the payments, as well as more details on who qualifies to receive them.

Representative Larry Womble of Forsyth County, made a strong appeal when discussing the bill.

It is a bill that separates North Carolina from the rest of the world, Womble said. This is an auspicious time in North Carolina history.

In order to qualify for monetary compensation as stipulated by the bill, sterilizations must have been court-ordered. In addition, families of victims who were alive as of March 1, 2010 can receive compensation on the deceaseds behalf.

Charmaine Fuller Cooper, executive director of the North Carolina Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation and graduate of N.C. States masters program in public administration, isnt convinced that monetary compensation is enough for every victim.

Some may need mental health services. Everyone has been affected differently, for some the money would be helpful, but then it becomes a question of how much, Fuller Cooper said.

According to Elaine Riddick, an outspoken victim of the Boards actions, the $50,000 doesnt cut it.

This is a huge smack in my familys face, Riddick said.

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Eugenics victims to recieve reparation