North Carolina confronts its history of forced sterilization

Now North Carolina is pondering ways to make amends to ...thousands of others sterilized as part of the eugenics (or "good breeding") movement that began nationally in the early 20th century and continued into the 1970s. The state offered a public apology two years ago. Now lawmakers are debating ways to make reparations to those robbed of the chance to be parents. More than 30 other states had eugenics programs during the last century; they were ruled constitutional in Buck v. Bell, a 1924 Supreme Court decision that is still the law of the land. Roughly 70,000 Americans in all were sterilized before the notion fell out of favor, becoming linked in the public's mind to Hitler's Germany after World War II. But North Carolina is the first to appoint a panel to study what to do now for its victims, from health care and counseling to financial reparations. The state is also considering addressing the shameful practice—finally halted in 1974—in its classrooms. "Some people have tried to pretend it never happened," says North Carolina State Rep. Larry Womble, a reparations activist. "It's painful to remember."