NC Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation
From 1929 until 1974, an estimated 7,600 North Carolinians, women and men, many of whom were poor, undereducated, institutionalized, sick or disabled, were sterilized by choice, force or coercion under the authorization of the North Carolina Eugenics Board program.
Gov. Bev Perdue established the N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation. In the 2009-2010 legislative session, the North Carolina General Assembly provided funding for the Foundation to begin planning to carry out its mission to provide justice and compensate victims who were forcibly sterilized by the State of North Carolina. The Foundation will function as a clearinghouse to assist victims of the N.C. Eugenics Board program. Foundation staff also supports the Governor’s Task Force to Determine the Method of Compensation for Victims of North Carolina’s Eugenics Board.
The N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation is dedicated to providing information and assistance to affected individuals.
Tonight, I happened to tune into Rock Center with Brian Williams and they had a special segment starting Elaine Riddick who was 13-years -old when she became pregnant after being raped by a neighbor in Winfall, North Carolina in 1967. Riddick’s perpetrator was never charged. The state of North Carolina–via a legal and institutionalized cost-reduction program based on Eugenics–ordered that immediately after giving birth, 14-year-old Elain Riddick should be sterilized. Doctors cut and tied off her fallopian tubes. The State of North Carolina needs to take public action and commit to helping the victims of misguided and detrimental state government programs during the war against poverty that lead to a systematic forced sterilization of under-age teenagers and women of color in 31 U.S. states during the 20th century.
“I have to carry these scars with me. I have to live with this for the rest of my life,” she said.
“I was raped by a perpetrator [who was never charged] and then I was raped by the state of North Carolina. They took something from me both times,” she said. “The state of North Carolina, they took something so dearly from me, something that was God given.”
It wouldn’t be until Riddick was 19, married and wanting more children, that she’d learn she was incapable of having any more babies. A doctor in New York where she was living at the time told her that she’d been sterilized.
“Butchered. The doctor used that word… I didn’t understand what she meant when she said I had been butchered,” Riddick said.
North Carolina was one of 31 states to have a government run eugenics program. By the 1960s, tens of thousands of Americans were sterilized as a result of these programs…
…It began as a way to control welfare spending on poor white women and men, but over time, North Carolina shifted focus, targeting more women and more blacks than whites. A third of the sterilizations performed in North Carolina were done on girls under the age of 18. Some were as young as nine years old.” Source: Victims speak out about North Carolina sterilization program, which targeted women, young girls and blacks
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