From 1907, eugenics programs sprang up all over the USA. Did these sterilization programs inspire Hitler's regime in Germany?
on.aol.com
It wasn’t long ago that forced sterilization programs were in place in the U.S. The American eugenics movement implemented them and over 30 states agreed to these practices. Hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom were in some way disabled, ill or who belonged to “socially disadvantaged groups living on the margins of society” were sterilized.
It’s an appalling record. The government policies are now recognized as abhorrent violations of human rights. Still, it wasn’t until recently that some of those who had been sterilized against their will received any sort of compensation. Virginia is in the news this week as one of the first states to compensate those on record who had been forcefully sterilized.
Forced sterilizations in Virginia occurred legally between 1924 and 1979, reported the Associated Press Feb. 26. Now, the state will provide compensation for those who are still living today, allotting $25,000 to each of the surviving victims who were forced to be sterilized under the act.
Lewis Reynolds was one of the victims sterilized during this time. He was sent to the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feeble Minded when he was 13 years old after being hit in the head with a rock. The event made him suffer temporary epilepsy like symptoms. Reynolds didn’t know he had been sterilized until many years later when he was unable to father children. Reynolds shares a fate with more than 7,000 Virginians who were rendered infertile between the above mentioned dates under the Virginian Eugenical Sterilization Act.
It’s an issue that has been addressed by advocacy groups in Virginia’s General Assembly for the last three years. Now Virginia is the second state to have approved a plan of compensation for eugenics programs victims. North Carolina ruled in 2013 that $50,000 would be granted to survivors of forced sterilization in their state.
This seems like good news but in reality, the wheels of apologetic compensation advance slowly. According to AP, there are “only 11 known surviving victims,” two of whom died last year.
*originally published on the now defunct Examiner.com
No comments:
Post a Comment