Latest on North Carolina Sterilization Victim Compensation

Well, I have returned to Chapel Hill to find that there's talk again of compensation to North Carolina's sterilization victims.  Already there's opposition brewing in the North Carolina Senate, where last year's compensation movement ended.  According to one report, Senator Phil Berger said that "with budgetary constraints, it's not appropriate."  The first article I linked to gives a somewhat different take from Senator Berger -- that "There was no ability to develop consensus on one particular path forward."  Perhaps there's some possibility of trying to find some consensus on a good way to proceed -- maybe that would involve attention to the circumstances of individual sterilizations.  Or maybe that's just Senator Berger's way of saying that some people are opposed and until they change their mind -- which they're unlikely to do -- this will not pass the Senate.  Time will tell.  And as you might expect, I'll be following this story closely.

Comments

[Murray Glick (of EEI)]

If they can find money in the state budget to compensate the victims of sterilization, why don't they take the money out of the retirement fund of the state politicians who oversaw the eugenics board last century. After all, they are the ones that didn't do anything to stop sterilization from happening so why shouldn't they be the ones who literally pay the price?