You didnt see it in the movie about her, or in most of the innumerable tributes (all well-deserved) recently, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg also fought an injustice in North Carolina.
In 1973, the Supreme Court justice-to-be took on the sordid legacy of eugenics in this state. As director of the ACLU Womens Rights Project, Ginsburg and Womens Rights Project co-founder Brenda Feigen filed a federal lawsuit in North Carolina on behalf of Nial Ruth Cox, a Black woman who had been forcibly sterilized by the state in 1965.
When Cox became pregnant at age 18, county officials gave her mother a choice: to have Cox sterilized, or to lose welfare benefits for her children. Cox and her mother also were told by a doctor that the process was reversible when it wasnt. Those officials saw the pregnancy as proof of Coxs immorality.
The case brought national attention to the states heinous program but a judge sided with the state, which had argued that Cox didnt sue within three years of the operation (which was impossible, since Cox didnt realize that the operation had rendered her permanently unable to have children until later).
A panel of judges reversed the decision in 1975, Ria Tabacco Mar, the current director of the ACLUs Womens Rights Project, wrote last week in a Washington Post op-ed.
But by that point it didnt matter, the three-judge panel ruled. The sterilization program had been ended and so whether it was unconstitutional became moot.
In the end, the state did compensate forced-sterilization victims. And Ginsburgs memories of it were vivid and her opinions obviously strong.
When Mar hosted a discussion with Ginsburg about her career in February, she wrote on her op-ed, she didnt get to a planned question about the North Carolina eugenics case for lack of time.
Ginsburg said to her afterward, You didnt ask me about forced sterilization!
Now Mar writes that she wishes she had.
Sad to say, the issue has resurfaced. Some immigrant women in a privately operated detention center in Georgia allege that they underwent hysterectomies without their consent.
The more things change ?
Greensboro News & Record
The case brought national attention to the states heinous program but a judge sided with the state, which had argued that Cox didnt sue within three years of the operation (which was impossible, since Cox didnt realize that the operation had rendered her permanently unable to have children until later).
The rest is here: