The state of North Carolina ran a Eugenics Board "from 1933 to 1977 as an experiment in genetic engineering once considered a legitimate way to keep welfare rolls small, stop poverty and improve the gene pool." More than 7,600 North Carolinians were sterilized under the program, and while the state formally apologized in 2002, they are STILL trying to figure out how to compensate the victims.
31 other states did this to their residents.
Jesus H. Christ.
See: Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)
P.S. Buck v. Bell has never been overturned.
you know, it’s absolutely horrific what happened and there’s absolutely no doubt about that. but the thing of it is, our state is absolutely struggling. the poor are getting poorer and the government is making cut backs left and right; the churches, in kind, are getting poorer too, so they don’t have their usual ability to (cherry-)pick up the slack. while i do think what happened is horrific, i don’t think i can, in good conscience, say of the X amount of money in the North Carolina pot, I think we should take Y money out and give it away as compensation for something we can never make right. That money comes out of education, transportation, social services coffers… and taking from people who need it as recompense for someone else’s wrong doesn’t add up to me as good government but, rather, just another thing of which to be ashamed.
