RALEIGH
A rarely used state law that allows District-Court judges to order sterilizations for mentally retarded or mentally ill people without their consent could be wiped off the books under a proposal filed in the N.C. House yesterday.

Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth, wants to repeal a law that he called "atrocious and ungodly."

"It borders on genocide," Womble said. "It borders on communist, on Third World countries, on countries that have dictators that they can do people like that."

The law allows sterilization in cases of a person's "mental, moral or physical improvement," or for the "public good."

It took effect in 1975 after legislators dissolved the Eugenics Board of North Carolina. The board - which operated with little oversight - authorized more than 7,600 sterilizations from 1929 through 1974 based on exaggerated claims that it could eradicate mental illness, genetic defects and social ills.

Once the board was disbanded, legislators shifted the responsibility for ruling on sterilization petitions to the judicial system.

The eugenics board has come under increased scrutiny since a series of stories in the Winston-Salem Journal revealed new details. Gov. Mike Easley formally apologized for the program and appointed a study committee that started meeting last week to consider potential reparations to victims, among other things.

It is not clear how many sterilizations have been approved by District Court judges since the 1970s, but Dick Ellis, a spokesman for the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts, said that such petitions are uncommon.

"Our statistics only show there are three of them done in North Carolina (in 2001-02)," Ellis said. "It's very rarely used."

A spokesman for the N.C. Department of Mental Health and Human Services said that in the last five years, one patient at a state mental hospital had been sterilized.

Womble sees little difference between the sterilizations ordered by the eugenics board and those approved by judges.

"It's a leftover," he said of the existing law. "I want to do all I can to remove all vestiges ... to that kind of program that was done in this state."

Currently, parents or guardians of the mentally challenged - or a head of a state mental institution - can request a sterilization order. The law says that sterilization is designed to protect children from being born to parents incapable of caring for them or to prevent the birth of children likely to suffer "physical, mental or nervous diseases or deficiencies."

"The people of North Carolina have a right to prevent the procreation of children who will become a burden on the state," the N.C. Supreme Court said in 1976 when it upheld the law.

Before a judge can order the procedure, it must be shown that the person is likely to have sex without contraception and therefore likely to get pregnant.

Rep. Verla Insko, D-Orange, who supports eliminating the sterilization law, said that the state should not be involved in decisions of personal rights and freedoms.

"It's really scary that the state is in the business of sterilizing people," she said. "It's not an appropriate role for government."

• Dana Damico can be reach-ed in Raleigh at (919) 833-9916 or at ddamico@wsjournal.com