Forced sterilization in the US continued until 1974.

[HiPointDem]

For more than 40 years North Carolina ran one of the nation's largest and most aggressive sterilization programs. It expanded after World War II, even as most other states pulled back in light of the horrors of Hitler's Germany. The sterilization program ended in 1974, but its legacy will not go away. Many of its victims are still alive and they bear witness to a bureaucracy that trampled on the rights of the poor and the powerless.

The state program was run by the Eugenics Board of North Carolina, a panel of five bureaucrats who usually decided cases in a few minutes. It was inspired by the eugenics movement, which made exaggerated claims that mental illness, genetic defects and social ills could be eliminated by sterilization.... until recently few details were known about how the board operated, or the nature of cases it handled. The Winston-Salem Journal obtained and examined thousands of these documents. It found that:

More than 2,000 people ages 18 and younger were sterilized in many questionable cases, including a 10-year-old who was castrated. Children were sterilized over the objections of their parents, and the consent process was often a sham....

The program had been racially balanced in the early years, but by the late 1960s more than 60 percent of those sterilized were black, and 99 percent were female....

http://extras.journalnow.com/againsttheirwill/parts/one/story1.html

Here are some of the reasons people were sterilized:

“Pauper. Needs close supervision. Hypersexuality.” (1939)

"She wears men's clothing all time." (sic) (1947)

"Her mother says that she did not go to school as regularly as she could because she had sleepy spells and slight attacks of epilepsy." (1954)

"She seems lazy and unconcerned." (1960)

"..while in school attempted to write love letters to boys she imagined were interested in her." (1962)

In one case a father suspected of incest asked the eugenics board to sterilize his daughter:

"This fourteen year old girl lives in a very poor home environment. Both parents appear to be limited, and the father admits to incestuous feelings for (his daughter) to his wife. Mrs.___ has been reported to the agency for sexual promiscuity by her own daughter but does make some efforts to give supervision. After the father admitted his feelings for ___ the mother had ___ carefully examined by a physician who reported that she had had intercourse.... The parents wish sterilization for ___ as they are afraid she will become pregnant."

[kskiska]

1. I remember a whole family

in Connecticut whose children were considered "feeble-minded" and attended a "Southbury Training School" upstate and had been sterilized. Some of them even married later on. My grandmother was acquainted with them.

[HiPointDem]

2. Still Hiding: Woman sterilized at 14 carries a load of shame

ATLANTA - Elaine Riddick Jessie can't forgive the state of North Carolina for what it did to her in an Edenton hospital in 1968. She tenses as she talks about being sterilized soon after delivering her first and only child when she was 14.

"I was just a baby," said Jessie, 48. "I (was) just a child. They did not, could not have gotten my permission because I wasn't old enough..."

The Perquimans County Department of Public Welfare took custody of Jessie and her seven siblings. They sent five of the children to an orphanage an hour's drive away in Oxford. Jessie and another sister were sent to live with their grandmother, just down the street from their parents' home. That house, too, was dilapidated and crowded. Shortly after moving in with her grandmother, Jessie said, an older man impregnated her. She was 13. "All I remember is that it hurt," she said.

Jessie's grandmother, Maggie "Miss Peaches" Woodard, was on welfare, and her social worker learned during a routine visit that Jessie was pregnant. The white social worker with the county welfare department, the late Marion Payne, pressed Woodard to consent to have Jessie sterilized. Finally, Woodard, who is illiterate, signed her "X" on a consent form. I didn't know what I was signing," Woodard, 86, said recently. But she said Payne told her that if she didn't sign, Jessie would have to go live in an orphanage...

http://extras.journalnow.com/againsttheirwill/parts/one/story1.html

http://extras.journalnow.com/againsttheirwill/multimedia/elaine.html

[BlueIris]

3. Stories of lives damaged by this brutality

are the shame of our nation. One of the worst things ever to happen here.

[procon]

4. The American Eugenics program was the model for Germany's Eugenics program

My aunt/uncle paid mega bucks to the Catholic church to "pray away" their daughter's Down's Syndrome. My cousin was a kind and happy person, but they hid her way andused her as slave labor to do menial household chores. In the 60's, my auntie shipped her off to a state mental institution to be permanently warehoused. It was all very hush-hush, but in the stratified society of the day, my aunt's social shame and embarrassment trumped her daughter's well-being.


