Sterile victims stand up, decry legacy of eugenics

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Chicago Tribune news : Print Edition - Wednesday News Sterile

victims stand up, decry legacy of eugenics `The doctor told me I had been

butchered' By Dahleen Glanton Tribune national correspondent ...

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Sterile victims stand up, decry legacy of eugenics`The doctor told me I had

been butchered'

 

By Dahleen Glanton

Tribune national correspondent

Published September 6, 2006

 

RALEIGH, N.C. -- It is hard for Elaine Riddick to talk about how the state

of North Carolina sterilized her without her knowledge at the age of 14,

changing her life forever. But she manages to wipe away the tears and garner the

strength to tell her story to anyone who will listen.

 

After Riddick became pregnant from a rape, doctors on the Eugenics Board of

North Carolina decided in 1968 that she was too " feeble-minded " to ever be a

good mother and wanted to ensure that she never would get pregnant again. So

doctors tied her tubes and didn't tell her.

 

 

Thirty-eight years later, Riddick, a 52-year-old with a quiet demeanor, has

emerged as a voice for thousands of victims of state-sponsored sterilizations

that were part of the eugenics movement in the United States from the 1920s to

the 1970s. Riddick and others are coming forward and forcing states to address

their roles in a controversial social experiment that went awry.

 

" What they did to me was totally inhumane. Death would have been better because

it would have been over, " said Riddick, who has battled depression. " This is a

story that must be told. So I pulled myself up from the hole . . . where I had

hidden for many years. And when I told the story, I could hold my head up high

for the first time. "

 

The idea behind eugenics, a concept embraced by Nazi Germany, was to wipe out

future poverty, crime and other social ills believed to result from genetic

flaws.

 

By sterilizing the feeble-minded, mentally retarded, insane and epileptic,

eugenicists believed they would ensure that undesirable traits would not

continue through generations.

 

`It was welfare reform'

 

" It was welfare reform, " said Paul Lombardo, a law professor at Georgia State

University and an authority on biomedical ethics. " There would be no need for a

welfare system if there were nobody in it. So they said, `If you let us

sterilize people, we will cut your taxes.' "

 

North Carolina had one of the most active and long-running programs. At least

7,500 poor African-Americans and whites, many of them welfare recipients, were

tricked or forced to undergo sterilizations from 1929 to 1975. Throughout the

United States, an estimated 65,000 people--overwhelmingly women--were

involuntarily sterilized, Lombardo said.

 

" This was really genocide, " said North Carolina state Rep. Larry Womble, who has

fought unsuccessfully to get the General Assembly to provide financial

reparations to 2,800 North Carolina victims believed still alive. " It cut off

their bloodline and took away all of their dignity. "

 

For decades, few spoke of the practice that targeted unwed teenagers, women with

multiple children and some men, most of whom were on welfare, poor and

illiterate and who lived at a time when authority was less likely to be

questioned.

 

But in recent years, as victims have put aside their shame and broken their

silence, several states, including Virginia, South Carolina, California and

Oregon, have acknowledged their roles.

 

While 33 states established eugenics boards, Illinois never did, despite

repeated efforts to get a bill through the General Assembly.

 

North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley in 2002 offered an apology and set up a study

committee--the first of its kind in the nation--that recommended a state

memorial, counseling and educational programs for the victims. The governor also

approved a recommendation that information about the program be included in

public school curricula.

 

State officials said they are working to establish an educational exhibit in the

North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, but so far the General Assembly has

not designated money for any of the proposals.

 

Riddick, who attended the apology ceremony at the state Capitol where she and

other victims received a standing ovation, is still waiting. And she continues

to tell her story.

 

Riddick grew up in Winfall, N.C., a small cotton-farming town near the coast,

with alcoholic parents who were in and out of jail. When she was 13, she said,

her siblings were sent to an orphanage and she ended up " on the street " after

her mother was sent to prison for attacking her abusive husband. And, Riddick

said, an older man in the neighborhood repeatedly sexually assaulted her,

getting her pregnant.

 

When she went to the hospital to have her baby, she was 14, fitting the profile

for the eugenics board, which during its course sterilized more than 2,000

children, some as young as 10.

 

Her grandmother, who was illiterate, and her father, who often was drunk, were

coerced into signing papers to have her sterilized, she said. Her grandmother

later told Riddick that the state had threatened to send Riddick to an orphanage

if she didn't comply.

 

" There were rumors that I was running around late at night and that I was

promiscuous. But the problem was that I was illiterate and I had nobody to turn

to. I was left on the street with no one to look after me, " said Riddick, who

lived off and on with her grandmother.

 

 

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