Posted on 06/23/2011 7:17:26 AM PDT by surroundedbyblue
There is nothing the state of North Carolina can do, Elaine Riddick says, to make up for forcing her to be sterilized when she was 14 years old.
"They cut me open like I was a hog," the woman who now lives in Atlanta said at a Wednesday hearing in Raleigh held by a panel working to determine compensation for thousands of victims of the state's defunct eugenics program. "My heart bleeds every single day. I'm crushed. What can they do for me?"
Riddick, 57, was one of 13 people who spoke at the meeting, and one of nearly 3,000 living victims of the program, which was shuttered in 1977, three years after the last sterilization was performed. The public hearing is part of a process unprecedented not just in North Carolina, but nationally. About a half dozen other states have joined North Carolina in apologizing for past eugenics programs, but none of the others have put together a plan to compensate victims of involuntary sterilization.
"It's hard for me to accept or understand or even try to figure out why these kinds of atrocious acts could be carried out in this country," said Gov. Beverly Perdue, who appointed the Eugenics Task Force that convened Wednesday's hearing.
Any plan that involves financial compensation will be a hard sell, though, in a year when the state budget includes deep cuts to numerous programs. The General Assembly passed the $19.7 billion spending plan over Perdue's veto. Bills in the legislature aimed at providing specific financial and medical compensation for victims have stalled.
"We've made some baby steps, but as we get closer to the big one, there's some pushback," said state Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth, the lawmaker who's been most active on the issue.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Actually Lady he was sterilized. :-)
Woo-hoo!! One less anti-life, anti-God troll!!!
Or maybe not so much dumb, but miserable. They may very well know what they supporting and doing, the leftists want all this to happen because they are not happy, are never happy(when is a leftist ever?) and wish to spread their misery to feel better about themselves.
It’s always easy to pick defenseless,innocent targets.
That'll fix it fer shur.
Margaret Sanger and much of the old left leaders supported eugenics.
He has been removed from posting on FR.
He still exists in the real world ... he still talks to people ... he still votes.
They come from the same mind set. Margaret Sanger is an example of a eugenics supporter, abortion was her method.
Man gets zot,
others rub it in...
end the entitlement, that is the solution
They changed from sterilization to abortion (they were anti-abortion previously) in order to continue their eugenics after sterilization was outlawed.
Thank you for your principled stand. It's not all about money.
I don;t think taxpayers should be made to pay up. Find the people who sponsored and passed the program and make them pay up personally!
Yes, that happened a lot too.
I think the politicians who passed it and the administrators who did it should be made to pay, not the present taxpayers.
I am tired of taxpayers paying up when politicians/gov workers mess up and are never punished themselves
This is one of those pieces of "Hidden History" that is known but rarely taught. My family had personal experience with it back in the 1930s in West Virginia so I know about it but it is generally glossed over or not mentioned at all in class room history books.
Eugenics was a very popular and respectable movement during the late 1800 to the early 1900. If you want to really churn your stomach you can read about the "Family Fairs" held in the 1920s. The ideals of Nazi Germany were born in the "Progressive Policy's" of the US Democrat Party.
People were just animals and should be bred and improved. The "impure" lines should be cut off.
This included people who were poor, people who had skin darker then a paper bag, people who didn't speak English or didn't speak it "properly", people who were unemployed, women who were raped, children who had birthmarks, children who had cleft pallets (cat mouth), ears that stuck out... In fact a good portion of the human race.
By their lights this was ok, after all they weren't really "people" and had no rights as a person.
If you like I can refer you to some websites.
[snicker]
Dancing in the troll guts and ashes is so much fun, isn’t it.
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