Locked away, my poor cousin never went to school or reached her max potential. After the California Eugenics program sterilized her without the family's knowledge, her sister launched a legal battle against her own mother to gain custody of her sister. Thankfully, she prevailed and her sister lived with her and her family until she passed away a couple of years ago.

[BlueIris]

15. I am very sorry to read about your cousin. nt

[raps]

5. Roosevelt supported eugenics as do many people aligned with socialist ideas.

"Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind.... Any group of farmers who permitted their best stock not to breed, and let all the increase come from the worst stock, would be treated as fit inmates for an asylum.... Some day we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty of the good citizens of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type. The great problem of civilization is to secure a relative increase of the valuable as compared with the less valuable or noxious elements in the population... The problem cannot be met unless we give full consideration to the immense influence of heredity..."

"I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized and feebleminded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them... The emphasis should be laid on getting desirable people to breed..."

Both, Theodore Roosevelt

The economist John Keynes was also a supporter of it.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of planned parenthood was a huge advocate. Birth control and abortion was her way of promoting eugenics. She was also pretty racist.

[HiPointDem]

6. teddy roosevelt was no socialist; quite the opposite. neither were keynes or sanger.

[raps]

7. Did I say they were?

Eugenics is a policy of socialism for sure but one need not be a socialist to agree with it.

[HiPointDem]

9. eugenics was a policy developed by the british and american ruling class. e.g. the carnegie &

rockefeller foundations.

only if you believe that rich people want to give up their privilege do you believe they are socialists.

i have never believed that.

[raps]

11. Because they thought they were the best

They believed that poverty was a result of bad breeding. That the poor were a drain on society. They were weeding out the undesirables. Ridding society of those who would drain their wealth. Socialism works best when the people who make it work are all capable of providing for themselves and there are none living solely off the work of others. True socialism is a strict and sometimes brutal societal form.

[HiPointDem]

12. sorry, you're speaking some foreign language i don't understand.

[raps]

13. Socialism can work great

When applied in the proper way. A big part of which is eliminating those who are not seen as providing anything to society. Socialism as it is seen today is not real socialism. It is based on emotion instead of logic. The emotional aspect that has been injected into it today is why it can't ever succeed. Especially on a large scale. There are only so many people who can be considered dependents in a socialist society before it begins to decline. People may dislike me saying this but it is the truth. Think about economyless societies that existed in the past. Ones in which every member had a job to do that provided a service for the whole of their society. Their size was limited by resources. If resources dwindled, so did the society. Think of money today as the resources. If there aren't enough people making money then the dependent class grows and drains the society.

Wow, this is way off topic now isn't it? rofl

[Raven]

8. I was an Advocate in Alabama for the Federal District

Court which was monitoring the treatment of mentally ill and mentally retarded confined in institutions. In 1973 I had a client who was a 16 year old girl, one of 12 kids who were found dumpster diving for food and taken from their parents by the State. Her name was Ina Mae Patrick. She was not retarded and not mentally ill. She was poor. While she was in the institution she crawled into bed with one of her sisters and was labeled by the institution as a lesbian. We got her out of the institution and worked with her for about a year. She was very bright and made great progress. At the end of that year we found her a job in Birmingham with a family as a live in nanny. We had to get an order from the county judge releasing her from State custody. We went to court and the judge read her file, saw the lesbian label, and ordered her to be sterilized. I remember saying to the Judge "Your Honor, if Ina Mae is, in fact, a lesbian, you really don't have to worry about her getting pregnant." He didn't care and issued the Sterilization Order. We had to go to the Federal District Court to get the Order rescinded. Ina Mae went to Birmingham and I hope has had a very good life.

[HiPointDem]

10. interesting, thank you for that.

[dixiegrrrrl]

14. I hope she is not bothered by the fact you have posted her personal details.

Apparently the Federal District Court Advocate's Office does not require client confidentiality?