As I wrote in The News & Observer, the legislature should compensate the victims of North Carolina’s forced-sterilization program. This program isn’t some long-ago chapter in state history. There were forced sterilizations until at least the 1970s and possibly even 1980.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals in a case called In the Matter of Temple J. Johnson gave the green light for the sterilization of a mildly retarded female in 1980. It wasn’t until 2003 that the sterilization statute was repealed.
Here is the court’s explanation for why a mildly retarded female could be forcibly sterilized:
Respondent [Temple J. Johnson] argues that evidence relative to her morals, sexual activity, her attitude about birth control, and statements she made to Dr. Ainslie [a psychiatrist] that in her youth she would get impatient and angry with children left in her care by her parents, was irrelevant and remote. Since the questions of fitness and care before the court were broad ones and since her conduct and traits over a period of time would tend to show that her condition was not likely to materially improve, we find that the evidence was relevant.
Here’s some of the "compelling" testimony from her foster parent Gertrude Royal:
Gertude Royal testified that respondent has been her foster child for 10 years and that in her observation, respondent went out every night, had boyfriends, came in later than she was supposed to, slept most of the day and refused to take birth control pills. Gertrude Royal further stated that respondent was able to clean the house but she did not have the patience to cook. Gertrude Royal would not leave respondent alone with a small child.
As I hope is fairly obvious, these were completely inappropriate reasons for allowing the state to invade Temple’s body by force and sterilizing her. In fact, Temple’s behavior is far from unusual, regardless of whether the person is mildly retarded or has the highest IQ in the country. Note: It is unclear whether Temple was ever sterilized.
Would the court have said she couldn’t be sterilized if she did use birth control pills? What if she had religious or moral objections to using them? If she were a male instead and had many girlfriends, would the situation be different? What if she loved to cook and took on her "acceptable" gender role?
I think this case indicates the sexist nature of the sterilization program. Females were overwhelmingly targeted throughout the state’s sterilization campaign. Between 1960-1968, an astonishing 98% of all sterilizations were of females.
The Human Betterment League of North Carolina, which strongly pushed sterilizations and was very influential with North Carolina’s Eugenics Board, included this little quote in their educational material:
Feebleminded girls are particularly in need of the protection of sterilization since they cannot be expected to assume adequate moral or social responsibility for their actions.
I have a lot more coming out soon about this sad chapter in North Carolina history.
The Rare Hamburger Controversy
North Carolina’s law prohibiting restaurants from serving rare and medium rare hamburgers has been gathering national attention of late, in part because it was featured on AOL’s Weird News. After all, I didn’t know such a rule existed in this state, and I imagine other North Carolinians didn’t as well. And, well, it is kind of weird.
Clarifications
1) The law is actually an agency rule — there is no statute that says anything about this.
2) The rule is not new — it has been around since the 1990s.
3) The rule, which applies to food service establishments, states "ground beef and foods containing ground beef shall be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 155 degrees F (68 degrees C)." Remember, you can cook rare hamburgers at home — I’m not suggesting that you do so, but it is your call.
Apparently, the North Carolina Division of Environmental Health, which is responsible for this rule, is considering the adoption of federal guidelines that would allow for rare ground beef so long as there are proper customer notices. Such a rule change, however, may not go into effect until summer of 2012, if at all.
Big Picture
This story is important because it goes directly to the proper role of government and individual responsibility. Restaurant customers should be able to decide for themselves whether they want a rare hamburger. There may be some health risks, but people don’t need the nanny state to protect them from a really juicy hamburger.
By the way, I like medium hamburgers.
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