North Carolina to Compensate Eugenics Program Survivors

Until the practice was terminated in 1974, state-sanctioned surgeries left as many as 60,000 Americans unable to bear children. Over 30 states were once involved in these programs; North Carolina is trying to make up for theirs.

In the late 1800s, the ills of society were promised a solution from an emerging science—eugenics. Inspired by social Darwinism, eugenics sought to rid the culture of degenerate individuals through a practice of selective sterilization.

Although North Carolina was one of the last states to abandon the practice, it was one of the first to issue a formal apology for it. Now the Tar Heel state wants to take another step to rectify past behavior as it considers granting financial compensation for as many as 2,900 surviving men and women who were victims of their program.

State Rep. Larry Womble (D) has been a major force behind the state’s reparations attempt. The five-term representative was responsible for encouraging former Gov. Mike Easley to issue an apology in 2002, and to erect a monument to victims. In 2003, Womble pushed to finally remove the eugenics statute from the books, and earlier this year Gov. Bev Perdue appointed Womble to head up the state’s Eugenics Compensation Task Force.

Womble can also be found behind a number of bills addressing the state’s eugenics past: one which would seal the records of state eugenics victims from possible exploitation, another granting surviving victims state health care for life, and HB70—which would create a fund to financially compensate each survivor.

Last week at the first ever public hearing for victims of the state’s eugenics program, survivors shared their stories with the compensation task force. Speakers made compelling cases for compensation as they revealed accounts of life-long pain, falsified signatures, and lies that led to the forced surgeries that left them childless.

Most states abandoned their eugenics program during the 1950s as comparable Nazi programs were revealed. North Carolina continued and increased its practice.

As state-sanctioned surgeries increased during the 1960s, North Carolina earned its distinction as the nation’s third largest eugenics program, just behind the previously active counterparts in California and Virginia. Until the North Carolina eugenics board was disbanded in the mid-1970s, the state determined that thousands of people, mostly poor black women, should be surgically prevented from having children.

While it’s difficult to imagine any state adopting such a program today, eugenics was once supported by scientists and legislators as a reasonable approach to improving mankind. The term eugenics is derived from Greek meaning “noble birth.” Eugenics laws targeted the procreation of individuals considered weak and “feeble-minded” in an attempt to weed undesirable traits out of the American gene pool.

In many cases, sterilization candidates were determined by poverty or race, rather than any actual mental deficiency. Proponents argued that preventing the procreation of certain undesirable social groups would ease the strain on the future public welfare system.

“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind,” wrote Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes in a 1927 Supreme Court decision in favor of eugenics.

Most lawmakers agree that surviving victims should be compensated, the question is: How much? Womble has suggested $50,000 per survivor, but others support a figure less than half this size. While the bill for compensation is said to enjoy bipartisan support, North Carolina faces a $2.5 billion deficit.

It’s hard to put a price tag on making up for decades of systematic state-sanctioned sterility. It’s even more difficult if there isn’t money to pay for it.