N.C. eugenics survivors prove elusive

[Jacie Estes]

N.C. says at least 1,500 of those sterilized under state authority in 1929-74 are still alive, but it lacks the money to track them down.

They were labeled unfit parents, promiscuous or simply feebleminded, then sent by the thousands to surgeons who ensured they would never have babies again - or never at all.


Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/20...cs-survivors-prove-elusive.html#ixzz1d2C8aI9N

 

[Jacie Estes]

Brian Williams did an excellent segment on this issue.

Elaine Riddick was 13 years old when she got pregnant after being raped by a neighbor in Winfall, N.C., in 1967. The state ordered that immediately after giving birth, she should be sterilized. Doctors cut and tied off her fallopian tubes.

“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


http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_ne...m-which-targeted-women-young-girls-and-blacks