I was concerned about a provision in the proposed legislation that would compensate the victims of the state’s reprehensible forced sterilization program.
Specifically, the same agency (Department of Health and Human Services) responsible for the eugenics program would determine whether the victims were eligible to receive compensation.
Now, as reported, one single person will determine eligibility:
Charmaine Fuller Cooper, named the first executive director of the North Carolina Justice for Victims of Sterilization Foundation, will help develop criteria to determine whether patients or their descendants qualify for financial restitution or other assistance, according to the Department of Administration. [Emphasis added]
First, no person or agency should determine eligibility unless the legislature has set clear guidelines. Second, the same state that thought it was right to pick and choose who should be forcibly sterilized should not now be choosing who is worthy of being compensated.
I don’t know what “criteria” are going to be used. However, the only thing that should be considered (and the legislature should clarify this) is whether the individual was a victim of the Eugenics program (there’s no way to figure out whether someone properly consented or not at this point). If the person was a victim of the program and is still alive, the person should be compensated if they file a claim.
Nothing more, nothing less. I’d think we would have learned our lesson about getting into questions of who should have been sterilized and who shouldn’t have been.
Some issues I could imagine that would be considered would be the IQ levels of victims, whether victims were institutionalized, whether parents “consented,” whether victims “consented,” whether the person was unable to function on his own, etc. None of this should be considered now–if consent could genuinely be determined and the records could be trusted, then consent would be something to look at–but this isn’t the case.
Finally, something that should raise serious red flags is the idea that descendants should be compensated. It was one thing to compensate the individual victims, it is another thing to compensate the descendants. Once we go down that road, it truly is impossible to distinguish compensation for the eugenics program from reparations for slavery. Further, this would also mean less money for living victims of the forced sterilization program.
