RALEIGH

With no debate, the N.C. House voted 116-1 yesterday to strike a law that allows involuntary sterilizations of the mentally ill.

Though rarely used, the law remains the last legal link to the state's eugenic sterilization program that ordered more than 7,600 sterilizations from 1929 to 1974, many of them against the wishes of the patients and their families. Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth, pushed to have the law repealed after he learned of the abuses of the eugenics program, which was based on flawed claims that sterilization could eradicate mental illness, genetic defects and such social ills as out-of-wedlock births.

Recent reports also revealed that many of the sterilizations performed were based on questionable IQ tests and without the patients' consent.

Some were performed on children as young as 10.

"It's unconscionable," Womble said. "It's ungodly. It's not the American way."

The proposal now moves to the Senate for consideration.

Gov. Mike Easley has formally apologized for the state's eugenics program, and appointed a committee to investigate and consider ways to compensate victims. Two weeks ago, the panel heard emotional testimony from two women who were sterilized in the mid-1960s.

Both women are black and were poor. Social workers prepared petitions to have them sterilized after each had a child.

Elaine Riddick Jessie was 14 when she was sterilized. She got pregnant by a man in his 20s - statutory rape by law - and was labeled "feeble-minded." Nial Cox Ramirez, who was 18 when she was sterilized, said that her social worker threatened to cut her family from welfare if she didn't agree to the operation. She, too, was deemed "feeble-minded."

Both gave birth to children who work in the computer field.

Womble said that the testimony was heart-rending. And he said that there are other victims like Jessie and Ramirez who have not stepped forward but have suffered silently the shame and heartbreak of being forcibly sterilized.

"We should compensate these people," he said after the debate. "My next priority is to work on reparations."

The bill passed yesterday would repeal the law that allows District Court judges to approve involuntary sterilizations for a person's "mental, moral or physical improvement," or for the "public good."

The law took effect in 1975 after legislators dissolved the eugenics board. Once the board was disbanded, legislators shifted the responsibility for ruling on sterilization petitions to the judicial system.

"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 when it upheld the law in 1976.

Three sterilizations were granted in 2001-02. State health officials say that in the past five years only one patient at a state mental hospital has been sterilized.

The bill would still allow involuntary sterilizations in certain instances, including if a mentally disabled woman needs a hysterectomy to remove fibroid tumors or treat ovarian cancer.

Under the legislation, the guardian of a mentally ill or retarded person could petition a clerk of court for the operation. They would have to provide a doctor's sworn statement that the operation is medically necessary and not solely for sterilization.

After the vote, the lone dissenter, Rep. Russell Capps, R-Wake, said he might not have understood the bill. "Once I pushed the button, I tried to turn it off and I couldn't," Capps said. "I wasn't voting for sterilization because I don't know if there's a need for it."

Capps did say, however, that there could be instances when someone should be sterilized, including when severely mentally retarded people have children they can't care for.

"I might of made a goof," he said. "I don't know. It won't be the first one."