Panel recomends money for sterilization victims
RALEIGH (AP) - A state House panel has recommended North Carolina provide compensation to victims of the state's forced sterilization program.
Lawmakers said Thursday the state should give $20,000 to victims of the program, which sterilized about 7,600 people between 1929 and 1975 who were considered to be mentally handicapped or genetically inferior.
Most of those sterilized in the 1960s were poor black women.
North Carolina's program was the third largest in the nation, behind those California and Virginia.
If the recomendation is adopted by the General Assembly, researchers say North Carolina would be the first state to offer compensation for a practice once considered a solution to rid society of mental illness.
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