Posted on 02/26/2015 11:24:25 PM PST by Citizen Zed
Lewis Reynolds didn't understand what had been done to him when he was 13.
Years later, after getting married, the Lynchburg man discovered he couldn't father children. The reason: He had been sterilized by the state.
Reynolds was among more than 7,000 Virginians involuntarily sterilized between 1924 and 1979 under the Virginia Eugenical Sterilization Act.
Advocates for the surviving victims won a three-year fight Thursday when the Virginia General Assembly budgeted $400,000 to compensate them at the rate of $25,000 each.
It's welcome news, Reynolds said.
"I think they done me wrong," he said. "I couldn't have a family like everybody else does. They took my rights away."
Eugenics is the now-discredited movement that sought to improve the genetic composition of humankind by preventing those considered "defective" from reproducing.
Virginia's Sterilization Act became a model for similar legislation passed around the country and the world, including Nazi Germany. Nationwide, 65,000 Americans were sterilized in 33 states, including more than 20,000 in California alone, said Mark Bold, executive director of the Christian Law Institute, which has been advocating the cause of the Virginia victims since 2013.
(Excerpt) Read more at kentucky.com ...
Some would say this still happens to some developmentally disabled young people today, at the behest of the caregiving parent. I am not in that position, so unless overt cruelty was involved, I cannot judge them in a one size fits all sort of way.
Disgusting. Poor guy.
NC settled their cases a couple of years ago.
There was a very lengthy documentary about this on TV, way back in the early to mid 90’s. I think it might have been on PBS, but I can’t swear to it. It was a very interesting program and yes, anybody they considered to be defective, was sterilized. That included people with cerebral palsey which is damage caused during the birth process, and is not an inherited condition.
And, it was cruel from what I remember about the program. I think of that documentary from time to time and now that the net exists, I think I’ll see if I can find it again.
Margaret Sanger of Planned Parenthood approved of eugenics & sterilization. Bet somehow she was involved in states forcibly sterilizing people
If the State is going to be responsible for the care and feeding of each person, cradle-to-grave, the State has the strongest interest, and should be permitted to decide such things.
Too bad they didn’t fix my parents. Would have saved lots of heartache.
Hmmmmmmm. Now, I wonder which political party had absolute control of the Commonwealth during the overwhelming majority of that time period.
It's on the tip of my keyboard...
I guess it's a good thing our government isn't trying to be responsible for the care and feeding of each person from cradle to...
Oh. Right. Never mind.
Does it still happen today, Lee? I thought there had been laws to prevent it. I do know years ago, many Down Syndrome children were sterilized. The parents saw that some were sexually active and didn’t want to pass on the gene/couldn’t take care of a newborn/knew that their DS child wasn’t capable of taking care of an infant.
I most recently heard of a family arranging this about six years ago, and for the exact reasons you stated. This person is maturing physically but never will be mature enough emotionally or mentally enough to take care of a child, or even of themselves. This family was on good terms with the prescribing physician, who knew about this child when she was in utero.
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